It was only a dully grating kind of ache, but it was enough to wake him up, warm and comfortable as he was next to his almost-husband of four months and three days. Cheerful as always, the cub kicked its greeting inside of him, then went back to petting his innards with tiny hands. Even after three months, it was still a strange sensation. He hadn't expected to be able to know which was hands and which was feet, or to be nearly able to see the moods play out in his unborn infant's mind, but now that he'd felt it he wanted more than anything to be able to see, to hold. At the same time, he was terrified of the birth. He had never been good with pain.
The cub kicked again, gleefully, and between that and the insistent ache tugging at whatever guts were situated between his hips, Tay despaired of getting back to sleep. Briefly he thought about waking Cour, but decided against it. It was within the time for the birth, yet surely birth pains would be bigger than that strange, lackluster hurt that was bothering him. Cour was tired besides. He hadn't been very good to the poor male lately, and even if he did have an excuse, it didn't make him feel any less guilty in the few sane, demandless moments he still had. Still, he did have to admit that it felt good to yell for no reason at all, once in a while.
Sighing, he rolled over onto his side, back to Cour, to soothe his stomach. He could hardly remember the trepidation he had felt on his first night in this bed. It felt kind of silly now, that he had been afraid of curling up under the thin covers with his mate to sleep, limbs tangled and bodies draped haphazardly around each other. He did remember the fear that Cour might want something Tay was unwilling to give before the cub was born, but it seemed such a distant thing. He should have known Cour could never really want anything Tay didn't.
There were things that still felt strange, though. Having to wait for Vayrsila to visit, or walk out there - an impossibility now that he was so tired all the time - was not entirely welcome. In spite of himself, Tay missed his mentor's morning teasing. He and Cour had had difficulties figuring out who was to cook the breakfast as well; Cour was used to making it, but so was Tay, and neither had wanted to give up yet another familiar thing in the midst of so much upheaval. They had settled in the end on an alternating schedule, which so far had worked well enough. At least the food hadn't suffered any.
Then there was the problem of cramped quarters. Denen's house was bigger than most but half of it was full of storage, and with two males and a pregnant, 'nesting' cub-bearer occupying it, it felt very small. Cour wanted to build a house for himself and Tay as soon as the cub was born, when they could move in at leisure, and a few of the more basic plans were already made. Until then, they would just have to make do with what they had.
Despite all the bad things, Tay felt for the first time since he was six years old that things were looking up. Life with someone to depend on was as good as expected. Actually letting himself depend on them was better. Cour asked his opinion of everything, so gradually Tay had become more comfortable expressing his own likes and dislikes, his thoughts on the way he wanted Cunelbren to be brought up. On Cour and Vayrsila's advice he had given up trying to follow every tiny requirement of his old life, and yet he did want his son to know something about where he had come from, the way his grandparents had lived. Happily for Tay, Cour agreed entirely.
Tay wondered what his parents and his brothers would have thought of Cour, of Sol, and of his cub. Cunelet would have biffed his twin and called him unimaginative for naming the cub Cunelbren, he was sure, but he hadn't meant to be. It had been a tribute of sorts, to the way things had once been. It felt so long ago. And the meaning, although a melancholy one for the beginning of a cub's life, had fit perfectly. A golden twilight, that was what Cunelbren was. The end of what Tay had been, and the precursor of something new and beautiful.
He didn't fall asleep again. The ache continued to bother him in short, uneven sessions, though it got a bit better once Cunelbren slowed down and started to drowse, tired out by his nighttime fun. Cour slept on.
Morning broke in slow waves of light, and Tay watched it come, tiredly but not with much irritation. It was good to be able to watch his mate rest once in a while, and commune with his cub as he was usually too busy to do. Since he was awake already he rose early to make the breakfast, then began straightening and dusting a few of the rooms while he waited for the two males to get up, have their meal, and go about their work. He could wash the dishes then, and do a few more of the things Denen still let him do, like combing the edges of the village for plants that could be used or scrubbing out the smaller, lighter articles of dirty clothes. Anything heavier was forbidden.
