I'll Use You ; [Birth]

[Zohartze]

The sun began to set.

It was a theme, on Ina’mos. Pregnancy. Birth. Pain. Blood. The smell of sex practically covered the island, and the stench wafted into her nostrils no matter where she turned. She could hardly trot anymore, for her belly was so heavy with young that moving around with any agility was impossible. The boredom gave her time to think, and it made her entire body itch with aching anxiety.

Her mind betrayed her when she was alone. She remembered what Datura had told her, the unspeakable pain, and suddenly she started to understand. The contractions came in waves, dull and sharp at the same time, squeezing unbearably and then washing out slowly like tide over the shores of the island she’d come to call home.

But, in a way, the give and take of her body came as a release. The femme had been unable to hunt, hardly able to walk, and she missed the feeling of breaking flesh of prey in her mouth. She’d eaten what the other hunters had brought back, but the blood had run cold by the time her tongue passed over it. She paced as long as she could, walking the land until she hurt so badly that she was forced to crawl back to the caverns to rest. But there was peace in this place. Visitors came and went from Datura and her young, their squealing louder now that they could see and hear. She sometimes smelled Goliath nearby, and sometimes saw him—never interacting more than a respectful head dip.

But not Titan. Never Titan.

Dusk fell, blanketing the night with darkness.

She’d gotten over wanting him; she didn’t want to obsess on something so fickle. He’d never proven himself to be anything but flat—he was a brute to her, in every sense of the word. She wanted something interesting to think about, something tortured, something mighty in body and mind. Zoharze had made a mistake with him, an irrevocable one that resulted in a literal weight hanging on her frame. She made a mental note to visit his other pups as soon as she was able, a thought cut off by a push from her insides, and she stopped her pacing to lie down.

Despite her history with caves, the she-wolf had settled in the caverns not so far from where Datura had nested with her pups. They would raise them together, so it was only natural—and neither one of them wanted to leave the other for very long in a time when they both needed help. Zohartze certainly didn’t. What their relationship was, exactly, was unclear to her. All she really knew was that she liked it. She was comfortable.

She knew she needed help more than her companion right now. The contractions came like fire, the pain ripping through her body like a knife and a sledgehammer at the same time. She squinted her eyes shut, trying her best to stifle the quiet whines and snarls that threatened to break from her maw. And then she felt a different kind of pain. Sharper, more external. There was a pup coming.

Midnight came, and the moon danced in the sky.

Zohartze let her head fall to the side, trying with all of her might to push the pup out. It was like trying to push a square peg through a circular hole—and it felt like knives, tearing and bleeding. When the young landed on the floor, Zohartze lifted her head, chocolate eyes turning to meet the being that had grown inside her. The tiny creature moved its head noiselessly; its sealed eyes looked to the sky before its small head fell slowly to the ground. The femme picked the miniature wolf up with her teeth, dragging it closer to her, gentle but swift. The pup was female.

Her brown coat glistened with a mixture nourishing liquid and blood, and Zohartze’s instinct was to groom her. Maybe she’ll look like me, the female thought, not feeling immediate pride or love for the small thing, but fascinated and almost giddy looking at her. As she cleaned the young fae, she slowed, eyes opening wider as she felt nothing against her tongue. No wiggling, no struggle, no protest from the pup—and it was only instinct that told her something was wrong. She wasn’t moving anymore.

She wasn’t breathing.

Zo nudged her around against the hard floor, pressing her ear against her tiny body.

Her heart wasn’t beating.

Zohartze began to lick her frantically, strained gasps leaving her mouth audibly and eyes wild with panic. Nothing was helping.

The pup was dead.

Her pup was dead.

She felt her blood spill to the ground, the warm, wet, thick liquid seeping into her fur, and felt her insides relax, though her fur was standing on end, electrified with anxiety and fear and a horrible, guttural grief that was shredding her heart and mind.

