Dragoncrest Cliffs lanmou lajounen

no posting order! <3

the night before, erzulie had been seized by a sense of finality.
she was woken long before dawn by the first pains, jaw tensing as she counted the minutes between. they stretched, interminable — and she groaned against @Rosalyn's shoulder. 
she emerged from the den to pace and to walk, to move with the scent of the sea and the air licking across her flanks, her withers. she beheld the ocean — an inhale, another tightening,
when the sun began to cast a path of gold shimmering across the face of the ocean, dawnlight limning her rounded sides and face haunted by mother-pain, she returned to their shelter and thought of nothing else.
through the morning, sapphique was punctuated by the cries and guttural moans of the obsidian, who did not move to veil herself. she churned inside the den; she sweated; she begged for the loa to attend her.
this birth, harder than the ones that had come before.
between her thighs, a child, a round darksilver boy who erzulie licked clean, panting. beautiful. healthy. "@Sobo," she sighed aloud to her wife, nudging him to her bosom as she had done many times before.
the pains, returning as the skies overhead greyed with the threat of rain.
another boy; she lapped the membranes from his mouth and eyes, marvelling. "@Loko." 
erzulie would have been content then, but her body thrummed with unrepentance, and she cried out again, toiling, toiling, until blood flickered into her mouth from a bitten jawline. this child, a girl, a daughter for sapphique, and despite her sodden brow and weakened voice, the harlot whispered, "@Coraline." nuzzling her closer, pulling birth from the fur that would soon be downy. a sister for those who had come before.
seababes, sea-children.
but she was not finished.
in shock, she felt her figure clench again; this time blood, and she lay spent, unable to fight the spindling of time nor the anguish that blacked her vision for a moment.
a fourth;
"@Mireille." the last of sapphique's new ones this year, a child who resembled the others with reddish hue.
erzulie gathered her close, this second daughter, and aligned her with the first three, unable to hold her head up for long as she lay back and became insensate, body willing her into an exhausted slumber that kept ears twitching at every sound made by her children.
the coastland, complete.
waves swung themselves loudly against the stone cliffs, and erzulie slept.

Sobo came into the world like a clap of thunder. That was how he earned his name.

In the womb, the boy grew fat. Fatter than fat. Fatter than the average cub, while his littermate became thinner. The other two, littermates in name but not in blood, and maybe that was the reason for it, were spared this leaching of nutrients by their parasitic sibling. Sobo became fatter, Loko became thinner, so by the time the four cubs were born, Loko would slip into the world, and Sobo—and his poor mother—would struggle into it.

Once he was freed from the amniotic sac, he continued his thunderous rampage by squealing as loud as his lungs would allow until his mouth was filled with a teat and he could scream no longer. Only then did he grow calm, and only then did his rampage end with a hiccup and a snore.

A clap of thunder, at least for today—that was Sobo.

If Sobo was a clap of thunder, then Loko was a reed snaking in his brother's downdraft; a squeaking and squirming slip of a wolf pup. He chirred and wriggled until a teat to the face stopped him up with a grunt of thought—if it could be called that. It was an idea if nothing else. The idea that there was something he ought to be doing besides worming in his new space and trying to make conversation.

Deprived of fat but not of spirit, the second-born latched onto his mother, and suckled. He suckled, and he suckled, and he suckled. He grew round with a temporary fatness and groaned with discomfort. Or was that determination? Because the bugger kept on suckling, and suckling, and suckling still. He must have been making up for lost time, for long past the point where it seemed there could be nowhere left in his long thin body to put more milk, he was still going. He burped there once, as if to signal the end, but then filled whatever space that made with even more.

If Loko hadn't passed out... well, he'd probably still be suckling. But there he was for now, dead to the world. The rise and fall of his chest the only indication that he hadn't truly eaten a hole to the spirit world in his first few hours of life.

the roll of the sea brings with it the spirit of erzulie's thirdborn child; driftwood breaking glimmering gilded surface; flotsam twisting with each crash of amaranthine waves. and perhaps coraline is some lost spirit, some wandering fragment of the wreckage of something well loved and long forgotten. elegant tragedy made graceless flesh; ocean incarnate, all the give and take of mother sea bound up in soul-thread and cast ashore in all the mess and blood of birth. but if this is true, coraline does not yet know it.

for now, she simply is.

goddess' grace, no gods; the loa surrounding the child and breathing with her as motherbody worked the child down into the bowl of pelvis, and then out —
her first breath was a shock! so great a shock that mireille was silent!
not for long, not as erzulie's tongue swept over her, and finally she began to weep, la llorona to rosalyn's heart perhaps; and lay peeping and downy against her sister's flank, to exist in some fright of melancholy and charmless cold.
bit by bit she became warm.

It was harder than she thought it would be to be there for this, but Rosalyn stayed. She did what she could to help the birth but it was clearly a hard one, and for a time her heart seized up with dread to think it might go wrong.

If she lost her wife to this, she did not think she could love them. She would want no part in them at all.

Bleak thoughts as she tried to deliver soothing encouragement through Erzulie's cries. After what felt like an eternity, there were four, all perfect. While Erzulie slept, she remained where she was alongside, keeping careful watch on them all. It was strange; with a pang, she wondered at the sensation that these felt less hers than before. Something that would fade as days passed?

Hopefully. She would wait a while before calling the pack; despite the fathers likely wishing to see, she would defend the space adamantly until Erzulie woke.

The islander could sense something was happening. Their golden matriarch had retreated to her home with her co-captain and wife, Rosalyn, quick behind her. Like gravity pulling the moon, Njord found himself orbiting the den site anxiously… but he dared venture no further.

The quiet summer morning was punctuated by the tribulations of birth. Erzulie’s normally lilting voice was now bedraggled as she struggled. Njord remained a vigilant guardian, more alert than ever, and wondered how a mother could endure such arduous pain. It seemed to last an eternity… until the tiny mewls of new life trumpeted their arrival… and Njord’s red tail wagged.

He would stay on duty and find other members of the pack to talk about Sapphique’s first children, all the while wondering their names or if any looked like their father.