Moon of the Sea by pandemonium_213

Chapter 10: Birth in Moonlight

This is a bit longer than the preceding ficlets, but I figure that the birth of an icon deserves a few more words.

The sensation was like nothing she ever had imagined. A large round stone prepared to burst forth from her body. Fear gripped her. Surely this thing would rip her asunder, and her life would flow out of her body.

“I can’t! I can’t!”

“Yes, Isilmë, you can. You will.” Her mother squeezed her right hand hard, no longer gentle. Behind her, her aunt massaged her lower back.

The midwife squatted before her where she sat on the birthing stool and watched the stone between her thighs, rubbing the stretched skin around it with almond oil.

“Breathe deep now, my lady,” said the midwife. “Then push long and strong. Think of the waves.”

She inhaled to her very core, answered her mother’s grasp and pushed again, a wave swelling as it gathers strength in its rush toward the shore.

The awful pressure crested then crashed. She felt a sensation like the sliding of waves across the sand. Then she heard a cry, mewling like a distant gull and then building to an indignant wail.

“You have a son, my lady!”

The midwife placed the infant on her belly. He was slick with the leavings of her womb, the cord still attached to the shadow child. She examined perfect fingers and toes, soft cheeks, the black cap of hair over the misshapen skull, molded by his journey. He was beautiful.

Her mother helped the baby latch on to her nipple. The child suckled tentatively at first and then tugged at her with surprising avidity.

After the shadow child had been expelled and she and her son were cleaned, her mother and aunt guided her to the bed where she lay back against the pillows, baby at her breast. She looked out the window and saw the moon rising in the sky.

She thought back to the night when this child was likely conceived. She and Elendil had made love by the cove they liked to think was their secret. The light from the moon had shone down upon them when their pleasure swelled and crested. The same light now poured through the window and silvered the impossibly soft skin of the fruit from that union.

She looked up and saw her husband standing in the doorway, his beloved face -- his beautiful face – sculpted by the moonlight that filled their bedchamber. He came to the bed and sat beside them.

“Isildur,” she whispered and then met Elendil’s eyes to see tears of joy.

“Yes,” he said, reaching out to caress his son’s cheek. “Isildur.”