Motherheart Dragon Priest

Chapter 7b - Birth and Flowers

He stood outside and listened to the chatter of the midwives and then a guttural nearly animal growl. He chuckled as he recognised Jade in mid contraction using Silent Gaze’s training.

“She is doing well, by the sound of that!” he said to Gaze as she came and stood beside him.

“Yes, the babe has crowned so not long now. Come, you have helped birth more than two hands of children, share your strength and wisdom now!”

Desert smiled and they made there way to where Jade was squatting amidst the herbs and ashes of the birthing floor. She stopped panting as he squatted down next to her and held her right hand in his while putting his left hand on the small of back.

He locked eyes with Jade and they smiled at each other. Desert felt her back start to tighten and she changed her breathing to match the onset of the contraction.

Desert matched his breathing to hers and relaxed his shoulders and breathed into this hands. Jade looked at him wide eyed as his hands grew hot. He smiled and nodded. Jade kept her eyes on his as the contraction built and she felt the head moving through her.

The young midwife nodded, “keep pushing now,” and she reached down to support the head as it emerged. There was the sound of more waters spilling onto the birthing floor and another midwife pushed more herbed ash underneath Jade to keep the floor dry.

Jade rested momentarily and Desert kissed her forehead and cheek.

Another contraction and again Jade matched her breathing as a shoulder came through her then the other.

“Reach down,” said the midwife and Jade reached down and the midwife helped Jade grasp the new-born and then ease out the legs. She lifted the babe to her chest and looked up into his eyes.

Desert could see the exhaustion and the joy and he helped her to lean back onto the cushions now arranged behind her.

Desert looked at the cord till it stopped pulsing and then the midwife felt the next contraction that started the placenta’s expulsion. He turned and gazed caringly over his womyn and newest daughter.

Jade was nuzzling her and talking softly to her telling about her world and the people in it, so that the spirit would recognise where it was and not try to separate from this body and the trauma it had just gone through.

Desert found himself moving between the emotions of being the father and his mind analysing what had happened and how Jade had fared. What was her colour, how was her breathing, how was the placenta coming along.

He stopped himself from taking her pulse to assess how much of her blood and qi had been used up during the birthing.

Silent Gaze laid a hand on his shoulder, “relax Grand master, all is better than we could have imagined.”

He felt his shoulders drop and realised he had been more tense than he thought he’d been.

Silent Gaze brought across a traditional wooden bowl and with a final push Jade delivered the placenta into the bowel. Jade let out a long deep sigh as she stopped the skilled breathing that Gaze had taught her.

Jade lifted the babe up to her right breast to give her qi first, then she would get the left and the her shoulders slumped and she leant more heavily into Stillness Desert.

He gently stroked the babes head as it suckled. He kissed Jades’ forehead and she closed her eyes. He nodded to Gaze and she ushered everyone from the room to leave them in peace.

Desert knew they would take the placenta and clean it. The cord would be preserved and used to mix with any medicine his daughter needed within the next year.

The placenta would be prepared and dried and made into a restorative with dragonwort, manroot, bloodroot and other herbs to help Jade recover her blood and strength.

__________________

Silent Gaze sat in the afternoon stillness of the meditation hall of Redcliff Temple.

Shafts of soft light slanted through the room from the light wells cut into the solid stone of the ceiling. She breathed evenly following the sensation as the breath moved in and out of her body.

She followed the subtle changes in the muscles of her shoulders and belly, the way her head slightly rose and fell and the slight change of pressure in the small of her back.

She acknowledged the sounds of footsteps as different students practiced their meditation or a movement from some exercise they were struggling with.

She smiled as she recognised the nearly silent steps of Stillness Desert as he approached. A wisp of fragrance and something was placed on the floor in front of her then his steps retreated. Her smile widened as she realised her mind was trying to recognise the different plants from the fragrance she could recognise.

She breathed out slowly and returned her mind to her cycles of nine, closing each one of the Inner Temples in turn. Gaze then brought her awareness up out into the world and finally opened her eyes.

Three sprigs lay at her feet. The soft green of dragonwort, the purple flowers of montainlight and the yellow of cliffsun. They were herbs that repaired injury and eased pain.

Their steam could open the breathing and clear the ears while their ash would close the bowels, soothing the fire of the belly and aiding in the return of fitness after disease.

They were also a language. The mountainlight said good bye see you when I can. The Cliffsun was care for family in my absence and dragonwort, well it spoke for itself.

Stillness Desert had gone to spend the last days of the King with him and he would not return till he knew the carcass was farewelled.

Silent Gaze looked up toward the light wells and the dancing of the dust motes. All of their lives were at play like the dust motes in the zephyrs of the air of the meditation hall.

A birth, a death, an arrival of new students and an imminent invasion by an already defeated emperor.

Gaze savoured the moment of realisation, then closed her eyes and returned to the stillness of her meditation.