Ankyra Sound VIII. Standing in the back door crying, now you're going to need a friend.

Official birth! AW but please be aware @regin and @valravn will be posting -- come save her life, or finish her off - dealer's choice!  Raleska had dystocia & eclampsia -- she'll need medical intervention or its fishes.

When Raleska came to again she was aware immediately of the dull, pulsing pain to her backside. When she tried to sit up, her head swam and she was forced immediately downward -- down, where she felt something wriggling up against her chest.

She could recall little of what had transpired -- she remembered struggling to stand, feeling her senses swimming as a bolt of pain struck her true, and then, she remembered being laid flat out against the ground in agony and labor.

Her vision had been blurry and filled with dark spots then, but she could have sworn as slowly lost lucidity, that a pair of sharp yellow eyes had emerged from the growing shadows in the Grotto. That the owner of those eyes had swept close and propped her body up against the stone; that the dark, smoke-like shape had tore the brisket of membrane from Raleska's sides and removed from within gasping, wailing things --

and then that that was all she could see before darkness came for her.

Now she was awake, and gone was the wispy trailing of a smokeborn wraith -- gone were those familiar eyes, replaced now by two strangers suckling against her side.

A sob wedged its way through the girl's throat as she looked upon the lives she had borne, and the bloodbath that was her afterbirth. Around her was a thick and ominous gathering of blood, and she could no longer feel sensation in her hind toes.

Only a dull, throbbing, venomous ache.