Desert

It’s time, said a voice in Cerosi’s head, seconds before the first contraction seized her. She was already where she needed to be — in a cave Cain had shown her when she first came to the Desert — so she didn’t move as her labor began. At some point, she let herself lay down on the cool stone, grateful for the emptiness of the territory. She wanted to be alone for this, because she knew something was wrong.

The fear grew within Cerosi as her labor progressed. The pain was unimaginable, far worse than her other children had caused in her past deliveries. She was lathered on the cave floor, covered in silt, her breath disturbing clouds of dust and sending them billowing into the dry air. Her face screwed up into a grimace with every contraction, and barely had time to relax and pant for a bit before the next one would come.

It lasted so long. Too long. Cerosi thought about giving up, but knew that that was impossible; even if she stopped trying, her body would continue. She had no choice.

She had begun her labor in the early evening, and continued into the morning. The chill of the Desert night had been the only thing keeping her sane, and if she were to continue into the daylight, she was sure she would not make it.

At last, as the first truly hot breeze whispered into the cave and shifted the dry ends of Cerosi’s mane where her sweat and blood had not saturated, she knew it was over. Something gave, and with it came a sense of relief. Not a hopeful relief, the kind that comes with knowing you’ve succeeded and that things will be okay — but the kind of relief that comes with knowing it’s time to give up.

—

The world was hot and fuzzy when she came to. Cerosi was so terribly weak she could not even lift her head right away. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the curve of her barrel, and beside it, a little red shape twitching just out of the frame of her vision. She found the strength to shift her head along the cave floor, arching her neck and tucking her chin towards her chest, so that she could see her legs and the filly that lay tangled in them, nursing from her unconscious body.

Cerosi could immediately tell that something was wrong. The filly seemed… broken, somehow, in the way that she had her front knees positioned, as though she had dragged herself by her front legs and let her hind legs dangle uselessly behind her. Horror gripped the grulla mare, and her fear gave her the strength to struggle to her hooves. She was dizzy, and out of breath, but somehow she stood without toppling over. The filly bleated pitifully as her source of food was ripped away and held out of reach.

Cerosi turned and dropped her head to examine the filly. She gave the poor creature a gentle shove, trying to get her to stand. If you don’t stand, you can’t survive, she thought with growing anxiety. The filly did not stand; she only squirmed in the dust a bit, her head bobbing on a spindly little neck as she tried to reach Cerosi’s milk again.

Cerosi tried again, but the filly would not stand.

A numbness spread over the slate-grey mare. Her child could not survive if she could not get on her feet. There was no point in dragging it out. Letting her nurse would not make her legs work; begging her to get up would not change anything. Cerosi could shove her around the cave all day, but there was nothing, not a goddamn thing, she could do to make her child stand on legs that did not work.

Frozen, numb, Cerosi turned away from the crying, doomed child, and walked on legs made of lead into the dusty Desert daylight.

—

Sybelle cried and struggled and cried until long after her mother had walked away. The sun rose higher in the sky, and then began to dip, and light spilled slowly into the cave. The red filly was soothed by the sunbeam, although she was very hungry, and very scared on her own. Tears puddled in the dust under her little head as she laid down, too exhausted to continue screaming, too shaky to keep her head up.

She fell asleep; but she did not die.