Andarin: The Mountains: now, as one ;

It is too cold, and too early, and there is nothing to be done: she walks into the shelter of trees, any shelter, and as far away from Their graves as she can manage with the pain that strives through her. It ripples like the icy wind, weaving through her thick winter coat and whipping through her tangled mane and tail; she cannot hear Ixtab’s laboured breath through it, though she feels alike the exhaustion. It is too soon, and the winter is too strong, but there is nothing to be done;

The wind bites into her skin like her daughter’s fangs, like the seizures of muscle that rippled through her, bidding her son too early into the savage storm; Astarte had resisted with gritted teeth for as long as she could, and she thought it bitterly fitting that now was the time, during blizzards and the howling violence of winter.

The contractions come swift and fast as the Simurgh burns within her, quickening her and her womb and the child that lay curled safe within it; beyond capacity of body she does not know if he will survive, but of she, Oracle and Starweaver and guardian of the Simurgh, there is nothing to be done. She can feel him moving, and her pain and regret shines wetly at the corners of her eyes, that she is alone in an hour of need.

Mother, this was a beautiful and terrible gift, she thinks, for they could not know that it would so alter her, change her and change the child in her womb; her power was infused in him, she knows, for the Simurgh had melded with her and suffused her with its own power – and she could not help but pass it to her son, sheltering within her and bathing within her earth, for there was nothing to be done.

Curled in the snow, with the wind relentless at her back and Ixtab’s rough tongue caressing the straining muscles of her neck, she can’t help but remembering the night of Indio and Accendare’s birth, in the soft warm sands and with the sea breeze soothing her; here, she is just as alone, just as alive in the wind and the snow, but bitterer for the moment of it.

It is too soon, and too cold, and she does not know yet if she can save him.

He is born too small, too early, and he is wet and swiftly freezing in the icy wind; she tucks him to her body as he thirsts weakly for her milk, and Ixtab stands lithely at his other side, warming him with her breath and her blood under her skin; Astarte licks him clean and warms him with her own tongue, silently imploring for the storm, in its viciousness, to end. She absorbs his tiny shivers into her body, as his body vibrates with the fierceness of Ixtab’s worried purr;

Loki, your son, she thinks to the wind, and Astarte wonders if his father will hear her, and come for them.