The alarm on Lynn’s phone pierced through her ears like she was being stabbed. At that moment, it was the most horrible sound in the entire world and she’d give anything for it to stop. She opened her eyes to a still-dark bedroom and groaned in the back of her throat. She’d gone to sleep early, she’d taken a sleeping pill and a warm bath, she had a full eight hours, but she wanted nothing more than to stay in bed for the rest of her life, becoming one with the sheets.

Just before she was about to drift off again, the mattress bounced her away as Cheyanne hopped off of it from the other side of the bed. She stretched, groaning in the back of her throat as her paws thudded against the floor. Lynn kept her eyes clenched shut for as long as possible, listening in dread to the creaking of floorboards as Chey walked around the bed.

“Lynn?” Cheyanne whispered, crouching down on level with the mattress. “Lynn? You up?”
“…Yes,” Lynn grunted, her face half-buried in the pillow. She could barely see Cheyanne’s face in the darkness. Chey sighed and smiled sympathetically before kissing Lynn on the head.
“I know, darlin’,” Cheyanne said. “It ain’t fun when you ain’t used to it. But you’re helpin’ me out so much, Lynn. I really appreciate it.”
“No problem…” Lynn sighed, turning her face out of the pillow to kiss Chey. “I’ll be okay after a shower.”
“No shower,” Cheyanne shook her head. “Waste of water. You’re just gonna get dirty again, anyway.”
Lynn groaned and pouted in the dark.
“You’ll live,” Cheyanne said. With a grunt, she stood up, wobbling in place as she tried to maintain her balance. The room was too dark for Lynn to see anything other than her vague shape. “I’ll get us breakfast started.”
“That’s okay,” Lynn said, sighing. “I’m not hungry.”
“Nnnnno, you’ll need breakfast,” Cheyanne said before flipping on the hall light and exiting the bedroom.

Lynn forced herself to sit up, staring at her phone and groaning at the sight of 4:30 AM on the screen. It took a long time and a lot of self-control to force herself out of bed and onto the floor. She got dressed in a pair of jeans and an old shirt she didn’t mind getting dirty or torn. She stumbled into the bathroom, took her time brushing her teeth, then turned on the warm water of the shower and literally dunked her head under it long enough to get wet and wake herself up slightly.

By the time she was finished, Lynn was starting to feel early-morning hunger gnaw at her stomach. It only grew as she as she exited the bedroom and caught the scent of breakfast Cheyanne was making. She panted, her tongue hanging out of her mouth as she nearly floated down the stairs toward the delicious smell. The kitchen itself was empty, but still warm with freshly-used pots and pans cooling in the sink. A stack of steaming pancakes and a bowl of eggs sat on the table and Lynn scrambled eagerly into her seat to wolf it down. She could usually only manage two of Cheyanne’s thickly-made pancakes, but she wasn’t satisfied until she’d cleaned her plate of them and downed half of the newly-bought bottle of orange juice. Lynn burped, her head lolling happily on her shoulders.

“Chey?” Lynn called out, realizing she hadn’t seen her wife yet. Without an answer, Lynn climbed down from her chair and padded bare-pawed into the living room. A cool gust of air made her shiver and she noticed the front door was left open, aside from the screen door.
“Cheyanne?” Lynn shouted as she walked out on the porch, her voice echoing far across the fields around their farmhouse. In the silence that followed, she was reminded how strange it felt to be so alone in their home, so far away from cities and people. It was liberating and freeing, but also uniquely isolating, like living on a ship in the middle of the ocean, and made the already-small Lynn feel even smaller in the grand scheme of things.

