
Brother, Mine
1. Cederwyn Whitefurr
May, 2010
All Rights Reserved


 Squealing in pain, the young whitetail doe, her belly heavily extended with faun, lashed out with her slender hooves as she felt the painful contractions, and she threw her head back and shrieked again and again, her natural instincts making her push harder and harder, then there was a sickening tearing sound, and embryonic fluids gushed and spattered her hind legs, as her faun slithered free and fell to the ground. Just as she moaned and shuddered, the difficult birth finally over – another contraction squeezed her in its torturous grasp, and she was forced to bear down again, her squeals echoing off the trees that surrounded her, in this shady grove.


 Another faun...her mind screamed silently inside her head – it was her first mating, last fall – and she had never expected twins...she hadn't even expected that Buck to sire any offspring with her, it being her first heat...and she was oh so young, with no experience of fawning, or caring for a faun – let alone twins....


 With her cries reverberating off the woods, she contracted her muscles and pushed with all her strength, and thankfully, the second faun was easily birthed, but the five hours she had spent in such  torturous labour, had near expended all her energies, yet instinct drove her to her hooves, and she rose shakily, before turning and beginning to tear at the placental sacks that threatened to smother her two new offspring. Delicately, she licked and tore at the membranes, clearing them from her offspring's heads and mouths, then tenderly nuzzled each of them, until they choked and coughed, expelling the fluids from their lungs and drawing their first, gurgling breaths. As she watched, her udder aching with the milk she would feed her two fauns, they weakly tried to rise and she nuzzled them lovingly, instincts claiming her, and she knew – somehow – that she would make these two fauns survive, even when many of the herds fauns hadn't survived to be born, or worse, were too weak and died soon after.


 Encouraging her offspring, she watched them with her dark, soulful eyes and carefully bit away the placental cords, then nudged them again – sniffing at these tiny, slime-covered fauns, and her ears flicked forwards, as she realised she'd fawned two Bucks...which was uncommon, but for her first fawning, a doe would usually bear a doe, and even then, that would be unusual, being so young, and barely sexually mature. As she shivered and felt the afterbirth slithering from her body, she knew instinctively, she should eat it, but just couldn't bear the thought of it – instead, turning her attention to her newborns, and desperately trying to encourage them to stand on their stick-like legs.


 At first one, then the other attempted to rise...wobbled, then fell heavily, as the Doe lay herself down and watched, then nuzzled at them again and again, her soft bleating making them try again and again, until, finally, nearly half an hour later – longer than her ancestral instincts told her it should have taken – they stood, but their footing was still very very weak, and she rose, then positioned herself next to them, spreading her hind legs and slightly dropping her hips, as the hungry fawns nuzzles at her chest and forelegs, until she carefully nosed them down her belly – and then sighed in relief as one found her heavily swollen teats – then the other and began suckling, their tails still wet and sticky, but flagging vigorously from side to side.

