Stone Circle i refuse then like i do now to let anybody tie me down

set during this: click and a few hrs before the charles/louie/indra thread! this is maybe a RO unless anyone wants to witness/see it.

they were hardly more than a week old, yet laurel's pups squirmed and fought in a furry bundle while indra stared down at them. @Riley was firmly pressed to the ground by one red paw, and @Louie eerily still as she held him in her mouth. @Charles was climbing over the pinned form of his dark brother.

a scene that in any other family would have been observed with nothing but overarching adoration.. but instead.. indra felt only a burning, fueled sense of resentment as she watched their twisting bodies wrestle with one another.

laurel had needed to stretch her legs, and indra knew what had to be done with that narrow window of opportunity. she carried them covertly to a patch of reeds by a riverbank. these three children (abominations, indra reminded herself sternly) could not be permitted to grow, to live -- they would serve as a constant reminder of laurel's trauma. just because they grew in laurel's belly did not mean they were owed anything -- especially when they had been planted there so hatefully.

they had to go -- it was a cruel errand that indra hastened off to, but a mandatory one. laurel did not deserve to raise three offspring of a monster, and god forbid they grow and do what their father had done...

there were crueler things in this world than an early, blissful death.

indra listened to the gurgle of water besides them. she knew this time would come, and how many times she had rehearsed it in her mind. a death by drowning was no kind exit, but she could not bring herself to snap their necks.. somehow, that single act of violence was unpalatable, so indra resolved to drown each of them before they could ever reap the same misery their father had.

it would be quick, she reminded herself. they would never know true pain this way, she convinced herself. they would never inflict pain, she corrected herself while the water chugged on down the sunny stream. indra watched the near idyllic scene with a sense of overwhelming dread. it would be over soon, and things would be better.

placing louie down atop charles, indra looked over their squirming, chubby bodies one last time. she did not see cute innocent lives before her: she saw three writhing demons that did not deserve the air they breathed. they were dark -- collectively far darker than laurel's last litter had been. they had yet to see the world, or speak.. yet they were implacably alive, and indra had never done something so cold-blooded before.. it's for the best, she reminded herself over and over again as she bent down and grabbed riley by his scruff; he hung there with a slow and helpless wriggle of one outstretched paw.

dangling her charge above the water, indra braced against the cold current with a wince. there was a gentle tug understream, and the redleaf made for the shallow pool that lingered along the bank. fish and small minnows darted away from her splashing paws as she went, grave and somber to her singular purpose. outwardly indra moved with strident intent, yet inwardly her adrenaline soared to new and confounding heights. water rippled and brightly bounced underneath her, sending riffling reflections along her thin legs and stomach.

still she walked purposely forward, riley mewling demurely in her mouth.

she came at last to the central part of the quiet pool, where water rolled gently and the bottom was littered with rounded river stones. her jaws loosened and riley dropped to the water, seized instantly and pushed downward by a forceful shove of her paws. she held him there against the river bed and he squirmed and kicked, bubbles rising roughly from his gasping maw. indra kept her eyes closed as long as she could, yet when she looked down upon that sorrowful scene and saw rounded babe held against the river's bed her heart could withstand such brutality no longer. this is not me, a voice rose within and indra came to her harrowing senses; i cannot do it.

with a gasp she released riley from the shallow river floor and he rose instantly to the surface, churning bubbles into loud and panicked yowls as his aunt plucked him from the glittering water and hauled him sobbing to the river bank.

shaken beyond grief indra sobbed as she clawed her way up through the reeds with riley in tow, her form sodden and limbs quivering in dumbfounded exhaustion. with an anguished cry, indra threw herself upon louie and charles. nothing but broken sobs of shock sounded from her heaving form. huddling the three of laurel's babies close to her soggy chest in horror, indra could not reconcile the atrocity of what she had almost just done.

one time post so it's in my threadlog!

Charles was blissfully unaware of how close to death he had come. The edge he had teetered on was lost on him completely, as he lay by the riverbank alongside his brother. Not even when his aunt returned, wet sensation in tow, did he understand any of it, except that this all must be a part of what life was and would be.

bliss was not a word riley knew then, while he was held under cold currents. he squrimed against the unseen force, squalling as cold water rippled by his spine, sunk through his coat, and rested on his bare and exposed belly.

he fought against the sensation as it shifted past his skin unpleasantly, seeping into his nose and eyes. he knew not to breathe, but his body knew the repugnance of water where it did not belong: in choking fits, bubbles streamed from the little curve of his small nostrils, parted from between tiny milk white incisors bared but silent.

this unfamiliar sensation was nothing like what he preferred. it was nothing like laurel's soothing flank, nor the comfort of his siblings tucked up one by one resting against his content and full belly. no, the only companion riley had then were the wordless and insensate stones pressed against his back, indifferent to the crime committed on their riverbed.

when it seemed he could fight no longer, his body stilled with gentle kicks until it seemed the river was at play between his limbs. it was then he was hauled from his watery crucible and threw callously against the bank. the shock of the cold, of the water, of the harsh thud of his body against earth, it all sunk into his chattering bones, which clicked and whirled with infantile terror as choking coughs burned up his throat.

he would not remember this day. he would never know how gently the sun slanted through the reeds, catching the rounded edge of a tear on his aunt's cheek in a golden halo. he would never know how close he had come to scarcely living, and as he labored against his aunt's hold, riley set up a high wail that sent birds fluttering wildly from the summer reeds and into the incandescent blue beyond.