“Round here!” called Cheyanne’s voice from somewhere behind the house, the sound of it breaking Lynn from her train of thought. Her tail wagging involuntarily, Lynn hopped down the front steps and shivered slightly as her paws touched the cold grass, still wet with dew. She was from Illinois, and while Georgia was never truly cold to her, the early-mornings around that time of year could get nippy.
On the side of the house, Cheyanne rounded the corner with two buckets in one hand and a half-empty sack of chicken feed in the other, her hair tied back in a tight ponytail. Lynn stopped at the sight of her wife, her mouth falling open slightly. Chey was wearing nothing but a pair of very short, cutoff denim pants that hugged her upper thighs and a checkered, button-up shirt tied into a knot between her breasts. Her belly, bare and uncovered, rounded out in front of her and bounced slightly with each step, making her hips bob from side-to-side very slightly. Cheyanne set down the buckets and feed in front of Lynn and sighed, catching her breath and planting her hands on her hips.

“You ready, darlin’?” Cheyanne asked. Lynn hesitated, too mesmerized by her body to think straight. Cheyanne cocked her head to the side and pulled her shirt tighter around her shoulders, which only served to hug her breasts more tightly. “…What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Uhh...Huuhhh…” Lynn pursed her lips and swallowed, then shook her head casually as her wagging tail simultaneously gave her away. “N-Nothing, you just…Uh…you look good.” Cheyanne shrugged nonchalantly.
“Damn near none of my clothes fit anymore,” Chey explained, patting the swell of her belly. “Rather wear somethin’ I can move in. ‘Sides, ain’t nobody out here to see.”

“Aren’t you cold?” Lynn asked, curiously. Cheyanne laughed and looked down at her belly.
“Thanks to this little fella, I ain’t been cold in ‘bout three months,” Chey grinned. Her pregnant belly had begun to grow steadily outwards in recent weeks, making it distinctly more round and circular than the egg-like, oval shape it previously had. As Lynn predicted, Cheyanne’s bellybutton had begun to protrude into an ‘outie’ that was mostly visible when she turned to the side.

“C’mon now, we’re burnin’ daylight,” Cheyanne said, nudging the buckets over toward Lynn and picking up the lighter feed bag before walking toward the stables. Lynn grasped the buckets and held them high enough that they wouldn’t bump against her thighs and hurried after Cheyanne, who still had an impressively fast stride despite her advancing pregnancy.
After putting the bag down, Cheyanne fiddled with the gate and opened it just wide enough for her and her belly to slip inside, then held it open for Lynn to scurry in after her. The barn smelled strong and earthy and was still something Lynn was getting used to. Contrary to her instincts, she took a few long, deep breaths of the air until she was used to the scent. Cheyanne didn’t seem to even register it anymore.

“Now, this gate,” Cheyanne stopped to explain, tapping the metal door with her finger, “is the only thing keepin’ the cows from wanderin’ out into the yard.” She pointed to the other end of the barn, which was open to the fields behind the house. “That’s all fenced in back there, so they can go out and graze whenever they want, then come back here to get fed and milked. That field’s connected to the one with the sheep, too, but there’s a gate to separate ‘em if we need to.”
“Why do the cows come back here, then?” Lynn asked, counting all four of their black-and-white dairy cows standing patiently in their stalls.

“For starters, repetition,” Cheyanne explained. “They’re feral, but they ain’t stupid, so they know when I come in every mornin’ to milk ‘em. And trust me, they wanna get milked. Leave ‘em too long and they get backed up and it starts to hurt ‘em.” Chey paused and made a grimace as she adjusted her own sore breasts beneath her shirt. “I think I’m startin’ to sympathize…”
“So the first thing to do is milk the cows?” Lynn asked, gesturing with the buckets in her hands.

“Yep,” Cheyanne nodded as she crossed over to a short, wooden stool sitting against the wall. She tried to bend over to pick it up, but found her belly had finally gotten too big to let her reach. Chey sighed in irritation, then braced a hand against a wall to keep her balance as she squatted straight down and picked it up in her other hand. “So uhh...anyway…” Cheyanne cleared her throat. “If ya don’t milk the cows, they start to get all irritable and could die from an infection, so this is the most important thing to do. They’re already pretty backed up from last night.”
The two of them carried the stool and buckets to the nearest cow, standing face-forward in the stall and munching food from a trough at the other end. Cheyanne set the stool down and patted the cow on its side, then pointed toward its head.
“She’s got a harness on to clip her to the stall so she won’t move too much,” Cheyanne explained. “Go hook her up back there. I don’t think I can fit anymore.”

