Her hair swirled in the wild, stormy wind. She looked out to sea, squinting against the rain, waiting for the next flash of lightning to brighten the horizon enough for her to see the ship being tossed from swell to swell.
Her hands dropped to her middle, clasping there in worry. A blinding streak of light split the sky with a clap of thunder so loud it seemed to shake her very bones. She almost dropped to her knees with fear until the craft appeared at the top of a wave.
She gasped, half in relief, half in horror as it slid down the crest and into the trough beyond her view. How could anything endure such tumultuous water? The power of the ocean humbled her as it never had before, but she stared outward still.
She must have imagined hearing the mighty CRACK that broke into her mind. The squall blocked out all other sounds from her ears. The roar of the wind alone was enough, but with the thunder and the waves and the rain, there was nothing else in the world to be heard.
Still, the imagined sound pierced her heart as she watched the mast of the ship give way and in slow motion break from the ship, falling into the sea. Darkness clouded her vision, crowding out all other sights, until even that was gone. There was only void, and a sudden, desperate, terrifying silence.
Trapped in the Darkness, she tried to scream, but there was nothing.
Nothing but terrifying, consuming silence and Darkness.
Finn blinked hard and opened her eyes, but the darkness remained. Slowly, her vision adjusted and she saw the familiar outlines of the furniture in her bedroom. It must be very late at night or early in the morning to be this dark.
She shuddered and tried to shake the dream from her consciousness, but it clung to her. It seemed familiar, as if she had dreamt it before, or seen it somewhere, but her sleepy mind couldn't pinpoint it.
She laid a hand across her belly to feel the movement there. It was comforting, and uncomfortable at the same time. Her midsection tensed and roiled, and she almost lost the contents of her stomach.
Fortunately, dinner had been long ago and her stomach did not have enough contents to be worth expelling. With enormous effort, she rolled herself over to her other side, facing her husband. Her stomach tightened again and she poked at the baby.
"Stop it, little one. Mommy needs some more sleep," She whispered to her child with some strain in her voice. Her heartbeat was still a bit wild from the nightmare, and the pressure wasn't helping her calm down. She hoped it would stop soon; the baby had been doing that since before supper this evening.
She closed her eyes and tried to match her breathing to Roland's soft, steady snores. It was a soothing exercise she used often when she was awake and he was not... which was often since she'd been with child.
Insomnia was perhaps her least favorite part of pregnancy. Hours lying awake with nothing to do. Night was the worst. It reminded her of the brief time she'd spent in the Darkness, except that she could hear Roland's breathing right now.
She tried to distract her thoughts as she lay still. Anything but the dream. As she sometimes did when she was awake in the night, she retrieved the mental box of puzzle pieces Gwen had once left her.
Turning them over one by one in her mind, she considered. What was under the mountain that Titania had wanted? The excavation of the collapsed tunnels had been ongoing since the war, and was almost complete. Although she had absolutely no desire to be down in them again, she did wonder what was of interest down there.
The end of the world was something else she idly wondered about. Gwen had hinted that she didn't know when it was. Did that mean it could be soon? That wasn't a relaxing thought.
She took a deep breath and shifted against the discomfort in her belly.
Her thoughts turned to Titania. It had been two years since the void-creature was banished from their world. They had made every effort possible to prevent her, or it, gaining a new foothold of following, but she knew from Roland how extremely patient the Void was. Apparently it had lurked in the Darkness for many generations with the Rhone before making its move.
That was somewhat comforting, but she also didn't want her children or grandchildren to have to fight the beast. She would rather be assured that it was gone forever.
Another, stronger flash of tightness in her middle made her wince. Maybe she needed to get up and stretch to help her baby calm down.
"Did Mommy's nightmare upset you, too?" She whispered. It was a wondrous thing, carrying a child inside her body. She rolled slowly and arduously back to the other side of the bed and flailed herself into a sitting, then standing position. Her very-swollen ankles protested the change.
A sudden and humiliating rush of fluid ran down her legs and hit the floor. She groaned. She'd had to go relieve herself more often during pregnancy, but this--Her thoughts froze as the tightness, now pain, gripped her more strongly.
"Oh!" She ground out between her teeth, doubling over and clutching her middle. "R--oooooooh" Her voice faltered on the pain as she tried to wake her husband. She settled for grabbing a pillow and throwing it at his face as the tightness slowly eased.
"Huh? What?" Roland pushed the pillow away sleepily. "What's going on?" He reached out to find his wife's side of the bed unoccupied, and his brow furrowed. He scooted across, feeling as he went until his eyes adjusted.
"Serafina? Are you all right?" He swung his feet to the floor as he reached the edge of the bed, and frowned when they met a puddle. "What's--"
A groan cut him off, and he shot to a standing position. "Serafina!"
He put one hand on her back and one on her stomach, counting silently until the rock-hard feeling on her abdomen softened.
"It hurts." She whimpered.
"Don't worry, it means we get to meet our child today," He smiled into her face despite his worry. Quickly, he got her a dry nightdress to change into while he went to wake a neighbor to go for the midwife.
While Roland had some experience with births through his work with Dr. Sherman, he didn't trust himself to be completely impartial watching his own wife birth their child. When Roland came back into the room with rags to clean up the mess on the floor and his medical bag, he found his wife shivering violently from head to toe.
"It's... I can't do this," She stuttered. "I can't. My mother died having Gabe. I'm so scared, Roland!" The shaking intensified, and Roland helped her lay down. "What's wrong with me? I'm so scared." Tears streaked down her face.
Fear--real, unavoidable, crippling fear--gripped Finn's heart as another contraction hit.
"I can't do this!" She cried with a groan.
"You can do this." Roland took her hands and held them still. The sheer panic in Finn's eyes startled him. Even in the midst of a battle, he'd never seen this raw emotion from her. "I am here, and the midwife will be here soon."
"I can't!" She protested.
"Well, you don't really have a choice, my love," Roland smiled gently at her. "The only way to the other side of this is through it. But we're together. I'm here."
She gripped his hand as well as she could through the trembling that rattled her all over. Roland urged her to breathe and brushed the hair from her forehead.
A knock preceded the sound of the front door opening and a call of "Midwife here!"
"In the bedroom!" Roland called in response.
An older woman who reminded Roland a lot of his adoptive mother bustled into the room with a bag.
"My, my. Sir, if you would mop the floor a little while I attend your wife? I wouldn't want anyone to slip." She said, prompting Roland to obey immediately. The woman turned a smile on Finn. "There, there, darling. Oh! Shaking already? Marvelous."
Finn's eyebrows drew together in confusion. How could this be marvelous? She didn't have long to ponder the question before she was racked with pain. The midwife washed her hands and performed a cursory examination of her patient.
"Just as I thought," She midwife beamed. "You're very close to being done here. I bet we can have your little one in your arms before the sun arrives."
Her confidence calmed Finn a little bit. The night her mother died, she remembered Amelia's concerned expression as vividly as if it were burned into her mind. It was the reason she hadn't asked her kind friend to attend to her for this birth.
The memory and fear flooded over her again and she cried out. Her heartbeat felt wrong, too loud, painful. Her head ached.
"Help. Help me." She tried to scream but it sounded dull to her ears. "Help."
"Breathe easy now, in and out. Sir, if you could hold your wife's hand and keep your eyes on her face, please."
Roland made a sour expression. "I apprenticed to a a doctor for many years. I have seen births."
"Not your wife's. Not your child's. Eyes over there." The older woman insisted sternly.
He had no time to argue with her as Finn's pained scream and tight grip on his hand forced him to turn away from the sight of blood.