She can feel it in the air, in how it brushes her skin.

Winter is brittle, frost spreading over her arms and back, dusting everyone white and glittery, making them all seem more fragile. Old. It is passing, in the way of all seasons, in the slow and subtle changes; the grass under her feet is growing, the air less thin.

Spring creeps along her limbs in green tendrils, making her cloak grow luscious and thick; she's warm in the evenings, bathing in steam vents and doing the wash, watching the young ones chase each other in circles, their laughter a wild rumpus against the moon and night sky.

Bulda unfurls onto her back and stares up into the stars, letting the moonlight fall gently into her face. It's waxing now, growing a little more each day – she's been tracking it carefully. A full moon means the beginning of a new month, the new season, new magic.

New life. New growing things, like the flowers the sprout up in the cracks between the stones. On the other side of the clearing, she can feel the vibrations of newness rumbling along the ground in tender circles; tiny little ones, barely the size of her closed fist, pale grey and unpitted, the barest fuzz of moss on their backs and eyes wide and large with the world in them.

Babes. She makes a mental note to go tickle their chins later, and rolls back up to her feet.

She's never given birth: ever sheltered another body in her own, or cared for a creature of her own flesh and blood. The sight of pebbles pulls at her a little, even now, just a little; she has memories aplenty...

Cliff running strong hands through coarse hair, gently, while they watch the moon and wait. Her sisters and their brood, always rolling over her toes, the scraping and knocking of stones like music in the early evenings. Crystals given and proud smiles and pats on the head and the shepherding, loving, nurturing little ones – her family gives and gives, but she couldn't give back. (It aches still, a dull and calloused sore that never exactly healed.)

But her boy.

Pink and soft and squishy, mouth full of sass, head full of ice and dreams.

The sweetie.

(In the tradition of all mothers, Bulda often thinks of him as still short and chubby and barely seven years old, not quite worn down by the world yet, all questions and pride and burgeoning independence.)

He's all married up now, grown tall and strong - but still with his baby cheeks, the dear thing - to the redheaded princess. (Red like fire and poppies and the crystal that thrums against her throat – another living thing; the girl glows like a sunset.)

Soon – sooner than he thinks, Bulda is sure, and don't mothers always know – they'll come to her valley and show her another small pink thing, fragile but so full of life.

She lifts her head into the breeze and breathes deep the scent of earth and mulch and spruce, of spring and the awakening.

Yes, she thinks, as her ears fill with the soft taps and giggles of the small ones, the whisper of new life in the mountain; that season is coming soon.