Zohartze’s contractions had stopped.

it's bloody and raw, but i swear it is sweet.

w o r d s : 854? ? ?m u s e : click? ? ?t a g s : @datura, @zenith

[Deleted]

The nighttime had always seemed suitable for Datura. Before, when she was a loner skulking about in search of scraps, she went unseen inn the darkness. Her size afforded her the luxury of moving carefully and silently, though she had done little since the birth of her robust brood. She had heard once that pups were most often born in the dead of night, and she knew now that it was so. Her own labor began after sundown, and lasted through the night. Zohartze had vanished hours before, slipping silently into the darkness and without comment, further into the cavern. While it still seemed as though it was too soon, Datura assumed she had gone off to give birth in privacy. Datura would not argue with that Zohartze was a first time mother, as well, and many females preferred to give life away from the prying eyes of others. Datura would have been livid if some other bitch had wandered in while she was giving birth, though in the end, it had been a relief to have Goliath present for the ordeal. Titan would certainly not come to see how Zohartze was doing. Datura wondered, with a hint of ire, if Titan would bother to come and see his brood. His seed had spread far and wide, and it was possible that he had no interest in any of them.

Her pups were asleep – finally. It was a bloody miracle to get all of them to sleep at the same time, but they had worn one another out, wrestling the day away. She enjoyed watching them grow and develop, but between six pups, there was limitless energy bounding off the walls. For now, it was silent, and it seemed surreal. Datura was growing accustomed to the sounds of little voices and tiny growls as the pups played with one another during their waking hours. She could scarcely keep up with them, and had been grateful when Zohartze decided to make her den there, in the same safe cavern as Datura and her litter. The weeks since the night of her litter’s arrival were a blur – they could walk now, though their mobility was often hindered by falls and clumsy stumbling about on oversized paws. Already, budding personalities were beginning to appear in each of them. Some were more independent than others, some seemed to display an innate interest in fighting. Datura adored them all. She knew her time with the boys would be limited, but she had the present to care for them as she saw fit, to prepare them for the bloody lives awaiting them at their father’s side.

Falling asleep herself was now impossible, curiosity pestering Datura endlessly as the minutes dragged by, with a touch of concern for the half breed she had grown close to in the preceding weeks. Datura was damn tired, but part of her insisted upon staying awake to see Zohartze’s pups when they arrive, to be the first one to see them, aside from their mother. Her ears pricked forward, straining to listen for signs of newborn life echoing throughout. She could hear only the constant, steady drip of water falling from ancient stalactites hanging along the ceiling of the deep cave.

The heavy smell of newly spilled blood wafted into her senses. She knew that blood loss was inevitable. But she had managed to make it through the awful experience, and all of her pups have survived, too. Datura had come out alive, in spite of the odds. She tried to ignore the sneaking worry as the cave remained nearly silent. Slowly, she inched away from her sleeping young. Her bones ached when she was back on her feet, muscle tired from disuse.

Stealing a final glance in her pups’ direction, the auburn-tinted fae’s paws moved quietly across the cold ground. Her heart was racing even before she found her. The smell of her blood was overpowering. Her eyes widened in surprise as she looked between Zohartze and the lifeless pup, its brown fur meticulous, but unmoving. She could not help but stare at the dead infant. It reminded her of her own… A chill ran up her spine. The thought of losing her own brought a sick feeling to Datura’s gut. They were too young to be lost, too full of potential.

”Zohartze.” No other words came as Datura was, for once, rendered speechless by the scene unfolding. Slowly, a paw extended to pull the limp creature away from its mother. It would do no good for it to remain there, but sometimes a mother had difficulty letting go. Watching Zohartze cautiously, she carefully nudged the pup away from her view. ”There are more,” she insisted, barely hiding the panic in her own voice as she repeated the same words she had pledged to Goliath weeks ago. Her calm features masked her fear for the other.  Zohartze could not die now.  There had to be more than just one weakling. Zohartze’s belly was still swollen, and she could not allow the distraught she-wolf to give up. Datura liked her company more than most.

