don't let the daylight rob your dreams

((ooc: this is set back in the beginning of spring bc I am terrible about getting birth posts up in time lmao))

Winter has barely begun to give way to spring when Svenja feels a familiar pain blossoming deep inside her gut. It's time. Her reaction isn't as startled or as scared as it had been when she'd gone into labor with Kvasir. She remembers being frightened the first time around, when she'd not yet known what to expect from childbirth and had not had her mother to turn to for guidance. But now she thinks she knows what to do, and it's easier to relax and allow her body to do most of the work instead of fighting against it every step of the way. Still, she feels a stomach-twisting sense of anxiety settling over her as she quietly excuses herself from the rest of the herd to find a quiet thicket just a little ways into the woods.

Svenja settles herself gently onto a bed of moss and leaves and pine needles, which prickle against her from neck to hock. But it's a minuscule pain compared to the deep ache in her belly. For a brief moment, she wishes she had someone here. To provide comfort, to distract, to help. But quickly she rejects the thought, and decides that it's better no one sees her this way. Especially not Nuka or Fell.

A pained, breathless cry heralds her second child into the world. Svenja allows herself a moment to catch her breath, sides falling and rising in labored breath. As the sweat begins to dry uncomfortably against her skin, she becomes aware of a soft stirring behind her. Exhaustion settles deep inside her bones and threatens to pull her down, but she fights against it and forces herself to her hooves, setting to work cleaning the child. She licks and nudges at the little roan foal - another boy, she can see now - until he's a fluffy, leggy bundle at her feet.

'He's beautiful,' she thinks, admiring the bold roaning along his neck and body and the little crooked snip on his nose. There is fondness in her gaze and a radiant smile on her lips as she tries to get him to stand. She'd decided long ago that no matter the circumstances of its conception, she would never not love this babe, innocent as it was. And now that decision feels, more than ever, like the right one. It would have been easy to allow bitterness to move in where love should be, but that is not what any child deserves.

With a bit of encouragement and a lot of patience, he eventually wobbles to his hooves. From there it's a matter of nosing his way along her side and between her legs, until he finds what he's looking for and begins to nurse.

"What should I call you?" Svenja muses as he suckles away contently at her side, oblivious to the world. "Hm. Kazimir. That's what I'll call you." She murmurs, pressing a soft kiss to his spine. "My little Kazimir."