Bearclaw Valley sickness

mama bear pls? <3 @Bernadette

breathy, raspy against the dark furs of the bear. a fussy baby who often found herself outmatched by siblings.

tiny limbs pressed hopelessly out into the endless expanse of dark fur. hoping and praying salvation was in there somewhere. hidden among the fur and food.

she began to fuss.

muffled cries, hitched by poor breathing.

like drumbeats against her skull.

the caches of ursus in the vicinity had been dug up. the dog suspected those farther out, if not stored so deep they'd been forgotten, had turned inedible. 
her milk had become a thinner stream, and her large, wolf-blooded daughters fought viciously - with all the savagery of fat, toothless things - among themselves for what was left of it.

but one pointedly lacked in might.

that one she'd named after the second coming, the fated return. the name's meaning felt empty. still, it came as a low rumble out the bearwoman as her head rose, turned and lowered to release a puff of air at the milk-coloured child.

"parousia."

it was one of the very, very few words she spoke over the past days.

parousia.

the big mother bear spoke, nothing but a rumble in the stunted babe's body. the wind of mother bear ruffled the baby hairs, swept parousia in a sense of protection.

parasite.

she grasped desperately with a soft mouth at her mother. not for food or for play, but to soothe herself. crying was always too difficult. more trouble than it was worth. she may have done so frequently, but never for very long.

the weakest babe. wormfood eventually, the mother was sure of it. it almost felt a waste to continue nursing her. let the bigger children get a chance to grow and mature and breed and split her bloodline into channels of equally mighty currents.

but then the maggot-coloured thing would weep again, a sound especially grating coming from one so unworthy of life. the little milksucker wouldn't let her sleep, oh she was sure of it, and she couldn't afford such a thing.

her dreams were forming a shape. the outlines could be seen, and if she could just focus a little bit more, take another of her dwindling supply of herbs and fungi, she could feel what message was it that the Bear was conveying to her.

for what other god would bother with a cheated mother in her hovel.

the woman didn't move her muzzle, deep in thought, and so the unexpected touch of her infant daughter made her head rise and pull away as if the pink paws were clawed.

her disgust was conveyed in the further wrinkling of her muzzle, the way her lips twitched to show stained teeth.

maggot-child.

she could not see the way that great mother bear met her with shows of teeth.

she felt the flex of movement, the ripple of warmth. parousia thought she had found heaven, not knowing it was her ill-wishing mother.

her crying ceased for but a moment as she nestled down into the furry plush of her mother's chest.

it was her first time experiencing wonder.

such a shame that the moment wasn't shared.

maggot-child, the thought echoed, now ready to be more critically observed.

she'd have thought it an effect of the hallucinogenics she was under while giving birth, but the association lasted.
this babe, long where her sisters were wide, of a colour that had never before come out her womb, strongly resembled a larva.
 
it crawled into the thick ruff of her chest, and bernadette adjusted herself stiffly, contact still unwanted and unpleasant.

...were she a sign? the former supplicant of ursus had thought the beargod would show its signs in a shape easier to associate with itself. but it would be quite base to assume such a fervently worshipped deity only had power over things like it. how many gifts were left upon its altars, and how many turned rotten and fly-infested? surely, its influence extended over the rot-eating things.

yes, the girl was worth her name. she was the way in which the god - so misunderstood by the savages which simplified it - wished to communicate with the dutiful scholar.

bernadette's muzzle bent down to look at the pale, wriggling thing looking as if wishing to burrow within her meat.

"parousia." she breathed again, in her shadowed, black eyes a shine reserved for things once believed worthless, only to be proven of use.

parousia found no more tears.

she did not weep here, in the warmth of mother bear. her breath shallow and she already so horribly exhausted by the travel from side to chest.

parousia.

a thunder cloud rumbling warning in her ears.

this time the sound that escaped parousia was nothing more than a babbling sound. vocal chords unable to form anything coherent.