Moonspear your love will always be rooted deeper than any grave

birth. come to me, my little moondrops. it got long, sry. also had to repost it because threadlog wonkiness so go me
@Korei Julia @Alya @Hydra @Lyra

Through all the long, muggy hours of the summer's afternoon, restlessness had claimed her with a fury unmatched. Despite her efforts, she couldn't find a way to make herself at all comfortable. Not even in the cool dark of the den, on the soft grasses beyond it, and not beside the creek -- nowhere involving this body, this skin, or any of it in this place. Not for as long as she was still pregnant with these puppies, she feared, and with a complex cascade of hormonal changes, she felt a great many ways. She paced with a lashing tail, sometimes stone-faced, others with a lolling, panting tongue or a vicious grimace as she snapped at the air near her distended flanks in protest. No matter the exact expression, she was miserable and it was clear.

The height of the day rose, and as it fell, humidity climbed up and up still. Clouds were slow to gather afterward and during this, she'd managed to steal some unexpectedly deep sleep until the twisting tightness in her abdomen eventually spurred her up again. As hours spanned on, it deepened, worsened, and gripped her with a far greater strength and now even as she tried to stretch through, it only held fast instead. Worrisome, but surely indicative of something to come. In part, she was eager to get on with it.

By the time the cloud cover let go its light shower, dusk was finally beginning to settle and she was finding her labor progressing more and more. Her contractions came faster, fiercer, and left her shivering in their painful wake. Somewhere between these cycles was where she'd finally warned @Charon out of her sights for good. It was not the first show of her teeth, but perhaps the most earnest yet; he had an unspoken important task, too, for she was entrusting him to protect the peace and quiet of this little swatch of mountainside until she got through this, and for her that meant him not hovering too closely. She had it in her head that she needed it that way, a careful measure of well-guarded yet left alone, or else disturbances were going to be met with hellfire.

Only when she was satisfied by her peace, and pleased that the short rain had already begun to cool the coming night's atmosphere, she finally took her toiling into the security of the den. Once there, it did not take her long to get to what this was all leading up to. Instinct pulled her focus inward in a way viciously unknown, so she listened and pressed onward over the strange new pain, determined to see herself out to the other side.

She was rewarded soon enough -- although nothing seemed to get over with 'soon' about those awful first seconds leading up to the heralding of this small life. But the second they fell behind her, she could forget about that all. Without a sound of her own, she pulled the little weight closer to her belly and cleared away sac and fluids alike. She licked purposefully over its face then back, revealing detail after detail with every swipe of her tongue. As she worked, her nose quivered greedily and careful snips of her teeth freed the little one to this life in full. A daughter, small, pale, yet showing signs of life that came as a great relief. She nosed her purposefully towards a teat so she could feed.

She could feel her muscles still pulling, but not yet nearly at the ferocity that forced her to mind them. It seemed the rest of the litter would grant them a moment's rest, which was good.. because she would need a bit to adjust to this -- this strange, foreign feeling. The dark alpha settled her head down to watch the single pup, feeling curious, wary, and so wholly invested that it hurt her chest to revere this accomplishment as she did. It occurred to her to match a name to her, but her head was so abuzz with a million thoughts and feelings and sensations all at once that nothing resembling any words came above this chaotic zen. So long as she lived, a presence itself was a good place to start and that was all Amekaze needed to be aware of, ailing and hormonal herself. She groomed gently on the girl, as well as herself, and aimed to ease her into a comfortable first rest in the world beyond her womb.

Soon, parturition urged her with more pains and she let them have her. When she reached beneath her tail for the second pup, she prickled uneasily at first sight, even before pulling it away from its confining bubble. It looked perhaps a shade off-color and smelled differently too, but she did what she had done for the first whelp and realized similarities and differences alike that could explain it. Male, larger, similarly colored, however did not seem to react to her ministrations. Limp, aside from a few small twitches, she couldn't seem to coax an earnest breath from this puppy. She licked a little rougher, nudged a bit differently, and when her handling began to border on rough, he gave up a few wet, sputtering coughs. After, she pulled him close to her underside and thought for a beat that he may brighten, but he did not. Blood dribbled from his nostrils now and she was keen to take that as a bad sign. She refused to leave him alongside her daughter, although kept him within reach near her forelegs when the contractions began to creep on her again, and intended to deal with that more later on.

Amekaze now could recognize the cyclical signals nature provided quickly, however this time they seemed to take a little longer and bite a little harder once they got there. She swiftly found herself panting, shivering, and only continuing to escalate by the moment. Eventually it was enough that she had to pull herself away from the first resting puppy and her stilled brother to pace again as labor had her twisting and turning anxiously all around the den; she couldn't seem to stay still through this round and all that went with it. The births that followed did not come so easily as the ones preceding them. She shuddered from the pain, her struggles against them seeming to always fall short, and willed herself forward, step by step into progression. But it was not easy. Nature repeated itself, and she heeded its word.

By later in the evening, she was looming tiredly wild-eyed over three more dark-furred daughters, each hardly distinguishable from the last. She arranged them around the paler female, noticed they were a touch larger, and then settled next to the small row of whelps to groom them and herself when she could, alternating between them each while they could nurse away -- hopefully undisturbed. She too was tempered by what her body could provide her for now, and adrenaline flowed with a quiet rhythm in her ears while in contrast, watching the whelps breath softly worked to soothe her back down from misery's heights. She expected exhaustion to follow on its heels soon, it was practically inevitable, but in due time. Courtesy this, even smelling like blood and knowing that she still failed to coax life into the secondborn, all else besides the pups seemed like a faraway hum.

Satisfaction from the successful achievement of four living pups curled warm in her chest for the moment anyway. She sighed, and selfishly let herself bask in it as she keenly watched them simply exist.