[ She can assure of him of that much, the gentle brush of mind against a mind that closeness breathes without necessarily understanding that it is happening, that shifts to memories from the present to the forefront of her mind.
The birth of her children, exhausted, sweat-slick and bloody, the battlefield a bed could be for any woman that she had died and yet fought for life against, crying harder from pain than she had ever cried before in her life - to have her child pressed into her arms. Swaddled, cleaned, put to her chest to nurse, blue eyes bright - hers, but his colouring all his fathers, dark complexion and hair. Perfect, perfect in that cry of a life becoming where even after all that effort there was no certainty the child would take their first breathes. But he wailed, small and new to the world. Her own child. Young and whole. A transcendence that she had what she wanted always, a family, and now, she had at last fulfilled the first duty of the Second-Child, and given heirs to give her people certainty after so many years of threatening instability.
And she wept and wept and wept in the love that burned her through. ]
They can. And it can carry a heart through so much in life, for knowing those brief few moments.
cw: childbirth sucks, infant mortality rates in history also suck
[ She can assure of him of that much, the gentle brush of mind against a mind that closeness breathes without necessarily understanding that it is happening, that shifts to memories from the present to the forefront of her mind.
The birth of her children, exhausted, sweat-slick and bloody, the battlefield a bed could be for any woman that she had died and yet fought for life against, crying harder from pain than she had ever cried before in her life - to have her child pressed into her arms. Swaddled, cleaned, put to her chest to nurse, blue eyes bright - hers, but his colouring all his fathers, dark complexion and hair. Perfect, perfect in that cry of a life becoming where even after all that effort there was no certainty the child would take their first breathes. But he wailed, small and new to the world. Her own child. Young and whole. A transcendence that she had what she wanted always, a family, and now, she had at last fulfilled the first duty of the Second-Child, and given heirs to give her people certainty after so many years of threatening instability.
And she wept and wept and wept in the love that burned her through. ]
They can. And it can carry a heart through so much in life, for knowing those brief few moments.