Stavanger Bay you who bares all your teeth in every smile

Paging @Samani @Kukutux @Shikoba and any of the women’s circle I may have missed! Referencing @Rhaegal , the babies will be coming next post.

When she knew the time would be soon, in some instinctual way, she woke her crow from his sleep. After giving him directions, he took wing to Moonglow, directed to return with her mother and Shikoba.

When the pains began, she sent Rhaegal for Samani.

In her welping den, carefully carved from sand and stone where she could hear the sea but not be in danger from the surf, she paced. Endless circles, round and round the small square footage. She did not eat, she did not sleep, she just moved in never ending circles, trying to remind herself to simply breathe.

Another pain shot through her and she leaned heavily on the den’s side, willing her composure to stay in tact through this.

kukutux returned to moonglow in high elation.

she spoke of the little daughter born to sialuk, and fell into deepest rest. a week's time found her caches relaid.

the bird winged close. moonwoman rose and took up the second of her birthing bundles, kissing her sun man goodbye and setting off in anticipation.

saltshore was not so far, and kukutux did not pause at the border. she sought vairë at once. in tongue-clucking she set her things aside, and embraced the pained shoulders. "we will walk a little more. we will breathe," she said gently, kissing the strained cheek and knowing this day would make her daughter a mother.

The sea girl raced as swiftly as her legs would allow.

Samani worried that her mother would know she was pregnant. Her sides had grown round in the weeks that had passed since her time spent with Rodyn. They had not yet been married and still she carried his pups inside her.

This passion pushed the girl to her sister, reaching the two women with panting breaths.

Sister! Samani's dark nose pressed to her cheek. She looked at Kukutux with worry on her young face.

It felt like she blinked and they were there. Her peach coated sister on one side, her mother on the other. Vairë strained a smile, just for them, only to have it drop into a whine.

I did not expect it to hurt so much!

It would only take a short time. Vairë would lay upon the cool den floor and pant, her muscles contracting, lifting and falling pains spreading through her abdomen. The world seemed to blur around her, the young woman going through the motions until there were three. Three children, settled at her side, though she could not remember if she had set them there or one of her family.

Vairë huffed a tired breath.

Look at them… One dressed as a deer, another a caribou, the final dressed in Rhaegal’s chocolates, though she could see her beiges involved too. Vairë smiled, softly.

@Salaksartok @Nasamiituuq @Ipiktok

A wolf cub, a new spirit, was shepherded by the totem of the deer. A stag, mighty and swift, held the child’s hand as it walked the corridor towards life. On either side, ancestors watched on with pride – some red, some beige, some silver and white -- as the pup, strong spirited and healthy, took his first breaths.

Ipiktok was the mighty name bestowed to him. He was surrounded with love and admired by his mother, aunt, and grandmother. Quickly, the boy latched and suckled and fell into a peaceful slumber.

It was the crashing of the sea that greeted Nasamiituuq in her earthside debut, and a circle of warm faces that would one day become familiar. She was not a particularly noteworthy newborn; not a fussy child, or a quiet one, or a sickly one. Her entrance into the world was peaceful, unmarred by the tragedy of life.

She slept, and the first sweet taste on her tongue was love.

If the first was shepherded by the deer spirit, and the second the ice-and-fire of his parents, it was a wonder what beast brought forth the last of the children: emerging finally from Vaire in the manner of a splitting cliff falling in to the sea, came Salaksartok. A bundle of wet brown, meeting the floor of the ulaq nose first, and squalling with such ferocity it was as if a storm's gale had possessed the cub.

He squirmed from the start; he writhed, kicked, wanted to be on his feet but didn't know up from down or what feet were. He was demanding things so far above his current limitations, and yet Salaksartok would not yield - touch would not soothe him, and if offered a teat he would only balk and cry with more fury.

Alive! Alive! Alive, I am alive! Every fibre of his being shrieked! I am your problem now!

to see maggak born had been a thing of wonder for kukutux.

now she gently crooned to the second daughter as the doe-woman was made mother, was wrought from bone and pain and blood and power.

against the creeping monsters was her mother's guardian chant, until two sons and a daughter lay against the heaving breast. a laugh was given after the lusty squeal of one boy.

"you have done well," kukutux murmured, helping to clean birth from the downy fur of her three newest grandchildren; tears stinging; mouth unable to keep from its wide smile.

"i will go and hunt. samani, be with her," and kukutux kissed first one forehead and then the other, filled with a satisfied pleasure and a deep sense of oneness with the feminine spirits which had worked here this hour.