Stone Circle Love, mom

@Figment @Katla @Swift @Skáld (tags for ref or joining)

For Katla and Swift.

The decision not to conceive you must have come as a surprise. I was thinking about your birth ever since I was a little girl and had stubbornly warmed a finch chick back to health under my belly.

If you could see into my mind, you would know it’s great turbulence. You would consider also that such storms can be moved through one being into the next. If you could see this world, too, that is forever evolving, you would also come to fear how quickly the permafrost melts, and how a place can stand one day and be gone the next.

I know this means I will never share my joy of the world with you. That you will never smell a crisp winter morning. That you will never hear laughter, enjoy a good meal, or feel the love I have for you. You will never see the eyes of your father, never meet your aunts and uncles and cousins, your grandparents, your partners. You will never be parents. But you will also never know blood, or illness, loss or grief. You will never have to make this decision. You will rest in peaceful nonexistence.

I think you would have thanked me.

But you had other plans.

Katla, that night it was you who came first to me. I suppose you could not wait any longer. Maybe you’d had enough of my protests, the cries and writhing of my body that afflicted us all. Maybe you knew even then this was to be the nature of our relationship- me asking for one thing and you determined to do the opposite. You made me a mother that night, and I could do nothing but stare at you. It was simply that I’d never seen anyone so beautiful in all my life.

Swift, you were second born and never to let me forget it. I’d never known such a fire as you, how you resisted even as I strained with all I had. You were not prepared to part from me and there was a point I believed you would not! I prayed to gods I didn’t believe in and swore heavily at your father for putting you there, and one of those things managed at last to work. Even in the dimness there was the ash of your fur and the roundness of your muzzle and I reached for you; my son.

I held you both, brother and sister, together at my chest and laughed, or cried (I can’t remember which). My throat was too raw for sounds, my tongue panting too hard for words. So it was with my mind that I spoke to you.



Hi babies. I can’t believe you’re here. And you’re you!

I’m your mom.

I’m probably going to make mistakes (a lot of them).
You’re probably going to upset me at some point. And I’m going to upset you.
I'm gonna say the wrong things sometimes, maybe even do the wrong things.

But I promise you, whatever happens, this is always true:

I love you.



And I knew, for all my resolve, there was nothing in this world that could have prepared me for the magnitude of you.

She was warm, and she was safe, cuddled beside her sole companion. Their hearts beat as one, in rhythm with the world all around them. A world flooded with love.

But lately, where she had once known only comfort, there were beginning to be pangs of something else. Their surroundings shrinking, and they would surge and twist, her preferred positioning would be disturbed by her ever-encroaching neighbor, deep muffled sounds would echo through them all. Woeful sounds.

She didn't have patience for much, and so during a particularly irritating moment, she decided, for the first time in her imminently approaching life, to take true action, to better her situation. She would find more space for herself.

The regret was instant. 

The one who had been beside her for all eternity, she couldn't feel him anymore. He was gone! She tried to turn back, to do anything, just to get back to him, but it was too late. She was on her own. 

A blast of cold, she fell limp on a cruel hard ground. She gasped and felt chilly empty air filling every inch of her, despair filling her just as quickly. The first breath she offered back to the world carried an anguished wail.

It was several lifetimes, and several wails, when finally someone came to her. The first touch… and she realized that the world came back. The world of love. Not the same as before, but strangely just as familiar. Her cries turned to eager whimpers as she struggled toward the touch, the cold soon banished as the world shepherded her into a wall of soft matter. 

And then he was there there, the other of the only two things she knew. She felt him join her, different but the same, and she nearly climbed over him in her effort to get close, so relieved she was. She had left him, but she found him, and she wouldn't let him go again. 

Warmth enveloped them, and muffled sounds as clear as they ever had been. Everything was here, back to the way it ought to be. There was her, and him, and the world.

Little Swiftlet’s infant mind was incapable of the impassioned and lucid thought that his mother’s was, but it was not at all dormant. It was frantic, straining to parse the sensations barraging it as he struggled against the turbulence unravelling his world as he understood it. He could not know that a safe, loving home existed beyond the membranous bounds of his mother, or that what he was experiencing was the beginning of his life and not the end of it. There was no real action he could take to resist the change of his circumstances, but he willed it as hard as an unborn thing could, and through some force or the other his birth was made something his mother had to battle for.

She did not, however, have to quarrel with him for a sign of livingness. He let her know right away that he had arrived, quite alive and quite unimpressed, with a stream of sharp, rumbling squeaks—a neonatal growling as it were. His paws, too, engaged in the protest with aimless scrabbling, too weak to move him and unable to take him where he wanted to be regardless. 

Nothing about where he was felt right and he raged until it did. Until he had been drawn against his mother's breast, until he became cognizant of the presence of the other he was accustomed to, and until the milk flowed and began to warm him from inside out. Only then did the squeaking settle, petering out to an almost inaudible gurgle as his stomach distended further and further. This was not the womb, but he had found all that the womb had been to him here. In time he would learn the differentiate between safety, love, and home; where each began and ended and how the three were connected. But for now, they were just one thing—the one thing he needed and wanted and would fight for.

Full and content now in his new surroundings, Tauris' firstborn son heaved a great sigh, and his gurgle turned to a whispering snore.

Looking back, Figment wasn’t quite sure how he’d gotten to this moment. The past weeks had been a blur of fears and anxieties, guilt and reluctance. Fig had not wanted to be a father. He’d spent too much of his life feeling responsible for others to want to commit to such for the rest of his days. He’d known the risks staying in the Bypass with Tauris, but he still had held out hope that perhaps they’d be safe. Then had come the news and his world had been altered dramatically forever.

