x A MOTHER'S LOVE

The wail of a baby filled the air, and its black-haired mother slumped back into her bed. Sweat beaded her brow, and her blue eyes were dull. She looked weak, and ill.

"Stay with me, Saria," her golden-haired husband pleaded, the agony evident in his voice.

"I'm so sorry," she gasped, writhing as another wave of pain washed over her. She was feverish. "I-is it a girl?"

"Yes." Though she knew he had been wanting a son, the woman had also known that she would give him a daughter- call it a mother's intuition.

The doctor tending the couple had swaddled the newborn in a red blanket embroidered with gold. He carefully placed her in her mother's arms, the infant's cries calming considerably.

"Seilu," she said after a moment. She smiled. "My beautiful little girl."

There were tears in her eyes as she brushed a tuft of white-blonde hair over her daughter's forehead. "I'm sorry, little Seilu, that I cannot be there for you through the heartbreak the future holds for you," she murmured, her voice fading as her strength did. "Know that I'll always love you, and that I'll always be in your heart."

Looking up at her solemn husband, she nodded; he turned his face away, though tears were fresh on his cheeks. "I have failed you," he choked out. While many of his actions over the years had seemed heartless, the head of the house of Sunhollow loved his wife without question. The loss of her would be felt by everyone who knew the stoic warrior.

"No, my beloved. You have given me everything I ever wanted. I-" Saria was interrupted by a fit of coughing. The man's eyes widened when the hand she'd covered her mouth with came away bloody. "I love you."

Those were the dying words of the woman with the voice of a songbird. The doctor carefully extracted a screaming Seilu from her mother's arms, even as her father fell to his knees and sobbed. He shouted and cursed, pleading his wife to come back in broken whispers.

He would find a surrogate for his daughter. He would raise her and love her, but the pain of his first wife's death would stay with him forever and his blonde-haired daughter would always remind him, with her pouty lips, determined gaze and slightly-upturned nose of the beautiful woman he'd loved with all his heart and who had taken his heart with her to the grave.