”There will be more. I can see that it is so. Stay strong for the sons still within you.”  Datura leaned closer to the female, her friend, just a little, but she stopped herself, uncertain whether Zohartze would lash out in her frantic state.

words : 919

tags : Zohartze

[Zohartze]

The world rushed through her ears like the ocean, filling her head with salt and dampening her hearing. Her eyes were locked forward, unseeing. The frantic chain of thought through her mind had ceased, allowing the water to rush in like a broken dam, and she couldn’t think. She could only feel. Her body felt as if it wanted to retch, but her stomach and esophagus wouldn’t put forth the energy to do so. She felt acid churn inside her, fueled by the flowing current.

“Zohartze.”

The voice sounded as if it were miles away. The bloodied femme picked her head up, flicking her ears at the noise, trying to locate it blindly.

“There are more.”

Suddenly, her eyes came back into focus, snapping onto the russet form of her friend. “Datura,” she said, surprised, forgetting for just an instant the predicament she was in. Zohartze felt like a pup, then, listening and obeying. She could see Datura was shaken, but if she was truly perturbed, she wasn’t letting on, and cautiously leaned closer to the Mexican mix, obviously unsure. “There will be more,” she repeated, her voice sounding much more like the youth she had been not many moons before. Stay strong, she said to herself internally, shakily coming to her paws.

She unfeelingly picked up the dead pup and placed her softly on the opposite side of her chosen outcropping of rock. She smelled Goliath nearby, and while it may have intimidated her before, the presence of her massive leader was comforting. Demons seemed to be crawling out of the walls—and with time spent with Datura, she was coming to believe that their alpha might actually have the power to keep them at bay. Maybe he fought demons with demons, ones that he had chained down as warriors.

It felt good to let her mind wander for a moment, and as she paced, she felt her body begin to crackle and her muscles churn. A fleeting wave of hope overtook her as another contraction did as well. The pain was horrendous, but somehow it was welcome. Her body wanted the pups out, and at this point, she had let it fly on autopilot.

Zohartze practically dragged herself back to her birthingplace, gesturing to Datura that it was okay in between winces.

The birth of the second pup made the first seem like a walk on the beach. Zohartze paused a moment after she felt the creature release itself from her body, almost scared to see. But with a courageous look at Datura, she twisted to pluck the pup up and drag it closer to her face.

“Holy shit,” she said aloud, wide eyes staring at the creature she had produced. The pup was huge compared to her sibling. Another girl, but strong and very much alive—and for that, Zohartze breathed a sigh of relief. The creature would hardly be still for a moment to clean off. Tears stung her eyes as she looked back up at her friend who was no doubt still nearby, though through her labor, she hadn’t paid much attention to anything else. She knew Datura understood.

The moment was short lived, and Zohartze gasped as her body was racked with electricity again, and once again, the pain seemed to overtake the level of agony she expected. She hardly had time to push the female to her belly before slamming her head back down onto the rock in her efforts. Datura was right. There are still more.

Zohartze was practically unconscious when she felt her body finally release. Shaking and exhausted, she gathered the remaining two pups and cleaned them, eyes half shut. But when she cleaned them off, she couldn’t tear her brown eyes from them. They were incredible. Mirror images of one another, the two boys were jet black. She nosed them to make sure they were intact before placing her nose at their level as she’d done with Erebos when she first met him. Their heads weren’t much smaller than hers.

They weren’t pups, they were tiny mountains.

“Datura,” she said again, the entire ordeal lacking communication between the two, though she knew her friend would be close. Goliath’s scent was closer now, and she called to them.

“Come see.”

and if you're still bleeding, you're the lucky ones.

w o r d s : 716? ? ?m u s e : click? ? ?t a g s : @datura, @zenith

(Gol should probably meet up with Datura and post first, then Datura?
Also, she'll be grieving in the next post, but for now she just wants to die lul.)

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[attr="class","pltxt"]Despite the air of wonder that lit the cave, softened by the mewls of the newborns and the lurid scent of their afterbirth, there was something undeniably grim about the situation. As Goliath’s hulking form entered the cavernous den, eager to inspect Zohartze’s offspring, Datura’s presence was a welcome sight – but his mate appeared almost forlorn as she lingered close to her friend, hushed words shared between only them. Merely an act of reassurance, perhaps, or one of consolation; Goliath’s gaze narrowed inquiringly, yet to know the reason for their solemnity.

