Nightfall's Nest: West Wing

Notes: X-posted on 100_roadtrips, for the 'Unexpected Consequence' challenge

Duckling
by Nightfall

The pain that floated, not pushed, him into the world was black. A bad sign, when a mother's body couldn't urge her child naturally from her crimson womb. It meant the end of the mother, more often than not. From the feel of it, the body birthing him was his own. Was he stillborn? Anyway, moving was out of the question.

The midwife's hands didn't pull him out--merely slammed down on either side of his head, and a curtain of crimson channeled him safely into life.

By the time they got around to naming him, he was irrevocably imprinted.

[end}