09-07-2010, 04:47 PM
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 Time crept by from day to day and yet it felt to Ember as if no time had passed at all since her incident with Haku. He was a monster of a wolf, that much was now certain to her...and if she ever met him again after her pups were born, she would be sure to give him what was coming to him. He had been the one to put her in this state, swollen with the growing forms of two unborn pups that she now realized she had most definitely not been ready for. She had spent these months protecting them and keeping them safe, but she now wondered why she had done such a thing. Why would she want to keep the pups that had been forced on her by that demon? She didn't know why. Things had gotten progressively worse for her over the previous weeks; each time that she thought of him and thought of the pups she found herself filled with mixed emotions of anger, guilt, and spite. The adult had never experienced the pains of labor before but knew instinctively that those were the pains that she felt; she was in the woods just beyond her small house in the village when she felt the pains and she stumbled toward the back door, pulling it open and walking inside. She had been preparing for this day for weeks and had a place ready to have them; a large pile of bedding sat in one corner of the room, the full-sized bed unused. The pain came to a climax as the first pup emerged into the world, a male as pitch-black as herself. She picked it up and rubbed at it with a cloth, but the pup was un-moving. Ember knew that this could happen sometimes, that not all of the pups would survive, but she attempted to revive the little one anyway. There was no response from the pup. She set him carefully down onto the blankets next to her and closed her eyes, concentrating on the next pup's birth. There was something a little unusual about the next pups' arrivals, however, as two whelps came very quickly, one just after the other. They were together inside of the same birth-sac. Ember cleaned them carefully; as quiet and still as the first pup had been, this male and female pair were noisy and wiggly. They looked very much alike, both chocolate-and-cream, and she frowned as she placed them up to feed. They looked like him. It seemed that those were to be the only pups born; she lay panting and resting for a few hours, but no other pups arrived. She didn't know what she was going to do with the living ones, exactly; as she watched them eat, she slowly realized something. She didn't feel anything. No motherly love or maternal instinct to protect them any longer. They were outside of her..and each time that she looked down at them she was reminded of who their father was and what this pregnancy had taken away from her. These pups would be Souls, like their father. She named them quickly and without much thought, names from her many books and magazines coming to mind. Melee and Range. Ember had been happy, once. She'd been a leader, a warrior, and had felt proud of what she did in the tribe. All of that was gone now, and what was she left with? She stared back down at the pair again, then up at the cracked ceiling overhead. She was left with nothing. |