The alpha moved closer, eyes adjusting to the gradual darkness and finding three writhing bodies pressed close to Zohartze’s stomach. A smile touched his lips, unseen in the darkness, as he noticed two of them were sizeable males, worthy of even his own bloodline. Almost.

Three healthy pups - each one a cause for celebration in their own merit. Her sons would become proud warriors, and the smallest, her daughter, would become a proud mother some day. Indeed, the litter was somewhat small compared to his and Datura’s, but Goliath was an advocate of quality over quantity when it came to the birthing of young. One strong, healthy pup had all the worth of a dozen frail and sickly ones.

And that’s when he saw it – the small, dead thing. The stillborn girl lay coiled and limp, cast away from her living siblings as though worth little more than the dirt she rested upon. His ears flattened in morose observation, wondering whether the she-pup might awaken by some divine intervention, but the stray thought was merely a hopeful fantasy. Goliath knew very well that the pup was long past dead.

“You’ve done well, Zohartze,” he uttered aloud, looking instead at the pups’ exhausted mother, his tone stoic but his words potent in their congratulations. She had done something that no man, great or divine, could do himself – that made her worthy of all the praise he could muster, but inevitably could not say, as his eyes were drawn back to the stillborn. “The dead one no longer needs her mother – but she does need a grave.”

His words were blunt, perhaps even uncaring to an unfamiliar ear – but as much as it shamed Goliath to admit, he cared deeply. Not only for his own pups, and his own mates, but for all that were born to Kairos, whether born of his own blood or from those lesser than his own. He cared for Zohartze, a bitch that had no claim on him whatsoever; and as much as it weakened him to understand, he cared for this dead, futile creature who meant, for all intents and purposes, nothing to him, or the gods. Why, then, was he scowling as though it were his own flesh and blood sprawled lifeless on the ground?

He was morbidly angry, but not at Zohartze – he doubted that Fenrir was innocent in this act of mercilessness. Such was the god’s way. A steady huff left his body, his gargantuan head lowering over the motionless girl, picking her up by the hindquarters – not an appropriate way to handle a living pup, but what did it matter when the creature was all but dead, dangling from his mouth as though she were the front half of a dismembered rabbit. Poor, damned thing.

His abyssal gaze lifted to Zohartze’s, pausing to wait for any objections - none of which were offered. He departed the cave without a word, and wandered not far from its entrance, digging far into the dirt until the hole’s depth rivalled the one in his heart. The frail body made no sound as it was dropped into the pit, and the brute stared down at the tiny corpse as an unfamiliar shiver ran from his nape to his tail. “Rest now, little one,” he murmured in a discreet moment of wretched sincerity. It was a sad truth, and likely not the last time he would be confronted by it – there was no life without death, and the young are offered no greater respite from this than the old.

@datura Zohartze

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Datura was not crafted by the gods for the field of battle. She was far from being the largest wolf, nor was she the strongest – but she had created offspring that would someday by both. Her pups would be famous throughout Anikira. No, she was not a soldier, but her purpose, newly discovered, was there, safely tucked away in the birthing dens. Here, the heavy metallic scent of blood spilled not for death, but for life. She would care for her pups, as well as the young of her pack mates. Her life had new meaning she had never expected to find. She cast another glance in the direction of the dead female pup as Zohartze’s struggle continued, and just as Datura had predicted, there were more pups waiting to be delivered, worthier sons and a daughter. The larger pups that came into the world were dark, looking very different from Datura’s own pups. She watched as Zohartze met her children for the first time, unable to suppress a smile. All was not lost, and the size of the dark pups impressed Datura, though she said nothing. Another scent had caught her attention.