Lynn dropped the buckets and dutifully hopped over the stool and slid past the cow, her paws sinking into the hay beneath her. She grunted as she squeezed past the cow’s shoulder, then stood next to its head while looking for the clip Chey had mentioned. As she did, the cow looked up from its trough and gazed at Lynn curiously. Just as Lynn saw the clip hanging from a chain on the back of the stall, the cow lazily bumped its head into her chest, blinking at her and shuffling its hooves.
“Oof,” Lynn winced, nearly knocked off balance by the cow’s nose pushing into her chest. “Uhh...Hey there.” She patted the cow’s neck, then sidled past as best she could to reach the clip and hooked its harness to the wall.
“Got it,” Lynn grunted as she emerged from behind the stall.

“Good,” Cheyanne nodded as she set the stool down next to the cow’s back legs. “They don’t move all that much, but it keeps ‘em in place all the same.” She stepped over the stool, with her legs on either side, then grunted as she sat on it, holding her belly in her hands for balance. Once she was on it, her her stomach hung slightly lower than her knees and seemed very, very uncomfortable. She reached behind her for one of the buckets until Lynn quickly picked it up and handed it to her.
“Thanks,” she said before setting the pail beneath the cow’s udders. “Now, this ain’t all that hard, but you gotta do it a certain way or else you’ll hurt the poor girl.” Cheyanne patted the side of the cow affectionately before stretching out her fingers and reaching out to gently grasp one of the nipples. Lynn sank to her haunches and watched as Cheyanne gently squeezed warm, off-white milk into the bottom of the pail. “See, it ain’t white like the milk in the store, yet.” Cheyanne explained. “That’s ‘cause it hadn’t been…” She frowned and tapped her thigh. “Dammit, what’s the word…”

“Pasteurized?” Lynn finished.
“That’s right!” Cheyanne said, snapping her fingers. She reached up and scratched behind Lynn’s ears affectionately. “There’s that college education, huh?” She continued to milk the cow absentmindedly, patting it gently with her free hand to keep it calm. “I was sayin’ that it’s still safe to drink it right outta the cow, but it’s still probably better to wait until it gets processed and-” The cow suddenly shifted unexpectedly, throwing off Cheyanne’s aim into the bucket and causing the spray of milk to douse her belly.

“Aw damn it!” Chey shouted as white milk dripped down the black fur of her stomach. “Shit…this happened the other day, too.”
“Let me do it!” Lynn said, stepping in to help Cheyanne stand. “I think I’ve got the gist of it.”
“Well…if you think so,” Cheyanne said hesitantly as she stood. She took a rag from her back pocket and wiped the milk from her belly, drying it off as best she could. “Guess I’m finally big enough to get in the way, now.”
“And that’s why I’m here!” Lynn said enthusiastically as she dropped down onto the stool. She leaned forward to grasp the udder, but found the stool was too far back and she couldn’t reach without her face pressed into the cow’s flank.
“Well okay now, but lemme watch,” Cheyanne said. She stood back and continued to towel off her belly while Lynn gingerly tugged on one of the cow’s nipples. A tiny dribble of milk dropped into the bucket and the cow stomped one of its hooves impatiently. “You’re pinchin’ too hard. You gotta squeeze and pull at th’same time, but not too hard.”

Eventually, after many tries and more coaching from Cheyanne, Lynn managed to spray a few ounces of milk from the udder into the bucket. She wagged her tail excitedly and repeated the motion enough times that the bucket between her knees was beginning to fill steadily. Cheyanne advised her from behind, but found Lynn was a fast enough learner that she didn’t need much guidance.
“Am I done?” Lynn asked a few minutes later, after the last tugs had only produced a few dribbles of milk.
“I think so,” Cheyanne nodded, smirking proudly. “You did good!”
“There’s barely anything in here, though…” Lynn remarked as she frowned at the milk in the bucket.
“Well, no. But you do that every morning with three more cows and eventually you’ll end up with more milk than you know what to do with.”
“I think this is good practice,” Lynn said while smirking up at Chey. “For when you start getting a little pent up.”
“Let’s uhh…” Cheyanne swallowed and held out her hands. “Let’s hold off on that kinda talk ‘til we’re back inside, huh?”