The only thing to sustain him and keep his spirits high had been the peace and joy he’d found in Kvarsheim with Tauris. He knew it had been hard on her, his strained relationship with her eldest, both of them accepting the pregnancy. But their stolen moments together of laughter and affection made all of it worth it to Fig. He was committed, whether he’d made that clear to her or not. He wasn’t going anywhere.

When her time finally came, Fig was not the calm, collected man he’d tried to be throughout her pregnancy. It was fortunate she did the birth on her own—his nerves and anxiety would not have been helpful for the situation. He did his best at least to keep it quiet, but every sound of her pained straining had him searching for invisible enemies he could fight off and protect her from. But there was nothing to do but wait, restless, crawling out of his skin from worry until finally, there was nothing but heavy breathing and tiny mewls.

Nervously, he called her name, seeking permission to interrupt her special moment with their children.

Their children.

His children.

On second thought, was he actually ready to go in?

Her head is heavy and full but when his voice lifts tenderly over the soft suckling of the puppies she raises it to search the dark.

“Figment,” she breathes and exhales his name, reaching for him. He is here; he hasn’t left.

“He looks like you,” even if winded from the strain, her voice is steeped in wonder as she cradles her son and daughter against her, “and so does she.”

Two children he gave to her. And would he love them at once as she does?

Like the children, he tossed and turned as he slept, dreaming of a herd of white bison that had crowded around him, racing in circles. They pushed at him with their great, shaggy skulls and buffeted him with their powerful hindquarters. The circle closed in on him, and he could the pressure of the nearing animals squeeze the breath out of him. No doubt some deep, distant memory of the birth process that some part of his brain still remembered. 

He awoke with a startled gasp, splaying his legs before him as he lurched into a half upright position. Eyes widened, he gazed around, blinking as his vision cleared. The bison were nowhere to be seen; it had all just been a dream. He shook lightly as he caught his breath, grateful now for the release of pressure that had made him wheeze while he slept. 

His ear flicked when he thought he heard a small cry in the distance. He turned his head, thinking he'd imagined it, but rose to his feet when he heard Tauris' frustrated voice in the distance. Uttering a beligerent and surprised boof! Skáld meandered closer, ears flicking to and fro. 

He'd haunted Tauris' footsteps, remaining just beyond reach so he might not be cornered into a confrontation with Figment. It was exhausting, tracking a packmate while also avoiding another, especially when the two spent so much time together. He remained within earshot of a howl so if he was needed, he could be summoned- but kept himself out of sight. He slept in the open in short spurts, so he could move his position when necessary. Ever vigilant, he'd become exhausted, and the tiredness had begun to give him nightmares. 

He growled lightly when Tauris' voice rose again, but the moment Figment came into his line of vision as a dark spot on the horizon, he stopped to lurk. He watched the man wait, pace, respond to the sounds he heard that were out of Skáld's earshot. Softer, reassuring sounds he would have wished he could hear- the first notes of a mother's voice and the quiet mewling of newborn children. 

Figment disappeared from sight. Skáld waited for him to call out if there was an emergency- but there was only silence. A new family had been made, and as always, it was just beyond Skáld's reach.

Fig’s heart was pounding when he took his first steps into the den, his eyes adjusting quickly to the lack of light. He searched for Tauris’s face first and felt warmth flood over his humming nerves. She looked happy, which was promising. She hadn’t originally wanted this either, so perhaps it wasn’t…

He saw them next and froze.

He stared.

One second.

Two.

Ten.

Thirty.

He lost count.

He looks like you, and so does she.

Fig swallowed and crept around behind Tauris, sliding onto his belly as he curled around her. He laid his head upon her back, still staring down at the two pups suckling greedily at her belly.

”No,” he said quietly, ”They look like you.”

He smiled, tears swelling in the corners of his eyes.

”Perfect.”

As sudden as the light hit his tears so too did her’s come. She reaches to touch his with her kiss before tucking her muzzle beneath his chin. Together they gaze down at their children, and nothing in this world has ever felt more right to her.

“You’re a father,” with awe she murmurs. And what will their children call him? “Or maybe, a dad? Pops? Old man?” Even in her weariness her dry throat gives a laugh.

She’d learned a lot about Fig, and the circles she would go with him around. Of the lines they’d marked, only to cross over. Even if they’d tried to stop each other, they couldn’t. And she knew she never would. He was the only one. Her's.

You're a father.

The words echoed in his mind, sending sensations along his spine and thrumming through his heart. A father. The one thing he'd never wanted to be now suddenly the most important thing in the world to him. He would take time later to marvel over how his entire life had shifted beneath his feet so dramatically today, but for now...

"I like Dad best," he said with a smile, "But Old Man is probably the most accurate." His tongue slipped out to place a kiss on her nose and he gave a contented sigh.

What do I call you, Fig?

Her mouth parts a moment then closes. Her senses stretch. The soft stroke of her children nursing is a nourishing sensation, as much as her trust for their father is. She hopes their children are like him.

“You didn’t run. You could have- I would have.”

She simply marvels at that. And when her head falls back and she closes her eyes to rest she marvels at it too in her dreams.

Fig was pensive at Tauris’s words. Could he really have run? She had given him permission long ago, but he had never given it to himself. He wondered at that, and the conclusion came swiftly.

He never could’ve run.

He loved her.

The revelation slipped to his lips, but held there when he realized she was already asleep. Fig smiled softly at this and kissed her crown gently. Her rest was more important than his confessions. Besides, as far as he was concerned, they had a lifetime together now to get to such things.

For now, she would sleep, and he would watch over their little family.