BE MY FRIEND, HOLD ME
WRAP ME UP, UNFOLD ME Priya had been labouring through the early hours of the morning. The air had been cool when the pains had first started, but now the sun had risen and the sands beneath her were hot and damp with sweat. She lay amongst what sparse shrubbery the Dunes provided, sheltered just enough for some privacy, but not far from one of the small oases where the herd often gravitated. Priya welcomed the heat. Valve had been kind to her in letting her stay after she had wandered into her home accidentally, and the rest of the herd she had met so far had been kind enough, but Priya couldn’t help but imagine she was home when she closed her eyes and felt the sun hot on her skin. She thought of Aadhira too. It had seemed so fateful, that day, to run into another Marwari, whose curved ears reminded her of family, and made her feel a little less alone. The tryst between them that day had been unexpected – on both their parts, she imagined, from Aadhira’s initially shy approach – but somehow Priya felt that it had been written in the stars. A curved-ear companion put in her path, and a little miracle formed from their meeting. Priya had been waiting for this day since she was a child – it was the greatest honour a woman could ever have in her life, she knew, to bring new life into this world. Although she was young, and although the labour was excruciating, she was not scared. She was not scared when the pain ripped through her like a knife. She was not scared when the sands turned black with blood beneath her. She was not scared when her vision blurred and she stumbled, dizzy as she struggled to her feet. No, Priya was not scared until she saw her child. That face that she had been waiting for months to lay eyes on, that precious miracle of life that was the culmination of her being, lay still and motionless on the wet sand. Priya was no experienced mother, but she knew that she had never seen a living thing ever lie so perfectly still. Although her body ached and bled still, and her head was dizzy, she felt none of it as panic dropped through the pit of her stomach like a lead weight. She lowered her head to the child, licking at its face – her face – to clear the birth sac from her mouth and nose. She nudged at her, at first gently, then almost violently, as if hoping that she would spring into life at her touch. But she didn’t. She was limp and still. “No.” The word was barely a whisper, closer to a breath caught in her throat as realisation slowly began to creep over Priya. She pressed her nose to the child’s speckled body. The word came again, but this time as a wail that rose from the very depths of her being, that snatched the silence and tore the air in two with pain. priya
marwari . blue roan . 13.2hh |