Nahuel held her first.

He was there for the birth at his father's request, disregarding the fact that it was sometimes still hard to wrap his tongue around the word father. Aunt Huilen had deferred a second request to join them, and he had not pressed her for a reason-- a scratchy, clouded still-shot of his mother played in his mind's eye, a completely imagined recollection. Why should his aunt have to explain that she did not want to see another child take another life?

The birth of his sister was bloody, even more bloody than he and his aunt when they fed. But they did it as painlessly as possible, training themselves to ignore pleas for mercy, hoarse cries of terror. This child had no such reason to fear her mother's helpless screams, to be filled with guilt by them. Nahuel, standing stoic at his father's side, made absolutely sure that he was watching the woman's face as she died-- the light dimming out of her hooded eyes, the limp fall of her wrist, if only so that someone would remember her years later; years later, when her own daughter couldn't.

The sacrificed would live on.

He himself had a vague recollection of arms lifting him at the same moment that he was born, born by his own hand. It was unsettling, because he could also remember, just as vaguely, being pressed into something that smelt of blood and biting into it on instinct, yearning for the taste-- not realizing until so much later that it had been the vein in his aunt's pretty swan neck.

He stood back as his sister ripped her way free of the flesh that had cradled her for one long month. She was crying, loudly, long after her mother's spine had snapped with a dull crack and her eyes gazed at nothing. His father held him back with a glance, a murmur of, "Leave her, leave her. We must be sure she is-- perfect."

Perfect-- not deformed. This was what Nahuel heard, the words his father refused to say.

What would have been his fate, had Joham found his son to be imperfect?

That line of reasoning he quickly forgot, of course, when his sister's cries reached their peak in volume. She shrieked, on and on, writhing in blood, covered with sprays of it, still lying half-within her mother's mottled corpse. Her fists were tiny and curled up like snails beneath their shells; her hair was slick against her forehead, a gash of black against the redness of her skin. Nahuel found himself equally fascinated and repelled. His urge to turn away from this casualty of his father's was torn in two with his desire to lift the child away, to clean her off and make her calm.

His father appeared to have no such wants. He stood stoically by Nahuel's side, lips pursed slightly, observing this newest creation. He had chosen the birth's location well-- here, deep within the Brazilian rainforest, there were no revenge-seeking relatives of the mother, come to kill, to burn what he had sired. There was only the drip of dew onto flowers, birds cawing their songs out loud to the newcomers.

The baby cried again, softer now. Nahuel watched with hands clasped behind his back as she tried, desperately, to pull herself away from the confines of the body that had nurtured her for her short duration in the womb. It was obvious, even when she was soaked with blood, that she was a beautiful child; that she would grow to be a beautiful adult. His sister, still nameless, because this was not something his father had ever discussed and something he was too self-conscious to ask about, cried once more-- more of a whimper than a cry this time. Nahuel saw then that the cord which snaked from her belly had snared around her small foot, resisting the efforts she made to separate child from mother.

He could see his father's test in that unsettling way in which he could sometimes view things with Joham's clinical, detached eye: if the baby girl could not extract herself alone, she would be left here, forgotten.

His father wanted only the strong.

In that way he had of acting without thinking, Nahuel twisted away from his father's cold, stony hand with no thoughts whatsoever, moving so quickly that in an instant he was plucking his sister out of the wreckage of limbs from whence she came. Now he could assume the blame: the baby would live.

Joham snarled at his son, seethed in the vice-grip of his fury, and Nahuel chose to ignore him. He did that much too often, Aunt Huilen said. His sister squirmed in his hands, unskilled at holding anything other than wood and supporting anything but grown men's necks before he snapped them. She was, Nahuel thought, adorable, in a way. Still paying no mind to his father's hisses of reprimand, he used the edge of his wrist to wipe the blood away from her face-- and was rather amused to find that she had shockingly pale skin beneath the redness.

"I do this for a reason, Nahuel! How dare you disobey my wishes!"

She blinked her slitted eyes, arms pumping furiously. Her whole body spanned half the length of his arm.

"What if she had been deformed?! What if? We would not know, for your foolishness!"

The girl's dark eyes widened slowly in the bright light. Nahuel brushed blood out of her hair, not sure exactly what he was feeling now. His baby sister made him feel... jumpy?

"I will be informing Huilen of this, mark my words!"

No, not jumpy. A strange twisting of his chest cavity, near the vicinity of his heart.

His father sighed then, body language clearly reading: defeated. (For now.) He stepped forward, reached for the child-- and Nahuel found that he did not want to let her go.

Protectiveness?

"Give her to me. She musn't choke."

Unsureness?

Cautiously, he transferred the still-wriggling baby into Joham's hands. There was something off about the smile his father gave her. What was it?

"There, my girl," he crooned, and...

Jealousy?

The girl raised her head, from where she had been-- oh, was she actually trying to bite Father? He grinned, despite himself, at his sister. And to his surprise, she smiled back.

His heart-region jumped again.

It was ever too bad that Aunt Huilen had never explained to him about love.

a/n: This could be considered some history on Nahuel and Mary from my other story, You Have Got to be Kidding Me-- even if here, the baby never gets a name ;) Hope you enjoyed my take on Nahuel and one of his sisters. Review?