A Canticle for Birth: Part XI

Part XI: Blossom

Fthh ru-chk krrk ch ch

Dreams, Dreams are not alone. 

Kaliedoscopic tumble from one to the next. No not tumble, not always, sometimes both or more. Mech heads. Lights and vines. Bugs, serpents, blood and books. Black suns and old trees. Warmachines and open skies. So many and more cascade and overflow back and forward.

Which one though, which one is you? And what do they mean? 

Oez knows!

Do I? I feel it, but it scares me. 

The reason I have come. Altered it is.

Krk krk thh

Roots move fast.

I begin to roll awake, but am pulled back by the vines. 

Into everything. Soft and hard, solid or liquid. Doesn't matter, grow, grow. 

The belly was beginning to impede movement anyway. The roots make it near impossible. 

I never want to leave bed. If I don't get up though roots grow deeper. So many holes in the mattress. Ruthless roots. 

Anything for Iksander I suppose. 

Iksander, a good name for a boy. Came to me one night when I was telling Earth Child the story of Iksander the liberator.

I pull and struggle, roots and vines protest, some break and shrivel. Like glue for flesh. Eager vines grasp and wrap, dive and stab. Getting more wood like. I rub my belly. It's almost time.

Always tired now and occasionally on edge.

I'll miss this time, but I do long to have it over. To hold my babe. 

***

Clothes are tattered garb now. Vines do not respect boundaries.

I want to be useful, but Mother Sky doesn't let me do many chores anymore. I initially fought her on that but I'm too tired to disagree. She still lets me do cooking and sewing, never far from me is she though, just in case I suppose the logic goes.

Earth child gets bored more often without me to play with now, I can tell. He behaves well. He's eager for a sibling. 

***

Took what I intended to be a short nap in the garden

Th th th th shk shk shk

Deep, deep down woven so vast so fast. Can't move now, roots bind. Restrained.

The neckvine, I feel the petals of its blossom on my neck. 

Legs bound together, arms still have some movement, vines will find purchase though. And then pinioned I'll be.

Shwree Queeya

Mother Sky comes to sit behind me. I don't see Earth Child. I'm glad for both. Heart seizing, fear inducing moment before the inevitable plunge. The night before a test amplified to boundless infinity. 

She sets her camera head down separating it from her shovel's arm to face me. I feel her stone hands on my shoulder. Comforting, yet still silent tears roll down my cheek.

Krrk krrk a moaning in the wood. 

A long sobbing shriek of pain, I wail. Sky Mother makes a series of reassuring creaks as she strokes my head and shoulder.

Constricting vines.

Agony splits in my head. Numbing and painful where vines squeeze. 

This is the beginning.

***

Sweat and struggle. 

Hour on hour. 

Dark walls stretch, red skies above. Blood they seem to me.

Arms like branches. Vines to stone, hung I am, as if upon a cross. Fruit on every branch. Birds come. Mother sky by my side always. 

Up. He's moving up. Sternum stretches. Chest swells. Smaller than my belly makes it seem but still uncomfortable as he ascends. 

Deep breaths and push. Thats what my mother used to tell the women. Not me. More like stretch and fight.

Through the blossom he will come. Hard to breathe, hard to cry. Exerted muscles, pulsing pumping in my head and neck.

***

He comes. My head hangs down. He's at the blossom. Stretch and pull my body strains at the binding. 

Aching for freedom. Sob with pain. 

Pain to pain, blood of my blood. Together and now separated. 

I cannot swallow with babe in neck. 

I feel I shall die. 

Excruciation and blackness.

And now...

He is free.

Falling. 

No.

Not falling, gliding. Vines from ropes to hammock. Gently laid upon new flowers like beds I come to rest. Soupy mess of salt and water upon my face, upon all thy body.

Brought to me now by Mother Sky the fruit of mine labour. Sweet Iksander. Tears of jubilation. 

He cries light. And I nuzzle him close. A mural of many colors his body is upon which sits a head of piercing light. A stained glass boy he looks, but soft and human with odd textures. A fitting birth for a glassling, beautiful he is to me.

I hold him long, whimpering wordless sounds of love. Mother Sky takes him. Sleep now.