Goliath appeared like a specter to congratulate the new mother. He had been waiting in the darkness, it seemed, to greet the newest members of the pack. Undoubtedly, he had come to take the place of his errant General, Titan. Her mate’s arrival earned nothing more than a half-hearted smile as he praised her accomplishment – and it was certainly something to be proud of, with two strong sons and a healthy daughter who was certain to be a beauty like her mother. The words that followed, however, quickly erased any semblance of emotion from Datura’s expression. She could not fault him for being direct in his comments, and Datura remained dutifully silent, not daring to move from where she sat as her alpha stared at the stillborn pup. She had never seen her mate behave this way in the year they had spent side by side. Somber and ever silent, Datura watched as the alpha collected the dead newborn where it had been set aside. Tiny paws were hanging from her jaws, as gentle as he could manage, before he departed to give the pup a proper burial, to keep it from the jaws of predators and scavengers.

She loved him even more for what he had done. If only Titan had not claimed Zohartze for his own. His offspring had nearly killed the mother of his pups and now, the giant was missing in action, leaving the new mother alone. But Datura wouldn’t allow that. She would stay all night if Zohartze wished it. She turned back to Zohartze to offer a soft smile, uncharacteristic for the femme. In spite of the small litter, Datura was relieved the ordeal was over for Zohartze, unwilling to consider what may have happened to her friend if the birth had been even worse. Datura sat slowly, close to Zohartze but still allowing comfortable space between them. ”The boys are like twins. They look as big as my own.” The prospect of motherhood was daunting. Zohartze would never have the support of their sire, but the females of Kairos would have to band together if they hoped to raise proud sons and daughters. Her voice dropped to barely a whisper as she offered her promise: ”I will be here to care for them as if they were my own.”

words: 589
tag: Zohartze + @zenith

[Zohartze]

Zohartze was almost living in third-person, watching herself from above. As her newborns clung to her teats, drinking in the nutrients greedily, Datura hung near to the walls like a shadow, though her warmth radiated towards her fervently. Exhausted, it was all she had to lift her head to meet the gaze of her only friend. She was smiling, her silent congratulations echoing in the caverns louder than any words. The Mexican mixed fae smiled back in her direction, though the gesture was weak and frail. Goliath’s smell wafted through the caves, potent like cologne, and Zohartze tilted her head in his direction.

The alpha was as massive as ever, and though the femme had never spoken with him, her moments with Datura had made her vision of him in much grandeur. He didn’t disappoint. The beast was much larger up close, and his eyes shone in the dark like candles. As he spoke, his voice was gruff and frank, but with a note of pain that made something inside the femme break slightly, cracking through her happiness to remind her of grief. But there was something soft in his face, and it changed her.

And then he leaned in to pick up her tiny Oeta. Something inside of her ached, made her want to call out to her emperor to stop, but it caught in her chest. He was going to bury her himself.

A single, silent sob broke from her maw like a cough, and she pressed her eyes shut as graceful tears dripped down upon her three healthy children. “Thank you,” she whispered, almost inaudibly. She dipped her head in reverie, a wordless goodbye to a soul she so desperately wanted to know. But somewhere inside, the gentleness in which he held the pup or the kind gesture in her burial made her see Goliath in a different way. He was good. The feeling that coursed through her brain was not one of obsession or need, but a proprietary blend of respect and affection that belonged only to him.

The absent general, Titan, was undoubtedly the father of her pups—but in a shared glance, a held gaze for a moment too long to be uncaring, Goliath had become more their father than the male they shared blood with.

Zohartze’s grief ebbed as she was taken away, replaced with a relief. She would have a dignified burial. And for a moment, she hoped Datura and her mother and father were right—maybe there was a god, and maybe her child was off to join him.

Datura spoke, then. Looking down at the life she’d created, she smiled at them absentmindedly. “They are,” she affirmed, too tired for more words. As the she-wolf settled beside her, Zohartze stretched her head towards her friend, pressing her forehead into her ear for only a moment. She met her friend’s gaze, a silent pact to do the same. Curling around her small brood in protective love—something she never knew herself capable of until this moment—she drifted into dreamless sleep.

Despite her trauma, she would rest through the night, unplagued by nightmares, for the first time in years.

- end thread -

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