Sawtooth Spire Will I ever be more than I've always been?

me: it'll be short
also me:

she was serenely buoyant, blissful; utterly untroubled by the crises of knowing things and of her own existence and unburdened by expectations to be anything but what she was––a uterine barnacle. she’d long since gotten used to whiling the weeks away with nothing to entertain herself with except playing kickball with organs and the occasional intrigued prod of exterior noses. if it came with the tide, she found the most enjoyably kickable thing was her brother. though this emotion—delight—could not yet be expressed through giggles or smirks, it was surely extant somewhere deep within her mind anytime she successfully right-hooked the trespasser.

lacking the spatial awareness that would advise her of her sausage-link of a wombmate’s earlier departure (first class passengers, pfft, amirite), she hadn’t yet felt life’s tether start to tow her downstream, though tow it did. Wylla’s earlier fretful pacing had the effect of cradling her to sleep, but some of the mother-to-be’s agitated stress came down the gangline and had her bun-in-the-oven feeling crusty as well. that was, until she startled herself with a case of the hiccups. Phaedra The Unheralded One silently cried out and midst that, hiccuped again. with a clouded brow, she writhed and assembled martyred looks as best a fetus could, but the fits continued. as did her distress. and her martyrdom. 

that was the worst thing about her day by far, until the biggety biatch miracle of life had to go and further tear the butt out of her chi. the machinist in this sausage factory was suddenly courteously insistent that she make like a tree and fuck off.

um, yeah, OSHA will be hearing about this.

at once she was aware of a warm cinch, next of being passed through a narrow entrance by the might of powerful and insuperable propulsion. her body was thrust by thew through the tight corridor and she couldn’t conceive of why her world was now warping and wefting and then she was suddenly obliged to—well, strictly speaking this was all being done without her consent, soooo: dragooned into making her way down the assembly line until—seriously? until—

as unceremoniously as a goldfish going down the toilet, she was flushed through the birthing canal, urged by a final, strongly summoning contraction. her stubborn preference to stick lichen-like to the familiar, tropical climes of her vessel went entirely unheeded and hand-waved by the higher-ups and thus, her safe passage was enforced and not long after that, what some precious few might call a “blessed event” ensued. 

obeying (and being conscious of a distaste for doing such a thing) the laws of gravity from the final heave-ho, following a gush of watery substance, was the second of Wylla’s daughters. she was “gently” ejected from her former capsule and found herself quietly joining the outer realm without so much as a complaint or even a curtsy. there. born. happy? let's keep going.

she had not registered any sensation during the transition from womb to earth-side, all save for the abrupt freedom from that overbearing, squeezing, grandmotherly embrace of muscles that had worked overtime to unlade her. the recollection of such a feeling, however, was soon nothing but a light posse of fireflies in her memory … and then their evasive light glimmered, dulled, and blinked into nothingness.  

fresh from the oven, the savory broth in the amniotic sac enshrining Phaedra kept her complacent and warm and drowsing despite the displacement from her roost of some months. unfortunately, her acquaintance to what would inevitably amount to an entire girlhood of hazing experiences with Her Audacity was met in the form of dove-like teeth pecking and plucking at the pellucid caul until the membranes bassineting her burst apart. before all the liquid it contained could be strewn beneath them all, another hiccup spasmed and stirred her frame, and she respired some of the fluid that had at one time kept her so safe, drawing it into her nose and lungs.

there was no doubt that whelpbearing was as messy as it was theatrical; the cherub had plopped out like an egg yolk and squandered to the ground like one too (not sunny side up), then cast motionlessly against the pelt soaked with lochia. thankfully only one of the sundry dry and insulating peltries lain across the den floor, this one was assuredly gone to rack and ruin by the various secretions and gore of labor.

dampened by the flotsam of afterbirth, an unwelcome chill slipstreamed through Phaedra’s body, now tenderly convulsing from the cold wet. she would have mewled in a row of self-pity, but something occluded her throat and before anything could draw attention to her state of sudden malaise, a jab of snuffling leather fretting over every hair of her length and girth disrupted her senses, and what felt like a heavy tapestry swathed her back and neck and head and, ahem, impolite elsewheres too. 

disgruntled by the rousting but unable to advocate for herself (or bitch out her aquatic ancestors for not blessing her with anatomy capable of sign language), she simply pancaked on the ground until her afflicter was satisfied with their work.

vexed so, but more or less cleansed of mucid-filth and the squalor of earth, Phaedra remained as she was, and would remain, until forcibly moved. it was evident she was fated to be a lady fair judging by the pale ashen looks of her (in comparison to her slate brother); in later weeks, it could be said that she may as well have been heisted from a clutch of cygnets, rather than from a holt of badgers.  

she strained her neck with great effort and gaped, her tongue poked out grayish blue, but nary a sound was borne on any hearing or unhearing ears. presently, a dreadful tightening feeling returned and this was pervasively different from being hugged in the womb. the feeling was one of something constringing her insides, instead. the touch of pain came shortly and escalated swiftly to a fierce battering ram against her tiny breast: a bearing down on lungs still congested with enough amnion fluid to intercept her first thin cry, her first true breath of air. she weakly tried to gasp but it gave her little relief.  

she was deposited alongside the warm, teat-hasped body of her brother (who paid her as little mind as she did him as he suckled away, white foam frothing his gums) but Phaedra refused to latch herself, making no attempt on the teat presented to her; the instinct to root for milk was obscured by her vignetting interior world, and so she merely lay there listless and dim against the murmuring heartbeat of her mother. if this disinterest in feeding did not inform Wylla of the trouble her lastborn was in, as her lethargy had initially failed to (having neither squirmed nor bleated her first spiriting cries while being bathed), the girl was ere-long to expire without even a plaint in her throat. 

already, she was nothing if not willful, however. tumbling over one of Wylla's lissom forelegs, with the last traces of lucidity beginning to grow feeble, she mustered all the strength left in her little body to bid binch i can’t breeeeathe in the very faintest of wheezing, phlegmy coughs—grave and distant as the anchor dragging her ever downward.

crushing, drowning—it all climbed on her senses.

after the struggling rasps, somnolence swaddled her and unconsciousness took her, helped her descend from the dreadful outerworldly sensations and sink deeply into oblivion.