I – Alabaster; Kitty
One last scream tears its way between her lips, and then there is silence, that complete and utter silence that thrums at your ears until you can bear it no longer. The midwife bustles about at the end of the bed, saying something that Kitty can't quite make out, and her lady's maid bathes her forehead, murmuring soothing words of encouragement as she has throughout the night. All that matters is that the pain has stopped, the horrendous agony that burned through her for hours on end until she thought she'd died and gone to hell.
(For what crime, she isn't quite sure).
But now, there is blissful numbness.
And a baby.
The midwife eventually puts the little bundle in Kitty's arms, and she looks down into a pair of wide dark eyes staring up curiously out of a pink face, bald, scrunched up, and utterly beautiful.
"You have a daughter, madam," her lady's maid says gently.
Kitty knows she should be disappointed that the tiny little life cradled in her arms is not the boy that her husband wanted. She knows that she'll get the blame, that it will mean more fear, terror, agony, like a butterfly trapped in a cage as its wings are set on fire, left to die slowly as it draws flaming trails through the air.
But at this moment, she cannot bring herself to care. The only thought that winds around her head in sinuous loops is the wonder at how on earth something so perfect could have come from the awful night of its conception nine long months ago.
Some miracles cannot be explained.
A/N Just another drabble series that I've been working on. With this and Sunset on the Water, I'll just update sporadically when another oneshot kind of appears. I'd love to hear from you! N xxx