“Sure, sure…” Lynn said, glancing at Cheyanne’s breasts beneath her shirt, which had finally started to grow with milk for the pup.
“Hand me the stool and the bucket,” Chey said, pointing at them. “And don’t forget to unhook the cows when you’re done. I did that a few times and lemme tell ya, they ain’t too happy bein’ stuck in here all day long.”
“I had a college professor that was a cow,” Lynn remarked as she emerged from stall after unhooking the clip. “I always wondered if she had to milk herself sometimes.”
“Yeah…uh…” Cheyanne stopped and glanced down at Lynn. “Darlin’…uhh…don’t go comparin’ anthros and ferals ‘round here. People take offense to that in this part’a the country.”
“Oh…” Lynn said, embarrassed. “I uhh…I didn’t mean anything about-”
“I know, I know,” Cheyanne said. “You don’t mean no harm but…people find it real disrespectful, y’know?”
“O-Okay…” Lynn said. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, darlin.’ You didn’t know.” Cheyanne smiled and pulled Lynn into a hug and kissed the top of your head. “Let’s finish up with the rest’a these girls ‘fore they get antsy, huh?”

Cheyanne watched Lynn milk the other three cows by herself, wagging her tail happily. As they worked, the first two cows, fed and freshly milked, wandered back out into the field and grazed a few feet away from the door, glancing back every once in a while as if waiting on their companions. By the time they’d finished, Lynn’s fingers were sore from working them in ways she wasn’t used to.
“You sure this is enough?” Lynn asked, holding up the bucket that was barely above halfway full of milk.
“Lynn, that’s damn plenty,” Cheyanne nodded. “You get a bucket of that much every mornin’, you’ll be begging to sell it off just to make some room.” The two of them left the gate at the edge of the barn before Cheyanne pointed Lynn back toward the house. “There’s glass jars and a freezer in the garage. Go pour this in a fresh jar, then put it in the fridge. Don’t ever leave it out, even for a few minutes, or else the whole thing could go bad.”

After Lynn followed the instructions dutifully, she returned and followed Cheyanne to the chicken coop with the extra bucket in hand, where the pregnant dog explained which chickens to look for, how to tell which ones were about to lay, and the best way to collect the eggs in the bucket without breaking them. Lynn found her size to be an advantage as she was able to comfortably enter the small coop by just ducking her head slightly and carefully collected the small, brittle eggs. Cheyanne, by contrast, was simply too pregnant to even bend over far enough, so she stayed outside and waited for Lynn to finish.
“Hmmm…” Cheyanne hummed to herself as she checked the eggs. She picked up one that was slightly discolored from the others, then passed it back to Lynn. “Go put this one back.”
“Why?” Lynn asked, cocking her head at the egg in her hand.
“I must’ve forgotten that one the other day,” Cheyanne said. “That ain’t an egg anymore, that’s a baby chick. Try to get all of ‘em, if you can, cause the ones you forget just hatch into extra chickens. It ain’t th’end of the world if that happens, but too many chicks and the coop gets overcrowded pretty quick.”

After feeding the chickens, Cheyanne walked Lynn through maintaining the garden, checking the water pressure of the house, measuring the well water, cleaning the solar panels on the roof, and a dozen other daily tasks Lynn had no idea even needed to be done.
“What about the sheep?” Lynn asked, pointing to the gate on the far end of the property.
“That’s usually the last thing to do,” Cheyanne explained. “They get enough grass to tide ‘em over, but the feed gives ‘em all the extra nutrients. They don’t wake up ‘til the sun rises, so it ain’t all that important.”
“When do they need to be sheared?”
“Few months into the start of Spring. Once the weather starts gettin’ warm again,” Cheyanne explained. She paused, then wrapped both hands around her belly and added, “Probably ‘round the time the baby’s due, I imagine.”
“Sorry sheepies,” Lynn smiled as she touched the side of Cheyanne’s taut belly. “We’ll be kinda busy around that time.”
“The feed bag’s down there in the box,” Cheyanne said, pointing to the overhang on the edge of the field. “You’ve done this before, right? Can you handle it yourself?”

