"Ouch!"

It was a really, really weird feeling to have someone sucking on your breasts, Imisha mused to herself. For over two hundred years these two bags of fat had followed her through life, just kind of hanging there, tagging along for the ride without really contributing anything. Sure, even if she was no beauty she had used the occasional low cut dress to score political points and Davar had fun with them in the bedroom but in essence, they had been useless.

"OUCH!"

Imisha shifted her body so that her eldest son could get a better grip. He was the greediest one, who could seemingly never get enough. His younger brother was already starting to doze off on the other side and his sister was sound asleep in her father's arms. For two hundred years her breasts had hung in there, biding their time. And now it was here, now they finally got to fill their role in life, feeding her children. Her three beautiful children.

Imisha was a mother.

She still couldn't believe it. In retrospect it had been one thing having them inside her, even sensing their souls in the warp. But it was something entirely different seeing them in the real world. Touching their skin, smelling their hair, listening to their soft breaths as they slept. She could already tell the two boys would be as different as night and day. The eldest, the greedy little bastard, was a splitting image of his father, body and soul, down to the crooked nose. Imisha could already tell that he would be a rowdy one, at three days old he was already testing his strength against every object that came in his path. No craftworld would ever be enough for him, he needed the open skies, the rolling plains and the high mountains. An exodite through and through. My little feral Eldar, she had already named him in her mind. One who would hunt, conquer and lead. A bright fiery spark in the warp.

His younger brother was the polar opposite. Quiet, careful and timid. While he wasn't that much smaller than his sibling, he somehow lacked the satisfying bulk of his elder brother. Initially, Imisha had feared for his health. Why didn't he cry? Why didn't he suckle as fiercely as his elder brother? Why was his spirit so much dimmer in the warp? Was there something wrong with him? Over the years she had seen hundreds of mother freak out in the same way, ignoring reassurance and logic, and she had scoffed at each and every one of them. Now she understood them. But slowly she started to understand her youngest son. He didn't cry because he was content. He ate his fill, neither more nor less. His spirit wasn't dim but condensed, focused. Imisha smiled. Her grandfather had been such a man. A man who seldom spoke but whose every word was carefully considered, whose every move was made with meticulous economy, efficient in everything he did, never wasting anything. She had so admired him as a little girl. To think that her son would carry on that legacy made her heart swell.

And then there was the girl. Her scaled, feathered daughter, her little lizard. The girl even had a little tail. Scaled children among Eldar were fairly uncommon but not unheard of. Same with feathered ones. Almost all children lost these extra characteristics in the first few years of their life, a byproduct of a time long gone. But only once had Imisha heard of a child born with both feathers and scales and even then it hadn't been this prominent. That child had died shortly after birth. Imisha glanced over towards Davar, who had the little girl snuggled up in his giant arms. Her daughter was much smaller than both of the boys, small even for an Eldar child. Blue scales, grey feathers, pale purple eyes topped off with a mop of curly strawberry blond hair. A whirlwind of colours. There was a rough unfinished look to her, like a painting a child had gotten bored with and never quite bothered to finish.

Yet for all her frayed nerves Imisha didn't worry about her little girl in the slightest. For of all her children, her daughter was the toughest of them all. In one way it felt wrong to compare them to each other when they were barely out of the womb. Yet there was no denying it, it was something she and Davar would have to adapt to. Their daughter was different.

She had been the one whose soul had stood defiantly in the face of a Keeper of Secrets and shielded her mother, even if only for a moment. It had been her that had forced Imisha to drive the lance into the daemon's back when she had been ready to give up. Likely her brothers already owned their life to their sister, Imisha could swear it. It was almost as if the little girl had decided that they would all be born, and that was all there was to it. Reality itself had hung its head in defeat and obediently obliged the girl. There she slept, only a newborn baby, frail and soft, yet already fierce enough to spit fate in the face and get away with it.

Even Imisha, a trained scholar of souls, had a problem describing the girl's little lifeforce. It was neither particularly wild nor focused like her brothers', and while it burned vividly, there was nothing extraordinary about that. She was the daughter of a farseer, a bright soul was all but expected. No, it was something different altogether. The best way Imisha could describe it was like standing in front of a fire that looked faint to the eye but radiated a fierce heat that hinted of a hidden power that couldn't be seen. A stray sound at the edge of your hearing, tattling of a high pitched symphony outside of your understanding.

Deviant in both body and soul, there was something almost alien about the little girl. As if she wasn't quite Eldar. Exactly what that would make her Imisha didn't know, nor did she care in the slightest. The girl was her flesh and blood, strong and healthy, and that was all that really mattered.

Imisha yawned and noted the time. Another four hours left. Four hours of peace and quiet with her family before everything would come to a close. She really should try to get some sleep. The Stablemaster's Pet was racing as fast as it could through the webway towards the origin of the explosion that had likely saved her and her children's life. What fate awaited them there she didn't know. An army of daemons? An insane goddess? The end of the world? Imisha snuggled in deeper into the bed, careful about not waking her sons. What did it matter? This was the way forward, that's all she knew and all she needed to know.

Smiling to herself, Imisha wiggled her toes just because she could. After she had come to after the birth she found she could move her legs again. Even the scar on her stomach where the jagged knife had gone in was gone. She shouldn't be alive and nor should her children. Yet here they were. It was as if they had been given a second chance at life. No matter what would happen she had gotten to have this moment with her family. One moment of serenity and happiness.

Just as Imisha closed her eyes her daughter let out a loud whimper. The girl was the only one of the children who slept better in her father's arms yet soon she was grunting and squirming, lips searching for something that Davar just couldn't provide. Imisha sighed, she knew that if she moved the boys from the breast they would both start shrieking like banshees. Yet there was no helping it. As gently as she could she handed the boys off to Davar who, like a zombie, rose out of bed and started to walk circles around the room, one screeching son on each arm. Meanwhile, their little alien lizard of a girl settled in Imisha's arms and suckled until her violet eyes went unfocused and finally closed. Even if the scales and feathers faded with time the girl would, like her mother, never be a traditional beauty. But even so, she was and would always be the most beautiful thing in the world in her mother's eyes. Caught up in her emotions Imisha leaned down and kissed her daughter on her downy forehead.

That, as it turned out, was a grievous mistake.

Frowning and squirming at the soft touch, the scaly little bundle of joy quickly joined her brothers in a competition to see who could shriek the loudest. As Imisha buttoned up her dress and rose out of bed, wailing daughter at her shoulder, she mentally accepted that there would be no sleep tonight. When the morning came she and Davar would have to fight for their future without sleep.

But that was ok because now she knew exactly what they were fighting for. Not for some abstract dream of revenge or return to former glory. Not for some god, not for hope, not for the Eldar race, not even for their own lives.

They were fighting for three ungrateful little brats who wouldn't even let their parents sleep the night before the end of the world.