Lion Head Mesa everybody loves you, baby [m]

Her rending screams stab like needles through his blasted heart, each one tearing the hull of his own body.

“Is there nothing that can be done?!” Impatient growls aimed for the doctor as she took up command. He looked on helplessly at the women who prepared ointments and readied their tools. The wife’s man gripped her tightly in his arms, bristling as if in no other woman in the history of the world had ever birthed an infant. With wildfire eyes he interrogated them all, hot as coal on a coppersmith’s forge, resistant to trust her with any other than her doctor. But they had been over this, as Semer-wati had conceived a temporary interest in the subject of pregnancy which rivaled even his obsession with his wife. If he were to stay for the birth he could not impede the order of parturition. So he relented with a grunt, releasing his hold to grab Toula's hand.

“We are ready,” he echoed, doing as Tavina bid, shifting to a firm place at the bedside. “I’ll not go anywhere," he told his wife, for in the preeminence of godhood they were one in the same. "You are so strong, my love,” he whispered and pressed a kiss to her tired cheek.

The father had done all he could. Now there was little else but to cradle his beautiful wife’s head in his paw and smooth the dampened furs upon her brow as the doctor coached her through each contraction.