“As long as they don’t knock me over again,” Lynn sighed. She pointed to the garage and asked, “What about the truck? Don’t you usually work on the truck in the mornings, too?” Cheyanne simply smiled and pulled Lynn into a one-arm hug.
“Lynn, I love you to death,” Chey said, “but I’m the only one that touches the inside of my truck.”
“Fine, fine, fine…” Lynn said, rolling her eyes. She poked a finger into Chey’s belly and said, “But you’d better not let that baby take more of your time than this one.”
“I won’t,” Cheyanne said reassuringly. She bent to give Lynn a quick kiss, then called after her, “Just holler if you need me! I’ll be ‘round here!” Lynn waved over her shoulder to show she’d heard.

While Lynn dealt with the sheep at the bottom of the hill, Cheyanne opened the garage to work on her truck. She took good care of it to make sure it still ran like it did when it was new, but there was still cleaning to be done and parts that needed replacing. However, a few minutes after popping open the hood and peering into the engine, Cheyanne was suddenly hit with a wave of fatigue. Even thought it’d been Lynn doing all the work that morning, walking her through the daily chores had still completely worn Cheyanne out. Leaving the hood of the truck up for later, she closed the garage door and shuffled back to the front porch, exhausted.
Chey collapsed into a rocking chair and took deep, calming breaths while stroking her round belly. As the pup grew, it took more and more energy for Cheyanne just to stay awake. She already ate double the amount she was used to before the pregnancy and even that was barely enough to get her up and moving. Cheyanne had lived on farms for most of her life and was a hard, sturdy worker, but the strain of carrying a baby was its own type of hard work that she wasn’t as used to.

“You’re really startin’ to wear me out, little fella,” Chey said out loud as she stroked her pregnant middle, feeling the sleepy pokes of the pup in her womb, not quite awake yet. He seemed to sleep the most when she was up and active, which was a good enough excuse to keep herself busy. But even her near-bottomless reserves of energy were running low as the pup grew bigger and bigger inside her. She was fortunate to have Lynn around, so eager to help around the farm, but the thought of leaving the upkeep to somebody else made Cheyanne nervous.
Far across the field, behind the barn, she caught sight of the puffy white herd of sheep all moving together down the hill, like a cloud with legs. Her ears twitched as she heard the sound of their hungry bleating carry through the morning air and she hoped they wouldn’t knock Lynn off her paws. Cheyanne leaned back in the rocking chair and kicked her legs up to rest her bare paws on the porch railing, rubbing her belly soothingly. The farm could handle a couple months of her taking it easy, and she wasn’t giving Lynn enough credit. Besides, if worse came to worst, she could always step in and help, even up to her due date.

“Hooh!” Cheyanne coughed as a hard kick from the pup smacked into her hand and made her belly bounce in her lap. “Damn, little fella, that was a big one.” She chuckled deep in her throat and pressed a finger against her middle, poking back at the paw that was currently pressed against the wall of her uterus.

