Herbalists' Cache the promise

BABIE TIME, since ghe'naya already posted, next is : @Cede then @Caan and finally @Faliya

the herbs work between her teeth, bitter and dry, but they bring a bloom of warmth that travels through her veins. not enough. nothing could be enough for this—the ache that splits her, the carving open of her body as life crawls free.
she says nothing. she does not cry. does not scream.
but she trembles.
her sides quake as the first pushes free, slick and small. a girl. she turns, drags her tongue across the babe’s damp spine. the taste of birth is iron on her tongue, thick and heavy. a daughter, she thinks, and the thought alone nearly undoes her.
then another. and another.
a boy. then his brother. and then the last—small, fragile and dark, a puff of shadow torn straight from her father’s back. she cleans her slower than the rest, more thorough, as if her love might fill what the cold has stolen.
four. four stars to follow her.
tears streak the dark of her cheeks, hot where they roll through the frost. they fall without her notice, quiet as the storm beyond the den’s hide. they are not grief, nor joy. they are simply the release of all things held too tightly. the weight she carried alone, at last, shared.
her breath comes ragged. shallow.
she does not lift her head until she feels gjalla’s shadow nearby, the rumble of black hawk's guarding, the soft shuffle of ishmira tending the den. they are there. they answered. she does not have to look to know it.
...you did well, she whispers, voice rough and thin like cracking ice. her gaze falls upon her children. her future. their future. my starlings.
her tongue slides gently across the girl’s head. the first to arrive. the boldest.
burn bright.