Bearclaw Valley distant stars come in black or red.

perfect!! let me know if the assumptions i made are okay

under a sky dappled with distant stars, astara labored.

her teeth set on edge as rippling pain overcame her -- stayed only by the forbidding sense of instinct. with gasps and heaves, astara whelped the first of her brood: a dark child round as a riverstone, pelt flawlessly gleaming between torn sheaths of membrane. something compelled her to clean him, stimulate him, and press her to his elbow as the contractions returned.

aventus' birth had been a struggle; she had no name or words for the situational complexity that had been his arrival, but she recognized her daughter's arrival was far smoother. louder, too -- the girl's wails arced between hanging root-tendrils, trickling out of the moss-stone den and into the cold night air. astara cleaned her wordlessly, unaware that the darkness of her pelt would soon lighten to a ruddiness reminiscent of a forbidden memory she had long buried..

for a moment astara stared at the two of them in disbelief as they nursed aside her. a dark part of her nature urged her to blight out their existence then -- they would get in the way of her love of merrick -- they would demand his attention, his love -- and he would kill them, surely.

overwhelmed then, and properly exhausted by the gauntlet that was pressing life from one's womb, all of astara's whims of infant-murder were blotted out as a heavy sleep blanketed her consciousness. only once did she stir, a hind leg instinctively and reflexively kicking out as a tooth clamped too hard upon her nipples -- otherwise, the blackbird was still and overcome with slumber.