> Birth > by MegatronsPen > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Happy Birthday > -------------------------------------------------------------------------- “What the…?!” Rarity awoke, startled beyond rational thought. With eyes wide, she glanced about her room as a cold sweat soaked her bedding and her coat, while her hooves flailed rather too dramatically in its simmering flail. As each pant passed her trembling lips, her tear stained face glanced left, then right, then finally ahead towards Opal’s basket on the opposite end of the bed room. “W-What? Ouch…” Lifting a hoof up, she felt herself wince as it came into contact with her throat, her voice hoarse, and grating as each and every word grated inside, “w-what happened?” Opal made little movement, for she was soundlessly asleep. Rarity could make out the gentle rise and fall of the cat’s chest, and noticed only barely as she spoke, the breathing charred. Opal noticed her mistress was awake, and that enough was to allow Rarity to relax back into the bed. Her hooves drew her bedding back over herself, as she settled back into the comfortable brace of her lair; each and every wiggle of her flank against the mattress a welcome sensation against her flesh. “Ahhhhhhh, such luxury…” Rarity licked her dry lips, and then suddenly leant up. “Actually, I could use some tea right about now. Perhaps some herbal tea. That blend Fluttershy gave me could be very useful right about now. I feel rather stiff—oh my…” Rarity rolled her shoulders as she slipped out of bed, wincing as she got upon all four hooves. Something felt... Off… Something felt… Strange. WELL, I suppose I have put on some weight recently, with what all the cakes I have been receiving from Pinkie Pie. She took a step, and winced, “Well, maybe too much. But I shall exercise away the extra weight. It was only a few ca-” Rarity was cut short by a fit of violent of coughs. She fell to her knees and spluttered to the point where she could hardly breathe, or hardly keep her head up. “What? Oh…” She lifted a hoof to her mouth and continued to cough until she ceased, “well, that was quite…” Rarity drew her sparkling eyes down to her hooves and noticed the bleached white fur, had become matted in red dots. It was blood. “W-what?” She widened her eyes, her panicked word causing Opal to twitch and writhe in her basket, “I-is that… Blood?” Rarity drew her hooves close to her face and inspected the offending, unfashionable color upon her fur, “It can’t be. I… I…” She licked her dry lips and glanced in direction towards the bedroom’s exit, “What’s going on? I feel fine. I just feel so thirsty… So hungry…” Heading out of her room, she trotted casually down the hallway towards the winding stairs that would take to the ground floor. Once there, she again licked her lips; wincing, as she felt the rough chapped surface of her lips which currently frowned given her current state. “I don’t understand what could had caused such a reaction...” She coughed again and shook her head as she lent against the door frame to the kitchen with one forehoof, while the other pressed gently to her throat, “perhaps I am coming down with a bit of a fever. A cold perhaps?” But why was her stomach raging? It felt squirmy. “By Celestia’s sunny frock I am so hungry right now I could eat a cart load of apples...” Rarity paused, then chuckled, “Well, maybe only Big Mac. He is very attractive after all. With such a fantastic singing voice and—I’m totally talking to myself and distracting from the original objective. I'm famished.” Rarity shook her head, giggling, “I mean, he is clearly the best choice. But a mare can dream, can they—ouch,” she winced, “why does my throat hurt so much?” She paused before a cupboard as her hoof paused midway to the handle, “come to think of it, perhaps I did strain myself a bit too much in the last practice with the Tones. That'd explain my hoarse vocals... Oh dear. Maybe I best skip the next practice.” Opening up the cupboard, a sudden flare of hunger overcame Rarity as she simply withdrew a bag of apples, and proceeded to consume them rather inelegantly which was quite unfitting for someone of her social caliber. Once she had completed her consumption, Rarity wiped her lips with a foreleg and merely sighed away her hunger. “Ahhhh, that was good. But I could use more. I wonder…” She glanced below her forelegs, and down along her own length, and noticed that her stomach was looking a little… Bigger, than normal. “Oh dear, I am getting fat with all of these midnight snacks. It is almost as if I… am… Preg…nant…” Rarity’s perpetual smile faded. With a loud rather disbelieving chuckle, she shook her head. “Don’t be silly, Rarity! You haven’t had sex in a long, long time! I mean who would want to make love to someone like me? A shut away mare who is more interested in the type of fabric you wear about your neck than—” She felt something kick. “O-ow…” It kicked harder. “N… No, this can’t be correct.” She felt a pressure shift within her stomach and it caused Rarity to panic, “No! I don’t understand… This can’t be—” Rarity wept as the pain only continued to increase in its contracting fervor until she fell upon her side, screaming in agony, kicking out her hooves as she called out one name. “Sweetie—AH! Belle!” There was no reply. The pain only continued to rise in its relentlessness as Rarity moved back towards the stairs, using every ounce of her energy to keep herself upright and walking within a straight line. “Sweetie! Sweetie! Your big sister needs your—AHHH! Why does I-it hurt so m-much?!” Floored by the pain once again at the top of the stairs, Rarity scrambled her hooves to prevent her from sliding back down them. "I-I can't be pregnant! I can't—AHHHHHH!" With a whimper of tears, Rarity forced herself to her hooves and made her way to the horizon that graced the landing and steadied herself at the top of the stairs with a hoof to the wall. “I… I-” The next shift in her stomach was violent, and glaringly evident. It caused her to cough and splatter large speckles of blood out from her lips into a gory mess before her. “I don’t… I don’t underst—Sweetie!” Rarity wept as she erupted into Sweetie Belle’s room, half delirious and half within the reality to which she so desperately clawed at to remain in, sweat covering her from hoof to horn, “Sweetie! I-” Silence fell as she noticed something attached to her young sister’s face. At the mere simplest of sound upon Rarity's entrance, the creature coiled its tail tighter about her sister’s neck, and wiggled its long, spindly digits about the filly’s face, as Sweetie's bulging neck pulsed oddly in a strange, rhythmic motion… As if something large was being forced down her neck. “SWEETIE BELLE!” Rarity screamed and stumbled back out of the room as her own pain only served to pierce her body. It flawed her, and she fell into a clump before her sister’s bedroom as with a single thump, she felt something push outwards from inside of her, shattering her rib cage and causing her to vomit blood. Then a second time, as she felt whatever it was inside of flower out from the center of her chest. And as it was born, it was staring its eyeless face right back at her. It wore a long crown, as if it were attached to its head, and it was black, and oddly shaped. “W-w-w-what?” Was it her baby? Is this what giving birth felt like? Was it like dying? Was it this magical? It was leathery and serpentine, and it was wiggling from the gaping hole in her body. But it had something on its head. A small, tiny spike, that could had denoted its origin to that of the Unicorn race. "My... Baby..." The agonized mare simply stared at the creature in disbelief, as it curled out of her body and drew its lip-less silver teeth towards her, and opened its mouth for a shrill, ear piercing screech; its long odd tongue-like appendage snaking out as it snapped a secondary pair of jaws at its tip into the air. Rarity died as her oddly birthed baby plunged its secondary mouth into her forehead.