What has she done? What devastation has she wrought on the world? After Anwen, after that loss and the cowardice of who she thought was her soulmate, Eirlys had sworn to never again bear a child. Never again know the touch of another stallion. She couldn’t raise the first child, couldn’t keep her safe, couldn’t even get her past her first season. So what right does she have to repeat that mistake? What right does she have to doom another child into life at her feet, into inevitable death?
And as if the very universe is punishing, Vidarr has been absent for most of her pregnancy. The hulking beast of a stallion had left her with a few parting words of moving the herd, of her going with and his intention to return when they had a new home – and then he was gone. So she carried the child alone, lingering at the edge of the Savanna, unwilling to leave. Her sides swelled as autumn faded into winter, and as winter warmed into spring.
Still, she lingered. Still, she was alone.
Eirlys doesn’t know why she’s surprised; Taurus was proof that she isn’t worth sticking around for. Anwen was proof that she isn’t fit to be a mother. Vidarr leaving? That is proof that she isn’t even worth a convincing lie.
Another stallion moved into the Savanna, and that is what cemented her need to leave. She made it to the Crossing isle, to a massive meadow that reminded her of home and made her heart ache just in time for her body to convulse, for labor to start and her tears to flow free.
So now there is another child, another filly at her feet, desperate and dependent upon her for survival. Eirlys doesn’t know how to describe the next few months. She goes through the motions, a yawning black pit within her, pulling all that she is downdowndown, greedy and consuming. The filly at her feet survives, and Eirlys does little more than act as a warm body, as an endless source of nourishment. She doesn’t offer words, doesn’t offer affection. She doesn’t know how to do so, anymore.
If she could, she would lay down and die. It would be easier, and far kinder to the world for her to leave it, But the insistent little red filly at her feet will not let her, always nudging her towards food and water, her small voice insisting that Eirlys eat or drink or move, do anything other than waste away here and let the wind carry off the dust she knows her bones are made of.
Helpless to disobey, Eirlys suffers on.