[Flashback:Solo]A Birthing Cry

[Asada]

Win 6, 488 av...
Silver Lake....
Mature Content warningI decided the best way of starting the character... was from detailing the day of her birth from her mother's point of view. If you are queasy... Leave now XD. But not you Cachet! You deserve this reading horror! XD

In the waters of the Silver lake a konti woman K'lala swam as her body continued the pains of Childbirth. She had been meditating , seeking the guidance of their race's mother -goddess Avalis in the Silverood for a glimpse of her child's future. This was only after she had sought out the matron of the Silver Lodge to seek the fortune for the coming child. She had been told to take a sabbatical of sorts, and meditate by the far side of the lake, praying devoutly to Avalis for her blessing of the child's life within her.

'A konti child took three hundred and sixty five days to form and be birthed... almost as steady as the passing of the seasons itself. But...' K'lala's gills fluttered beneath the waters as a wave of childbirth racked her body. 'This one was early. Why was this happening? Was her body rejecting the baby?'

As the first signs of pain had wracked her body, K'lala had tried to stand to walk back around the lake's edge to the Lodge, content that the matron would help her. But along the way she had lost her footing and fallen down the steeper parts of the embankment into Silver Lake's waters. Unable to climb up, she had struck out towards the far shore where the white stone of the lodge could be seen. At the lodge, a salt water bath could be drawn, or a horse could be summoned to take her to the sea if she had that time.

The pains were early after all, it had only been eleven months since she had last lain with the child's father? She had to have the date right, shouldn't she? It was the night before Jared went off to his quest and she was returning to the Opal Order... that had to be-' A tremor of pain wracked the woman's stomach muscles mid-stroke towards the far shore as she thought of the peril she was placing the child in.

The lake's waters were taken care of not to be sullied, and on many occasions the deep waters beneath the surface housed a miraculous display of coral and kelps that were soothing to the eye. Pale fish, oddly luminescant would meander around, and the mother's council demanded that the waters remain pure. There had only been half a handful of konti born in the lake before , and all of them had been racked with problems during their first year of life. Problems deriving from their gifts.

That was one of the many reasons the council only allowed the waters to aid the birthing process in matters that required the child's healing. But only under an Opal Order Healer. Vision water was a forever potent reminder of Avalis' blessing. K'lala knew however she wasn't fit to help herself in such matters of childbirth... perhaps if she could go the longer journey she might find help in the docks.

But the Lodge was closer. It would be best for K'lala to go there.

As the woman swam beneath the waters surface towards her destination, her body shuddered once causing her to swallow a bit of the vision water within the lake as a Vision came to her beleagured senses. Stunning her enough that she lost track of swimming and began to sink deeper into the lake's darkness. Her body began to shudder more as the pains of childbirth continued as her mind became vested with the visions of the past, and of the future...

[Asada]

For the next span of bells underwater, the konti woman sank to the bottom of the Silver lake as her body continued the toils of labor on its own. What happened in K'lala's mind was a different matter though.

Her head was filled with the sight of the child's father, Jared as she had seen him last. Strong, proud, and full of vigor. Then the image shifted, shifted as if the human's passage of years took their toll within a single instant. An injury, a leg divided from the whole of its flesh from the knee down, a young woman held within his arms protectively as she she cried. No, not a woman, a child ... a child with her own eyes. Barely grown to the cusp of becoming mature by the konti races standards.

The vision flashed forwards, the young woman clad in the raiment of a syliran squire, but where was she?

At the thought, it was almost terrifying, as she knew in that instant... her child would outlive herself. But all that did not matter, the visions came again, twisting her consciousness for Bells more before K'lala's mind was ripped free. More visions came, visions of necessity, of training in things few konti children would be, all for keeping her safe to the day she would go to her father. Opening her eyes under water, one final soundless cry under the lake's waters brought K'lala's mind back to the present as she thrashed about..

K'lala would see the blood between her legs muddying the waters as her child was born. Nothing more then a fish swimming out from her amidst the deep as its gills took over its breathing. A pale figure, with the milky eyes which all newborns possessed. Grasping the child to her breast a small flower petal of the lily could be seen in the darkened light upon the new child's neck just below the right ear.

Worried , and tired, and wary of the folk tales of large predators nesting at the bottom, the new konti mother grabbed the tiny child by the armptis and began the long rise to surfacing. She kept one eye on the newborn as it first began kicking instinctively to swim its first simple strokes. The other eye was wary of her surroundings, and filled with fear and doubt.

The new mother's mind was filled with fear.

Fear for the child's wellbeing, fear for its health and the trek back to the healers, fear of the shadows of fish swimming about them both, fear that she would never reach up towards the surface in time to get the child and herself safely to the healers of the Opal order to be checked to see if they both were okay. K'lala would only remember faint images of her visions, but the smatterings of what she had seen would determine her efforts to ensure her child was prepared for some of the harshest circumstances possible.Kicking her legs, K'lala guided her newfound responsibility towards the light of the moon reflecting upon the lake surface far above.

[Asada]

The child's mind was filled with many newborn thoughts, most especially the unknown sensation of suddenly being somewhere nice and warm to someplace suddenly wet and cold. Her little gills breathed the water just as easily they had the amniotic fluid which had held her just hours ago. Her entire universe had become a series of pushing and shoving from forces she could not have understood, not then as tiny little babe struggling in the waters.

For a moment, she had floundered and spent the first minute of her life in distress as she swam about within the cold. But then, the touch of hands supporting her came to be and she could feel the pleasant sensation of warmth coming from another's body. The same warmth she knew instinctively as the 'other' that which was not herself but close to her, the mother's whose womb had supported the development of her life.

The babe's vision was dark, intangible within the waters which surrounded her. Though she couldn't express it, like the course of many things there would only There was only the touch of the 'other', her mother, guiding her as she kicked.

Babies of almost any race were born for swimming. Throw them into the water and they would stroke with the best of them. The only problem was that many race's babies did not possess the necessary gills to keep themselves alive beneath the waters surface. It was very hard for mammals like human babies to breathe in the liquid well enoug to derive the ever present amounts of air from its liquid grip. In fact, any other sentient race but the charodae or an akontak would have had their difficulties.

But not the little konti child who had yet to be named.

The only real problem was that she knew to kick, but not the direction in which to go. Not even when the pulled her to her breast to float upon the water's surface. Within the darkness of her world little Asada would not notice the name whispered to her baby ears amidst the winter's night air, nor the fact that she was still connected to the other by the umbilical cord. Instead, she just rested her baby head upon her mother's chest as her mouth opened to let out a little scream as her bottom was smacked to help her lungs inflate, becoming in that instant a creature capable of breathing both in air, and the sea.

For a long time, the sensation of being moved within the darkness was apparent until she was pulled to shore. There, the 'Mother severed and tied the cords which bound them and for the first time, Asada was a being completely apart from the other. Resting with her eyes closed as she breathed.

Without much words being spoken by the other one she could not recognize yet as K'lala, the babe was soon carried to the white stone house of silver lake lodge, and from there, to the Opal order temple to be checked out by the doctors. Her little tiny feet were pressed and prodded as her mother told her tale. The tale of birthing a child amidst the waters of Silver Lake.

~Fin.

[Cachet]

Asada : Asada SKILLS Swimming:2 LORE Born Within the silver lake Conclusion: I don't believe I have ever heard anyone starting this way. But I like it. Where do we start....the very beginning. Anything seem out of place? Any questions please feel free to contact me ASAP.