Andarin: The Mountains: Please forgive this broken soul.

Ulaume feels dark and alienated. She feels like a falling stone, the weight of gravity pressing fiercely upon every surface of her lean body, crushing her down into the welcoming earth. She feels like a broken hawk, tumbling in slipstream; a stunted manuka bent almost double by harsh seawinds. Deep in her gut, she feels the creature stir, feels its limited intelligence reaching desperately for light in its home of endless black. Suspended inside her like a fattening spider, crouched its delicate web, the pale bloody beast broods and whispers. Ulaume whispers back. Secrets of the earth leave her lips in near silent mutters, breathing back into her own ears and slipping stealthily down her veins into her belly.

Ulaume stands in a small, quiet clearing. All about her the leaves of willows and cypress susserate together. Long summer grasses rustle and gasp. Pollen fills the air like a golden veil and through it Ulaume sees only shadows – bright, glimmering and yellow ghosts of filling the trees. Ulaume – slender woodnymph, dark dryad – shifts uneasily. She feels as if her long thin legs can scarcely hold the ballooning weight of her distended stomach, hanging below the ridges of her ribcage like a bloated parasite. Yet when she reaches around with her small dark muzzle to nudge that swollen, dappled skin it is a gentle loving caress, and her great black eyes darken protectively. The thick ophidian vines of her mane undulate softly about her barrel, releasing a soft and subtle music of clicking stones and skulls and bones. Ulaume hums tunelessly to herself; to her spidercreature growing gluttonously inside.
“Cobweb.” Ulaume whispers in her warm, dusky tones – a rough buzz of heavy summer afternoons – and smiles dreamily to herself as she settles down amongst the hot, moist seedheads and mumbling bees.

Drowsing in empty golden shadows, Ulaume hardly notices the approach of Oceantree. Only when the thick ropes of her mane arch up about her, cupping her bowed head like the hood of a cobra, does Ulaume sleepily blink her wide dreaming eyes and cast a sharpening glance upward to where her plumply painted love eases herself between the trees. Ulaume smiles darkly, teeth glinting wetly behind black bristling lips, and lunges with a strange ungainly grace to her unsteady feet. She weaves towards her gentle vixen, her once sinuous frame now an awkward bulk. Before Oceantree can speak, Ulaume casts her a shy glance and reaches out with her whiskered mouth to brush her neck softly where the ends of her hair trail across her twisted skin.
“I was dreaming, dear magpie,” she says softly and her hot rough voice is low and serious. “I have something to give you.” And before Oceantree can reply or move away, she brushes carelessly against her shoulder-to-shoulder and the coldly defined scar upon her scar-scattered shoulder blooms brightly with blood which is smeared between their mixing skins. The dark glinting blade embedded shallowly beneath her skin springs forth and plunges like a fish into the soft flesh of Oceantree’s shoulder. Just as quickly, the tiny nightshade blossoms scattered thoughtlessly about Ulaume’s hair whither and die as the earth power in Ulaume wanes.

She sighs, “Be safe, O, my love. And do not turn away from the light.” Ulaume rests her black muzzle amongst the silk of Oceantree’s mane and inhales her salty, stonedamp scent deeply. She does not say it, indeed she locks the thoughts deep – away from sly and prying minds – but Ulaume fears that soon the time will be when she will not be around to love and protect her burgeoning spawn. But she knows that Oceantree will not fail her.

ULAUME
shake for that which sinks but can’t drown