Pregnancy was always a special sort of hell to Oswin, but this one had been considerably difficult. Not only was she irritated in general to have gotten pregnant right after dedicating herself to the Peak and being voted in as Prime Minister, but she could tell the foal she was carrying was much, much larger than either Klara or Maia had been. The way her painted sides swelled up would almost be comical if she wasn’t so damn angry all the time. Unfortunately the larger she got and the less able she was to stick to her busybody schedule, the more and more her mood plummeted.

Oswin was, admittedly, not much fun to be around the last few weeks of her pregnancy. She could not do her evening hike up to the summit of the Peak and had to remain at ground level where it would be easier to find grazing and tuck herself away from the winter winds rather than being exposed to them as she would be up top. She could no longer swim to other islands and, much sooner than she’d have liked, she couldn’t travel much around Crossing Isle, either. She felt utterly useless among her sisters and spent most of her days stewing in silence, feeling that she had failed them. What if there was injustice being done under their very nose because she went and got herself knocked up and couldn’t go out there and investigate?

The day she gave birth, Oswin had no idea it was going to happen. She was spending the morning stewing in quiet rage with her ears turned back and her dark blue eyes glaring at nothing in particular. Everything she was missing out on because of her pregnancy kept popping up into her mind and, for the final punch to the gut, she’d looked up the trail to the Peak’s summit she hadn’t taken in months and felt her entire body ache for just one more night of sleep on top of her mountain, blanketed in the stars.

An angry huff of air left her mouth and she dropped her eyes back to the level ground, glaring with her ears turned back at the path ahead. The longer she stood there, stewing, the angrier and more defiant she became. Logic stopped making any sense.

“I bet I could do it.” She grumbled to herself under her breath, narrowing her pale pink eyelids at the incline ahead. “I’m the fucking Prime Minister. I can do whatever I want.” A bit of a reach - a bit of exaggerated cockiness to cover up the plain and obvious truth. She was just a mare in the middle-stretch of her years and heavily, heavily pregnant with a foal she was clearly too small to be carrying. Oswin could not and would not accept that any more.

She started walking forward.

It took her longer than it should have. It hurt and it was exhausting but damnit, Oswin got herself up to the top of the Peak. It reminded her of the time she’d been pregnant for the first time with Klara and decided to swim for Luthien, to return to the Prairie to have her daughter there. Much like that fateful swim, as Oswin stood, pleased to look out over Crossing Isle below, a very telling pain ripped through her body that snatched what labored breath she could get clear out of her lungs.

Oh… no… Now?

Oswin circled, nose to the ground as she worriedly felt the increasing contractions and looked for somewhere she could birth this gargantuan foal. She hoped it was another girl, a daughter she could raise to stay with her here in the Peak. Oswin wasn’t sure she wanted to go through another pregnancy again, but the idea of having blood that remained fighting with her in the Peak had become an appealing little thought since she’d realized she was pregnant at the end of fall.

So, hopefully this was it.

Her body lowered without grace and she grunted as the pain rippled down her white back legs. Oswin stretched out, groaning and panting, sweating and rapidly blinking as her vision went fuzzy with how intense some of the contractions were. No, no, this wasn’t going to work! This foal was too big. The hooves alone poking out were large. Oswin’s blue eyes widened with surprise at how intensely the pain ripped through her body.

She’d been making fairly low grunts and groans up until that point but now she screamed. Through the shoves and the burning agony, through the overwhelming smell of blood and birth, Oswin kept pushing the large foal from her body. She had to. Oswin wouldn’t accept death during childbirth, and she wouldn’t accept a dead foal, either. If she was going to have made the mistake of caving to her hormones she would find some way to dedicate herself both to being Prime Minister and to being a mother. Somehow, someway, she was going to be perfect.

And perfection meant giving birth to this foal, getting her ass up, and coaxing him to stand.

Oswin’s white ears flicked back and pinned. She screamed in her throat, jaw clenched as she shoved the foal’s hips free. Her legs pushed over the red rock, hooves scraping the hard ground, as though the movement would help her put more force in birthing her foal. Oswin’s blue eyes rolled as the spring clouds and sunlight above her separated into doubles, then merged and turned blurry. Her sides were heaving, her breathing more labored than she could ever remember it. She had a cramp in her side and her coat was soaked in sweat.

