EVERLAST - FIVE - NO ANYTHING

The residual pain of the birth seems like cakewalk to the actually birthing itself. As the pain ebbs and flows out of her along with a bit too much blood to be considered 'normal' Everlast finds a sense of serene peace in this moment. The children... she wants to love them, but can she love? Can a wolf who has never known love know what it is to give love? She lifts her frail head for a moment, turning it to look at the squeaking creatures as they instinctively move towards her belly and their wet claws stain her light gray fur. It is an odd sensation as their gasping mouths find her swollen teets and life is again sucked from her in bursts and spasms. It almost makes her yank away from them yet she is too tired. It was what was natural, anyways, and nature has a way of taking it's due course, so she lets the children suckle from her while she lies in the dirty mess that brought them forth. She is unable or unwilling to move from it, the blood forever staining the grass and soil. It would be soaked into the roots of this tree until the tree grew high with the taste of cooper.

It is the sound of movement, the slightest brush of pads against the tips of grass that draw her attention. She tilts her head to the side with a softened sigh, an exultation of her exhaustion until she spies the white and red figure striding towards her. Seline is.. beautiful. Even in her grotesque way there is something about her that draws the eye of Everlast so that those steel gray orbs cannot tear themselves away. She wants to sink into that beauty, that confidence, to at once know and be Seline. Be wary - it was a thing she had overheard in the teachings of her brothers. Always be wary. Yet she was too tired to be wary, and besides she was weary.

Onward Seline comes with her tail arched high and her smile covering the dangerous musings of her twisted mind. Slowly her white top-lined tail rises before falling back against the earth with only the barest of thuds and the whisper of fur against blades of grass. Blood stains the ends of that fur as it drops down over her legs and into the grass. So much blood loss, it was really a wonder she was still awake. It would heal. She did not feel close to death despite the way her body aches and her bones groan at movement.

"Yes," she gasps suddenly at Seline's question, her eyes watering once more, as if for once the world has offered her an answer to her prayers. Her breath comes in gasps now, clearly overcome at the moment before her. "Please, yes!" What she does not know is that she begs for her own death - her death of freedom, her death of choice. What she does not know is that her children which cling to her, which drain from her, were the sacrifice for her life. If only Everlast could finally realize the truth: her happiness would forever be last.