The weeks following their arrival on Tinuvel had slipped by as quickly as a snake. With Rohanne’s swelling belly like a ticking time bomb, the sisters had more or less kept to themselves, lingering on the outskirts of the herd and making no effort to interact with the others. Even to each other they rarely spoke. Roza’s anger had festered like an old wound, leaving in its place a cold loathing that throbbed in her bones whenever Nephilim made an appearance. During these periods in which the young stallion was present, Rohanne would often lift her head from the tundra grass and gaze wistfully in his direction. Her sister watched Rohanne carefully in these moments, and if the pregnant grullo made a move in the stallion’s direction, Roza would pin her ears and drive her sister even further away from him.
Near the end, the sisters left the herd altogether, making at Roza’s suggestion toward the hills, where the promise of privacy drew them onward. They spent the last few days, as the unborn foal hung uncomfortably within Rohanne’s pelvis, grazing along the warm rocks and bubbling waters of the hot springs, and when the first signs of labor began to appear, the sisters retired to a small, well-hidden cave that overlooked the bay from halfway up the mountain.
Day melted into night, and shadows swallowed their hideout. Roza lay reclined on the hard, cold rock beside her sister, whose great belly heaved with each trembling breath. She murmured reassurances as each contraction ripped a half-scream from Rohanne’s throat. As the hours rolled on and the moon arced across the sky, those screams became weaker and weaker. Rohanne was so quiet by the time the foal slid onto the floor of the cave that Roza stood in alarm and nudged her cheek repeatedly to keep her from slipping into unconsciousness.
“It’s here, it’s here,” she cooed into her sister’s ear. “You did great. Everything’s okay.” Rohanne said nothing; her eyes were half-shut and her body slick and lathered with sweat. She gave a feeble groan as Roza’s hooves clip-clopped around her body toward the lump that was the foal. Beneath the congealed grime of birth and the cloak of darkness, it was difficult to make out the foal’s sex or color - thankfully the moon was now low in the sky, however, and peeked just enough into their cave that Roza could make out a brown body with a pale shimmer of white. It lay in the awkward position it had been born, still and unmoving.
“Rohanne,” the blanketed mare muttered. “You need to clean him. I don’t think he’s going to move until you do.”
Her sister, still flat on the floor, gave a long, low groan.
Bile rose in Roza’s throat as she looked back and forth between the two bodies on the floor. Finally, with some reluctance, she leaned over and began to clean the foal herself. The acrid taste and sticky texture of blood and afterbirth was shocking in her mouth, and she jerked away for a moment. But another glance at her sister’s semi-conscious, exhausted body spurred her onward. Roza cleaned that foal until it was free of blemish and until she vowed to never have children herself.
Still the damned thing would not move. Or breathe, for that matter. Panic clutching at her belly, Roza nudged the tiny, limp body over and over, even going so far as to partially lift it from the ground with her snout. It flopped back onto the cold stone floor with a dense smack.
Dread trickled down her spine.
“No, no, no,” the mare pleaded, her heart hammering in her chest, and backed toward the mouth of the cave until moonlight spilled onto her spotted hindquarters. Her dark eyes stared helplessly at the horses laying in the cave, willing both of them to suddenly stand and make this whole thing better. For months Roza had cursed the day Nephilim had planted that child in her sister’s belly, and had slowly grown to resent the unborn burden that it was, but she could never have wished for this outcome. After all they had been through, Rohanne deserved better. They both deserved better.
Roza turned away and fled into the night, leaving the dead body of her nephew and the barely-conscious one of her sister in the hands of fate.
Her night was a sleepless one, wracked with waking nightmares and panic attacks. Several times she almost made the journey back to that cursed cave on the hillside, but the image of Rohanne’s dead child was too much for her to bear again. So she waited, and prayed to the stars - for what, she could not say.
Her sister found her late the next morning along the banks of a hot spring further down in a small valley. Rohanne appeared through the mist like a vision, her eyes deep-set and haunted in her tired face. She had been crying, Roza noted. But now Rohanne was eerily calm.
“I’m so sorry,” Roza whispered, her voice cracking. The sisters embraced silently and stood there for some time. For once, it was Roza who cried into her sister’s shoulder, after all the times Rohanne had cried into hers.
They returned to the herd the next day, after spending the night together on the soothing warmth of the rocks that surrounded the springs. Rohanne’s belly was still somewhat swollen, but obviously empty of child, and they both bore composed masks that nonetheless showed all the signs of exhaustion. “Nephilim is going to ask what happened,” Roza muttered as they stopped a stone’s-throw away from the main body of the herd. Her sister said nothing, lowering her head to nibble listlessly at a few tufts of clover.
After watching Rohanne with concern for a few moments, the peppered-grey mare returned her attention to the tree-dotted tundra before them, her eyes searching beyond the forms of the other mares for the tell-tale spotted-gold silhouette of the stallion who was to blame for all this.
ROZA & ROHANNE
twin daughters of vitalij & asha |