It’d been years since she heard her mother’s voice, but she heard it then, or at least imagined she did. As the sun began to dip for the horizon, slowly washing the sky in gradually fading colors of light, Oswin heard her mother’s encouragement. “You’re nearly there, Oswin. He’s almost here…”

He?

Had she heard that right?

Oswin tried to lift her head, but it was too heavy. A beckoning whinny barely made it past her lips, and she panted as she lay there, eyes on the Peak summit and where it fell away, far from where she was, giving the effect of the earth simply coming to an end. The wind had picked up as night drew near and she felt it’s cool spring temperature as it brushed her sweat-soaked coat. She shivered and counted and focused through the pain.

One more push.

One more terrible, scream-inducing, aching push and the foal slipped free at last. Oswin’s eyes closed as she tried to focus on slowing down her heart and catching her breath. She wanted to lift her head and look at the babe, to make sure they were okay, but she couldn’t move. She could barely hang on to consciousness.

Eventually, though, the shuffling sounds in the afterbirth and placenta at her hind couldn’t be ignored. Oswin weakly tried lifting her head, failed, groaned, and forced herself to pick it up successfully. The world swam, but she blinked her eyes and turned her head slowly until the little thing behind her could be seen.

The sac was half-broken, stuck around its shoulders and over its back, with only its neck and head free. Its little tufts of red hair were wet and stuck to its neck. The face was as white as hers, laid atop the richest, darkest red she’d almost think it was black if not for the way it caught the sun. The foal’s neck gave way to a soft greying-red color down it’s neck, a freckled roaning similar to its father.

Speaking of something similar to its father… Oswin could definitely see why she’d been so large this pregnancy. The foal was as huge as she’d expected it to be, looking more like it belonged to its father than it did to her. There wasn’t a trace of her mother’s light-built desert blood at all. She smiled faintly, feeling more love in her heart than she thought would be possible. Oswin looked back at his eyes, the irises a strange light blue-green that she wondered what they might darken to as he grew older. But there was something else that made her pause.

As the last rays of evening light caught his eyes, she noticed a strange reflection in his pupils. They weren’t black, more a murky, dark grey-blue. What… What did that mean?

Oswin made a soft, loving nicker under her breath, pink nostrils trembling with the warm breaths she exhaled. The foal’s red ears twisted toward her and it turned it’s head a little, mimicking the sweet noises she’d beckoned it’s attention with. She knew. Right then and there, Oswin knew. She’d already had two foals early on in her life and, furthermore, she’d spent seven years living with Maziel.

Her child was blind.

Oswin only felt more love for them. It gave her the drive to move her tired limbs and achingly pull herself upright so she could focus on the next important steps. She needed to help the foal completely from the birthing sac, clean them and get them standing. They’d need to nurse and then, finally, they could relocate somewhere else atop the Peak to rest.

As she freed the foal at last, uncovering four white legs, a white belly and chest atop that rich, dark red roan, she took note of it being a colt. She half laughed, knowing now with her sense returned there was no way she’d heard her mother’s voice. She must’ve imagined it but, somehow, she’d guessed the gender. Maybe even though a part of her had been hoping for a filly, she’d known this pregnancy was different for more reasons than just the size and extra discomfort.

What did this mean? Oswin had two headstrong, independent daughters. She’d never raised a son.

As the colt stumbled his way awkwardly up against her side and poked underneath her belly, looking for a meal, Oswin smiled. He was so large, he didn’t need to stretch to get his head up under her belly.

Having a son meant she could make sure to raise the sort of stallion she wanted to see among the islands. The ones his very father hoped he could now raise in the Lagoon instead of the monsters the muck birthed before.

The colt’s pink lips finally latched on to the teat and his tail flicked as he started to eagerly drink.

Speaking of his father… an uncertain fluttering struck her heart as Oswin frowned. Would he think less of his child because he was blind? It was hard to fight the wave of protective anger that overtook her at the mere thought of that happening. She breathed a warm breath over his haunches as she bent her neck in and gently rubbed her velvet lips over his damp, fuzzy coat. She wouldn’t allow it. If he gave any sign of seeing the boy as less than because he didn’t have his sight, Oswin would be sure to give him a piece of her mind.

She sighed and swung her head forward, only then noticing the sun had set long ago and the first stars were starting to twinkle in the sky above. She smiled. It was just like the night she’d led his father here and they’d slept atop her Peak, side-by-side underneath the stars.

oswin
this is as brave as I know how to be.
I know it’s gonna hurt you, but please… be a little proud of me.