Verdigris Ravine i'll be your mother and i'll hold your hand

@Harta ! Time for birf :)

The huntress of quiet shadows slipped from her den under rock in the dead of night. Her stomach felt ready to burst, and something in her told her it would. She did not want company.

A stark silhouette against sand and long legs trod to a different den, some ways away. It felt better for her, to be alone when she was no longer. Kusuma crept inside it's opening to shelter the coming litter from the wind. No one would know until she wanted them to. No one would see her precious little ones - she would never let Wolfs ever touch her kin.

Quiet. Let no one know. Not a sound out of her for fear tribekin would not accept the litter. Though why they wouldn't was a fear based not in reality.

Pain.

She soon had pain in ways she'd never felt before. Kusuma hoped this would be quick- 

~

And it was not. By the time moonlight held no shadow, the pain finally eased and a sense of numbness came over her. She cleaned the area as best she could, a single lump of dark, wet fur that darkwoman held close. Only one son of Talis would be born from her, it appeared. 

There'd never be another.

Yay! <3

If loneliness was a concept he understood, the boy did not feel it. In the absence of littermates, it was the wild thrum of an ever-present heartbeat that kept him company while he drifted in a world of stillness and comfort that left him wanting for very little. He knew not of the incidents that ailed his mother in the outside world, nor why she stole into the night to reveal the cub to the world in secrecy.

It was there in the solitary cave that his own life was thrust into turmoil. A long, confusing ordeal that ended with a single, piercing cry as he took in his first breath.

It was silenced just as quickly as loving swipes of a tongue revealed the tiny dark replica in his mother's form, with blue eyes yet hidden behind unopened lids, mirroring those of the father he'll never know.

In the aftermath of her one child's existence only beginning, the only connection she had to the small boy's father she had, she cleaned and held him close to nurse. 

It was only then Kusuma realized that she had yet to pick out a suitable name for her litter of one (which irked her as her being correct, that Talis had seen Wolfmother's larger belly and preferred the wolf over the coyjackal for giving him more children). Darkwoman had wanted it to be special, and between fits of guilt and waves of torment that had flaked her lonely soul, had she settled upon a name fitting of such a child.

Har-ta, she whispered each syllable, another lick of her tongue between his closed eyes. He needed dried, and warm. At least, she hadn't had a child before, but he still looked rather wet- which made sense, he was just born - 

And his mother was still no better than when she had discovered his existence. She was a dutiful worker - in her eyes - but her own mother had not given her much thought beyond survival. The pack she had been born into was not one of familial connection. The furless tall ones had taken care of her litter more than Kusuma-ma did. 

Kusuma still shied away from others. Other prying eyes that could be lurking outside the mouth of the den she'd dug in the days prior to this moment. Her speech quivered with the next line.

And no matter what others say or do, Harta is loved and welcomed always in Kusuma's heart. Forever. Promise.