Blood. I can taste it. I can hear it pumping all around me. I can feel it bathing me in this warm floating darkness. Squeezed in close to my sister and brother, I wriggle against their compressed bodies. It was cramped in this space now, we were growing larger. Growing stronger, and now this prison of flesh and blood and bone and tissue was too small.
We were restless. Beside me, I feel my sister shifting. I was ready. I was ready to be free of this place. I wanted to rend and tear, an instinctual aggression stemming from some deadly, diabolical source.
Suddenly, the darkness is closing in, and I am pummeled down into an even tighter corridor. My body does not wish to pass through and I writhe and twist in a maddened effort to free myself from whatever hellbent constrictor had taken hold of me.
And then, so abruptly I am thrown to freedom. The clutches of my mother's body relinquishes me to the cool night air and a feral cry of triumph haroos from my lips. The warmth of Mother's mother is pressed to my bodice, cleansing the blood from my fur, and I can smell the copper tang of the placenta she works to remove.
The lure of that sent is intoxicating, pulling the full attention of my unlearned mind and petite muzzle twists against the rasping tongue to nip at the bloody birth sack. Already tiny, needle-like teeth have broken through the gums and these teeth now seek to pull the placenta from mother's grasp. Ripping the fleshy tissue, I lap greedily at the blood that drenches it.
It is only by mother's imposing snout, nudging me towards a teat, that I am forced to release my prize for something.... less satisfying. But instincts dictate mother's milk provide nourishment and thus reluctantly I begin to feed, tiny paws digging at her stomach as a tiny snarl is pried from my jaws.
|