“I figure I can’t keep callin’ ya ‘little fella’ forever, huh?” Cheyanne said out loud to the baby in her tummy. She drummed her fingers against her swollen middle and chewed on her lip as she gazed out over the field. “Mmmmmmmmartin.” She said. “Mmmmmmaaaaaa-Andrew….William?”
Another kick jostled her stomach and she patted it with a giggle.
“Okay then, we got William as a ‘maybe.’ How ‘bout…George?” Cheyanne made a grimace and shook her head. “Damn, I ain’t any good at this. Lynn can come up with somthin’ better than I could. ‘Sides, we got time.” She slid her hand down the side of her stomach, feeling the rounded shape it was beginning to take. “Well…maybe not too much time…”

“Cheyanne!” Lynn’s voice called over the yard. Chey sat up on the porch, her ears standing high on her head as she listened. “Chey!” Lynn shouted again, more frantically.
“Aw shit,” Cheyanne swore as she pulled herself out of the rocking chair and hobbled down the front steps. “That doesn’t sound too good…”
Cheyanne walked as quickly as she could, trying not to run at risk of slipping and falling on the slick grass. As she approached the gate, she saw the sheep pushing past one another and eating their food as normal, as well as Lynn standing on the first rung of the gate with mud on her knees. Her eyes were wide as she glanced behind her every so often at something Cheyanne couldn’t yet see. Chey waved at her, wishing she could ‘take off’ her pregnancy just for a moment to pick up the pace.

“Whew...damn…” Cheyanne panted once she reached the gate, already winded. “What’s wrong?”
“Th-There’s something wrong with one of the sheep,” Lynn stammered, pointing back at the herd. “I-I-I don’t know if it’s sick or-or-or it’s dying and I don’t…It’s making these sounds and won’t get up.”
“Hey, hey, hey, calm down, darlin’,” Cheyanne cooed, stroking a hand behind Lynn’s head to calm her. “It’s alright, it’ll be okay. Do you remember which sheep it was?”
“I-I don’t know, they all look the same…” Lynn swallowed before pointing to the other side of the shed, out of sight. “B-But it’s laying down over there and hasn’t gotten up.”
“I’ll take a look at ‘em,” Cheyanne said, stepping back. Lynn unlocked the gate and opened it wide enough for Chey to slip through before closing it again. “They’re all tagged. Do you remember the number?”
“No, but it was purple,” Lynn said, following after Cheyanne while wringing her hands together. “Sorry…”
“You ain’t done nothin’ wrong, darlin’,” Cheyanne said reassuringly as she nudged past the sheep in her path with her leg. “Let’s see what we can do.”

Chey rounded the corner with Lynn to find a female sheep lying flat on her side, breathing heavily and gazing into the distance. Her back was against the wooden shed and she bleated weakly every few seconds. Cheyanne instantly recognized the swollen, bulging sides of the sheep and watched her muscles contract beneath the layer of wool.
“Oh girl…” she sighed as she knelt down next to the pregnant sheep. “If you could’a picked any other mornin’…”
“Is it okay?” Lynn asked, wringing her fingers together.
“Well, sorta,” Cheyanne said, turning to Lynn. “She’s havin’ her lamb.”
“...Sh-She is?” Lynn stammered, her eyes flitting to the laboring sheep. “Right now?”
“Looks like it,” Cheyanne sighed. “It’s not really the kinda thing you can ‘hold in,’ yknow?” She paused and turned back to the sheep while brushing her fingers against her pregnant belly and thinking about own, imminently-approaching labor. “This…ain’t gonna be fun.”
“Wha...what should we do?” Lynn asked.

“Well, normally we’d need to get her into the barn up there,” Cheyanne said, gesturing up the hill. “But I think she’s past that point and…I uh…I don’t think I’m in any kinda condition to carry her.” She sighed dejectedly, chocking up yet another thing her pregnancy wouldn’t let her do. Biting her lip, she tapped her fingers on her thighs and thought. “Okay, Lynn. Remember how I said there’s a gate between this and the cow’s field? Take the feed bag and use it to herd all the sheep outta that gate, then shut it.”
“Okay,” Lynn said. She swallowed, then nodded again and repeated, “Okay. I can do that.”
“I know ya can,” Cheyanne smiled.
Lynn picked up the bag from the crate and carried it up the hill, shaking it above her head. The herd ignored the food already left in their trough and followed the small dog up the hill, bleating out after her as they thudded past Cheyanne. The laboring sheep on the ground tried to get up to follow, but Chey gently held her down and kept her from standing.

