The Birth That Tried to Unmake Her

The pain started wrong.

I woke to wetness between my thighs, the copper scent of blood mixing with something else—ozone, burnt prophecy, the particular smell of divine things dying. My first thought was relief: Finally. She's coming.

Then the first contraction hit, and I knew this wasn't birth.

My spine arched off the blanket, body bowing in directions human frames weren't meant to bend. The pressure came from everywhere—not just my womb but my ribs, my throat, the spaces between thoughts. Something was trying to climb out through every possible exit, testing my seams like a prisoner checking bars.

"Dorian—" His name came out mangled, half-scream.

He was already moving, battle-instincts faster than confusion. One look at the blood—too dark, moving too slowly—and his face went pale. "What's happening?"

"It's not her." I clutched his hand as another wave hit, this one accompanied by the sensation of something licking me from the inside. Not with affection. Tasting. "Something else is trying to—"

My voice cut off as my body convulsed. Not labor. Possession wearing birth's mask.

Dorian's touch triggered something worse. The moment his skin met mine fully, his eyes rolled back, showing white. I saw it through our connection—flashes of other timelines bleeding through. Dorian with his throat torn out. Dorian aged to dust. Dorian who'd never existed because I'd never been born to love him.

He jerked back, gasping. "The boundaries. They're still thin."

"Don't let go," I begged, even as his touch brought more visions. "I need—I need an anchor. This timeline. This life."

Understanding flashed across his face. He grabbed the salt from our meager supplies, pouring it in a circle around us with shaking hands. Then, without hesitation, he drew his knife across his palm, letting blood drip onto the white crystals.

"Salt of earth," he muttered, words pulled from some half-remembered protection rite. "Blood of choice. Lock this moment. Lock this life."

The circle flared warm, and suddenly I could breathe again. Still wrong, still invaded, but present. Here. Now. His.

"If she's still in there," he said, retaking my hand with his bleeding one, "we pull her out. Together."

Another contraction. This time I felt the crowning—but wrong, all wrong. My hand flew between my legs, expecting to feel the crown of my daughter's head.

Instead, I felt a mouth.

Lips. Tongue. And worse—teeth. It whispered against my palm in languages that predated speech:

"Name me, and I will be yours. I will wear your daughter's name better than she ever could. I will love you with the devotion of aeons. I will unmake your enemies with songs."

The temptation hit like another kind of labor pain. To speak. To give this thing what it wanted. My mouth opened without permission, ancient syllables trying to crawl up my throat—

"No." Dorian's voice, fierce and absolute. He pressed his free hand over my mouth, not to silence but to remind. "That's not our daughter. Don't give it what it wants."

But my body was already betraying me, trying to birth something that should never taste air. The mouth between my legs laughed, and the sound reverberated through my bones. Inside, I felt Ashara's terror like a second heartbeat—trapped, suffocating, being slowly digested by something infinitely patient.

Then the world tilted.

Not the cabin—my consciousness, pulled inward like smoke through a chimney. One moment I was screaming on a blood-soaked blanket. The next, I stood in a space that shouldn't exist.

My own womb, transformed into a cavern of flesh and starlight.

And there, in the center, was my daughter.

Ashara huddled naked and small, maybe six years old in this space between spaces. But around her, wrapped tight as grave clothes, was something else. A skin that didn't belong to her. It pulsed with mouths, with eyes that weren't eyes, with the terrible patience of things that existed before names.

"Mama?" Her voice was barely a whisper. "I don't know who I am anymore. He keeps telling me stories about who I could be. If I forget, if I become him... will you still call me back?"

The god-skin tightened, and she gasped, silver tears tracking down too-pale cheeks.

I didn't hesitate. I ran to her, fell to my knees in the blood-warm space, and began tearing at the skin with my bare hands. It burned—ice and fire and the absence between stars—but I didn't stop.

"Your name is Ashara," I said, each word a battle against the mouths trying to speak through mine. "You are not prophecy. You are not a vessel. You are not a door or a bridge or an ending."

My fingers found purchase, peeling back layers of god-flesh. Beneath, she glowed faintly—not with power but with simple life.

"You are mine," I finished, pulling her free from the last of it. "My daughter. My choice. My beginning."

She collapsed against me, and I felt the cavern shudder. The god-skin writhed, trying to reform, but without her to wear, it was just hunger without shape.

"I want to go home," Ashara whispered into my chest. "I want to be born. Just born. Nothing special."

"Then let's go home."

The world snapped back.

I was screaming on the cabin floor, but this time the pressure was right. Human. Dorian's face swam into focus, etched with concern and something like awe.

"Push," he said. "I can see—Aria, I can see her. The real her."

I bore down with everything I had, feeling my daughter descend the way nature intended. No mouths. No wrong-shaped pressures. Just the ancient, agonizing, perfect process of bringing life into the world.

She crowned between one breath and the next.

"Again," Dorian urged. "She's almost—"

One more push, primal and absolute, and she slipped free into his waiting hands.

For a moment, silence. The terrible kind that makes mothers' hearts stop.

Then—a cry. Thin and angry and absolutely, blessedly normal.

"Is it her?" I asked, barely able to see through tears and exhaustion. "Is it really—"

"She blinked." Dorian's voice was thick with wonder. "Her eyes are just eyes. Silver, yes, but... human. She's human, Aria."

He placed her on my chest, this small, squalling thing covered in blood and vernix and proof of her journey. She was perfect in her ordinariness. Ten fingers. Ten toes. A mouth that held no teeth but hunger.

I sobbed, holding her close, feeling her weight—real weight, not cosmic significance. "Ashara. My Ashara."

She quieted at her name, blinking up at me with those silver eyes that held curiosity, not cosmos.

Through the window, wind whispered with a voice that had no body: "Not this time. But the door is open now."

I was too exhausted, too relieved to care about threats. Let them come. Let every god and prophet and timeline try to claim her.

"I am one life," I whispered to my daughter, to Dorian, to whatever listened. "One mother. And you... you are my beginning."

Ashara yawned, tiny fist curling against my breast. Already falling asleep, trusting in the safety of arms that had fought gods to hold her.

Behind us, through the cabin's warped window, Dorian watched the tree line twist—just slightly. Like something vast had turned its attention elsewhere.

For now.

But I didn't see it. I was too busy memorizing my daughter's face, this singular child who'd chosen to be small, chosen to be mine, chosen to be herself.

The rest could wait.

For now, we were just a family, bloody and exhausted and whole, holding each other as the cracked sky slowly began to heal.