Cour woke less than an hour later by the deepening of the bright light outside, and Denen immediately after him. Both scolded Tay for getting up without waking them, and neither really meant it. Tay felt surprisingly cheerful for being so weary, so he let it pass without complaint and instead pointed out their food and went on with his cleaning.
It was an altogether boring morning. He did all the work that needed doing, then redid a few things that didn't just for the sake of something to keep his mind off the still nagging ache until it was time to get the midday meal going. Sure by now that it had to be another bruise from so much kicking, since it felt much the same as the ache he'd gotten once before, he decided to tell Denen. The older man had rubbed oil of some kind into the bruised section then, he remembered, so Tay would ask if he could again when his meal was finished cooking and he could say he had eaten already. Both Denen and Cour had been adamant about Tay's eating habits.
The soup finished boiling; he sat at the little table to eat it slowly, blowing on each hot spoonful while he thought about what he could accomplish for the rest of the day. After eating, he washed the bowl, the spoon and the pot he had used, then went out into the little garden patch with bowl and small wooden spoon still in hand to find Denen on his knees, busily loosening the earth around the roots of one of the older plants.
"Had your dinner?" the corolaith asked, smiling lopsidedly. Even he knew how close to paranoia he and his apprentice had come in their quest to keep Taydren and the cub healthy. Tay nodded, fidgeting.
"I finished just a minute ago, and I wanted to ask you something."
His back creaking slightly, Denen got up and dusted off the front of his tunic where his knees had been pressing it into the dirt after planting the small tool he'd been using next to his plant. "What?"
"My stomach hurts. I think the cub's been kicking too much again, and I wanted to know if you could do what you did before." The cub-bearer blushed. "I didn't want to bother you, but he kicked all night..."
Denen's forehead furrowed in consideration. "You were up all night? How long has it hurt, then?"
"Since early this morning, before the sunrise," Tay told him thoughtfully, twisting the hemmed edge of his tunic sleeve between unconsciously moving fingers. "It comes and goes."
"How often?"
The younger Kindred shrugged. "I don't know. A few minutes apart, I think, but it feel like it varies."
"Well," Denen said, smiling and shaking his head like a man torn between relief and pride. "Don't get too excited, but I think you may have something to show off tomorrow."
"Something..." Tay echoed vaguely, blinking fast while the insinuation tried to force itself into his suddenly misty brain. Surely it couldn't be the cub, not today! It was such a normal day, big things weren't supposed to happen in it!
Silly, he chided himself weakly. Of course, the cub had to come sometime. But first... "I - I need to tell Cour," he stammered out, distractedly rubbing the almost imperceptible swell under the front of his tunic. "Do you know where he is?"
Most cub-bearers, by some hidden mechanism inside their bodies, unconsciously put the birthing off until after sunset, after the Change came over them. There were those who couldn't, but these always died; some with their first cub, some with their second depending on when the failure showed itself, because an unChanged Kindred's body was much like a human's, and human males were not meant to give birth. The problem was one passed down in a family, by the da most said, and the cub-bearers who had it knew that they did because of this. Tay couldn't imagine the bravery it must take to bear cubs knowing that something so horrible would happen.
Tay had no problems of that kind but most cub-bearers went into labor mid-afternoon to early evening, and his early morning start seemed to disconcert Denen, who said it was better to be safe than sorry and put Tay to bed. Cour, once he had gotten over his excitement and disbelief, wanted to stay with his mate, so they sat alternately talking and working on projects for the cub until late evening after the dinner meal when the cramping became too insistent to ignore.
Denen got water boiling, and together he and Cour gathered up the things they would need after the birth; wrappings for the cub, a clean tunic for Tay, and an assortment of herbs that Denen would brew in some of the hot water and use, one mixture for Tay to drink and the other an antiseptic rinse to wash him up with. The confidence with which the two corolaitè checked and approved his progress reassured Taydren a little, but not enough. The contractions hurt like nothing else he had ever experienced, not even the cramps he'd had near the beginning of his pregnancy, and the fear that he wouldn't be able to handle the delivery at all nagged coldly at the back of his mind until he would almost have given up had that been an option. He wanted Cour to come sit with him again.
