... was cost for a happy beginning.
I just can't handle it anymore. My mate has left this world... A laboring Tatsu, wolfish in her appearance, was having one of, if not THE hardest birthings the townsfolk have ever seen. It was heartache for anyone who had wandered into the barn. Inside the mother cried in anguish and mortification. Not only was her heart broken and shattered, but she was having a single child. Not two, three, and a far cry from four... just one. That's not right, is it!? This is a very unhappy moment for the female. Widowed and her labor was going ALL wrong.
A human, the Tatsu's kinship, was already mourning before her best friend. She was in her 30's, and had been kinship with this Tatsu since she could remember. The woman seemed to have named the Tatsu Lupe, made obvious by her devastated cries. She wasn't ready to lose her best friend of so many years, the loss would be almost as bad as her friend losing her mate. The human knew just how much her Tatsu cared for that boy. She sat there recalling the past, remembering her friend as a mere egg she carried home happily from the forest. She'd found the abandoned egg during her play through the woods. Then she thought back on the times she proudly toted her rare-breed Tatsu pup around town. Despite the wolf in the Tatsu, people knew the little dear would cause no harm. As a dragonet, her and Lupe would run around the forest together, playing for hours on end, realizing the beauty of the forest together, and she was even teaching Lupe to hunt. By the time the Tatsu was an adult, her looks had already snagged her Life Mate, and that same male Tatsu's kinship was the perfect match for her. Not only did the Tatsu become mates, but shared a lovely home with both of their kinships. They'd hunt together, eat together, relax and have fun. There was possibly no happier family in the Village.
...happy endings don't always last forever, Lupe told herself. Both her and the kinship knew she had reached her Unhappily Ever Afer. But at least she was leaving behind something to be proud of. Oh, how I hope you go to a good human, my dear, sweet little child. My little boy, my little sweety. Lupe was able to smell with her keen wolf senses that the child was a boy, long before her birthing day.
The human had calmed herself with idle thoughts of the past, but when brought back to reality by a crying mother who was finally delivering a healthy looking speckled egg, she started to bawl again. The loyal, loving husband took care of the egg, and set it in a mess of hay, warmed rice bags, and blankets after cleaning it off. The wife leaned down and clung to her friend, crying her heart out. The husband had done the same when he lost his Tatsu, and now it was... unfortunately, his wife's turn. With the egg nearby, the husband rushed to his wife's side and tried to provide comfort and warmth. He knew what the loss of a Tatsu as close as theirs felt like. He felt as though he's lost a son, and he knows very well his wife feels as though she's lost a daughter.
Lupe shed her final tears. All her pain was numbing, mental and physical alike. The world was going black and she felt cold. But then she felt the arms of her friend wrap around her, and smiled. All her senses began to fade... her last thought being... I'll see you in Paradise, My Darling Mate.
