tram cars and taxis, like a waxworks on the move

Sedna knew that Raijin wouldn’t be far off, and Chips was circling dutifully overhead, stupid bird, like she needed babysitting. Otis clung to her back and grumbled low and protectively, the way her companions were carrying on you’d think she wasn’t able to fend for herself or something. She was pregnant, not disabled, and while the sickness that should have passed as her children grew lingered on, she was a healer herself and had bought many children into the world before her own. Sometimes, that was just the way things went, there wasn’t a rhyme or reason to why that she had ever been able to decipher. She would just have to endure for now.

From the swelling of her sides alone, it would be easy to assume either she was having 10 kids, or at least three that took after their father. The stabbing of small sharp paws into the bottoms of her lungs and the stretch of tiny limbs into her kidneys often left her breathless and aching. It was a long way back to Auster, and she wasn’t even sure she would be welcome when she got there, but the climate was far nicer than the northern continent, and she would find somewhere to set herself up to safely bring these little lives into the world, unlike her mother who always seemed to be half way to somewhere when her children made an appearance.

She snatched at some grass as her stomach rolled in protest again, a low groan of foreboding easing from her chest. She was going to be sick again, there was no use fighting it, but it didn’t stop her reflexive need to try and keep it down, bile already burning at the back of her throat.