"No, no, no!" Sonorae muttered to herself. Sweat drenched her body, darkening her normal pale coat to a dark steel in unnatural patches. Her flank seized angrily, the muscles tight with the contractions that had steadily grown more intense throughout the day. Wincing, the heavily pregnant mare did her best to ignore the pain and limped awkwardly forward, attempting to convince both herself and the babe that this was not the time. Curling her neck around to proud at the alien swell of her own barrel, she pleaded with her unborn. "Please baby, not today. Soon -- ah!"
Her words devolved into a grunt as the pain deepened and she braced herself to breathe heavily through the pain. It took every ounce of her waning strength to keep her footing but she managed, and the breath she'd been holding whooshed out in a single gust as she desperately drank more of the humid Atlantean air in. Her panicked gaze rose to the edge of the clearing she'd made for herself, beyond the branches she'd broken and trampled over the past few days as she paced through the anxiety of impending motherhood.
She was torn between an overpowering desire to have Rougaru at her side so that she could rest her head against his shoulder and take her comfort from his nearness. It would be unfair, perhaps, to ask him to witness the birth of a child that was not his own, but he was her rock. Had she not spent the entire pregnancy daydreaming that his was his child? Even pretended as much on one of the good days, when her fear was muted and she allowed herself some small happy anticipation of this child. Despite the fact that she had still not found her own name, she had found a name for this child… if it lived. Even Monster's company, she thought, would make her feel more secure.
But deep instinct barred her from making a sound.
With a soft mewl of despair, Rae cast her gaze around for anything that could keep her attention. The place she'd carved for herself was small, hardly large enough for her to take five steps across and there was little in it to capture her gaze. Her movement had chased away every creature within a few hundred feet's radius, and the sky lay too far above to serve as an easy distraction.
In the end, it hardly mattered. Her pacing and fretting had managed to distract her from a crucial truth that she could no longer deny. Regardless of her reservations, or her fears, or her nerves, the baby was coming now. Her rapist's child would soon be here and she would have to make the decision she'd been dreading ever since the realization of what had happened had sunk in. She would either be a mother or a murderer at the end of the day, and no amount of crying was going to stop this train now.
"Please," she murmured into the dark woods before dropping to her knees. "Please," she begs again, although to whom she is begging or what she is begging for remains a mystery.
In the end, the buildup proves to be the worst part of the birth. By the time she'd finally given in, the child was all but ready to slide into the world and with a final push, the wet bundle lay helplessly at her hocks. For a single heart-stopping moment, nothing happened. The bundle remained limp and unmoving behind her, and the pain kept coming despite the child being free.
Breathless and in pain, Rae still rolled back to her chest to peer back at the child with mixed emotion. It is only the subtle flare of small black nostrils that reassure her that the child is alive. Wide-eyed, the grey mare can only stare at the child, her chest a conflicting mass of emotions. As the child wriggled and more of her coat was revealed, Rae could feel her heart sinking. The newborn was not an exact replica of the nameless villain that had crawled atop her back without her permission and stolen what innocence she had left, but she was close.
The same black on her face. The same white on her rump. The same spots that darted here and there across her coat. The longer she stared, the more Rae felt as though there was nothing of her in this child. She might as well have not been involved in the process at all. To take her mind from it, Rae lurched back onto her feet and turned unsteadily to eye the foal closer, although she studiously avoided any eye contact with her.
Clearly she needed to do something to help it if she meant to keep it. What that something was felt very distant and fuzzy beneath an overwhelming surge of grief that wrung a silent sob from her chest. She was a piano wire, stretched between a deep need to be something for this baby and an overwhelming desire to never see it again. She couldn't do this and she'd been a fool to ever think that she could. She should have taken Monster's offer in the beginning and undone what the brute had forced upon her.
She couldn't remember her own name, let alone what she was supposed to do with a foal. Irrationally, she backs away, her breath hitching in soft wheezes as panic seized her. She couldn't do this. Panic does not allow her to move forward to clean the wet bundle, nor call for Rougaru, nor beg the help of Monster. "I'm sorry," she murmured again, her words once again a plea to an undisclosed source. "I can't."
Shaking her head, Rae backs to the edge of her clearing until her rump encounters the wall of brush she'd not yet managed to trample flat. Only then does she halt, her gaze rigidly on the foal as the tears trickle down her cheeks. She wasn't strong enough to do this.
