Arrow Lake ❝—by my blood & bone.❞ (lbr.)

It seemed to be eons ago when the far-seer had risen with the evening star, sent Vonnaruil running for Mahler, for Olive, and parted from sleep and Vercingetorix with a quivering kiss. Between the inscrutible hours of twilight and dawn, their children would arrive. I will live to see them, were the thoughts of Aurëwen, children restless in her belly, for it is all I may give. Yet she felt so faint, so far-away already.

Breath heavy, the silver had straggled to her thicket, a wetness on her thighs. Though she knew no answers would come, Aure had given her eyes to the heavens; given her faith to what Rhaesuial considered Eä; instilled it, even, into Olive's gods she'd never followed. Five months since, she would peer into the waters, gaunt and wraithlike, and had never let herself wish to be enraptured, to mother. Never let herself wonder if she were deserving enough of either.

Yet, here she was: with agony seizing her each moment she tried to rouse from her side. Fading from herself and flushing to life with each deep, laborous strain through her ivory being. She felt her heart ebbing within her, everywhere. She convulsed in her own arms as the pain took her again, and again, and again, as if her children had grown fangs and meant to tear their way from her.

I must live. And it must have been a thought; there was no wisping from between her scarred lips. These children of the sea and sky kicked within her gut like wild hares. What did the water give me? With a tremulous lowing of distress, fear — the only plea she would ever make — and with the beat of her heart filling the world, Aurëwen wilted, withered.

As the dark fever ensnared her, she thinks she saw bleak shadows in the guise of Mahler — or Olive? Both? As she fell from herself, she thinks her first child left her; she thinks she felt it thrash at her hocks, but Aure could not rise to pull at that filmy veil. What did the water give me? The breath had gone from her; it was all she could do to gasp.

What did the water give me?

Dated for 4/1st. @Mahler @Olive @Dragomir @Vercingetorix @Isilmë