As if the gods had heard and granted his request, the sunlight began its last stage of draining away, and Cour came gladly back to curl next to and around Tay on the low bed where they could wait together for the Change to find them. Denen withdrew into the main room, to leave them their privacy until he was needed. The room went dark.
It was like a ripple going through him, as it always had been, taking his human understanding and leaving him a pair of needle-tipped fangs, eyes that could see in the dark, a nose that could smell for more than a mile, and a killer instinct. He had wondered once in a fit of curiousity whether he preferred that strength or the knowledge his human form gave him, but he hadn't been able then to answer himself, because there was no comparison. When he was one, that was him, and when he was the other, that was him too.
Normally he would have wanted feeding first and foremost, but now there was something else on his mind. He could smell his own blood in the air and beneath that, just faintly, he could smell his cub, moving now, upset by the Change he had undergone along with his bearer and awakened by the new force of sound and scent, tiny eyes glued shut by habit and mucus trying to open and witness the strange turn his comfortable existance had taken. Next to Tay his mate shifted, midnight blue eyes burning with possessive light, to lick encouragingly at Tay's strained face, his tight-drawn mouth, and the harshly working hollow at the base of his throat where the breath rose and fell in short, gasping pants of pain. His presence annoyed Tay, grating at a innate sensibility that told him birthing was private, a thing to be done in complete solitude, but the attention did feel good. He decided, arching his spine against his mate's chest and whining uncomfortably as the newest cramp twisted his insides, that he wouldn't argue. There was too much else to attend to to waste time like that.
He struggled for what felt like hours. For the first while he stayed down, lying beside his mate and bending himself like a snake into contortions he hadn't known he could make in the quest for a position that didn't hurt so badly, but by the time the cub's head had begun its descent into the birthing passageway he couldn't stand the pressure of the air on his stomach. Whimpering in small complaints to his mate, he turned himself over and settled on all fours where the pressure rested on his back and the lean muscles of his arms. That felt a little better, so he stayed there instead, rocking back and forth on his support, and again, waited. There was nothing more to do. Cour lapped at the shell of his ear, nuzzled everywhere with an air of calm that made Taydren's racing heart slow, but nothing he did could make the pain go away or the birth speed up. Pressure built steadily between his widespread thighs, pulse by pulse nearing the relief he wanted, and the night dragged on and on.
Sweat was trickling in rivulets down Tay's arms, face, and neck, soaking his hair, and his arms felt ready to break when at long last he felt something give, something that he knew was important. The mouth of the birth canal had been stretching inch by inch forever as he pushed and forced, but no more. In one rapid, wet gush, the cub's head burst free. Shoulders caught - strained - burst out too, followed by the entire cub in one smooth flood of tiny limbs, and Cour leapt eagerly to scoop the flailing little thing into his arms. Tay was too dazed to do anything. After all that time, the end had been much too fast.
Then Cour was nudging at his shoulder, making him lay down, and the wet cub was nestled into the warm arc of his bare belly where he and his mate could keep it from catching a chill. Content in spite of the ache still pinching at his innards, Tay spared a minute to look his cub all over. It was a tiny male just like he had known it would be, small enough to be held easily in Tay's two paws, but the noise it could make! Purring tiredly, he guided its small gaping mouth to the fine network of veins in his wrist, where it at once dug tiny pinpricks of fangs into his skin and began sucking greedily.
Huffing a small sigh, he laid down his head. His body was sore all over, but he couldn't find it in himself to rue it. It was a good kind of ache, the kind that came from the hard work of producing something special. A little sleep would take care of it, curled up next to his lifemate with his cub safe between them.
A little sleep like that might take care of anything.