“No girl, not yet…take it easy, now…” She whispered to the sheep while stroking her neck. “You’ve done this a thousand times, you’ll be alright.” Cheyanne felt the pup turn over in her womb and glanced down at her own belly, finally big enough to touch her thighs. “Maybe you can show me how it’s done, huh? ‘Cause I’m near scared outta my mind ‘bout havin’ this baby.”
Cheyanne fell silent and gently stroked the side of the sheep, every once in a while checking under her tail to check if the lamb was crowning. After a while, Lynn came running over the hill, her long ears fanning behind her in the wind. As she approached, Cheyanne noticed that the feed bag was missing and she was covered in dirt.
“I-I got them closed off,” Lynn panted, planting her hands on her hips. “But they got the bag and I just…I couldn’t get it back.”

“That’s fine, they can have it,” Cheyanne laughed. She motioned toward the sheep’s head. “Lynn, take over for me right here and keep pettin’ her so she stays calm and won’t bolt. She might start to panic, so just hold her down if she does. But this ain’t her first lamb by a long shot, so she knows what she’s doin’.”
Lynn took over after Cheyanne moved, dropping to her knees. She shuddered as cold, wet mud began to seep through the legs of her jeans.
“See what I mean?” Cheyanne teased as she pinched the leg of her shorts. “I won’t need to do any laundry, all I need is a bath.”
“And here I thought you were just showing off for me,” Lynn teased back.

“That, too,” Cheyanne said with a wink. She crouched on the ground, holding her arm to her stomach for balance, and sat on her knees behind the sheep. “Go grab me the hose, will ya?” She asked, pointing around the corner. After Lynn retrieved it, Cheyanne doused her hands off of mud and dirt, shivering slightly as cold water splashed her round belly, then gently angled the water to clean off the backside of the sheep.
“Yeaaahh, she’s probably been in labor long before we got out here,” Cheyanne said, examining the red, puffy birth canal of the sheep. “This may not take all that long.” She looked up and nodded at Lynn. “You ready?”
“I am,” Lynn said, her jaw clenched. She paused and noticed the shallow, nervous sigh Cheyanne made. “…Are you ready?”
“Huh?” Chey glanced back at Lynn and rolled her eyes, waving a dismissive hand. “Pfft, I’ve done this a thousand times. I’m fine.”
“Well…okay…” Lynn said, frowning. “If you say so.”

Cheyanne turned back to the sheep and clenched her teeth, trying to will her heart to stop pounding in her chest. She’d done this a thousand times do a dozen different animals. But no matter what she did to keep her mind focused on the task at hand, she couldn’t help but imagine she was looking down at herself in a few months time, panting and screaming in pain while pushing out the pup in her belly that was getting bigger and bigger by the week. She took a deep breath and did her best to cast the idea from her mind.
The sheep’s labor was long and took most of the morning. Lynn and Cheyanne both stayed by her side and used the hose to make sure she got plenty of water, then doused one another when the sun started to rise in the cloudless sky. The sheep tried to get up more than once, at one point trying to stand with the lamb’s head crowning, but Lynn did a good job at holding her down until she stopped struggling.

As the contractions became faster and harder, with shorter breaks in between, Cheyanne’s anxiety was starting to bubble up inside her. She worked her hands like machines, without thought, but her breathing was ragged and her fingers began to tremble. The sight of the lamb stretching open the sheep’s birth canal took on a new horror for her, the pain the laboring ewe was going through and the way her muscles squeezed the baby out of her made Cheyanne’s stomach churn. Lynn couldn’t help but notice her wife’s sudden change in behavior, but there was nothing she could do but tend to the situation at hand.
“Okay…it’s okay girl…” Cheyanne said soothingly to the sheep, watching the lamb slowly emerge from her birth canal.
“Chey?” Lynn asked for what felt like the hundredth time. “I can take over if you…”
“I’m fine,” Cheyanne said, flatly. Her ears were folded back and her tail was tucked between her legs, but she wasn’t ready to quit from just nerves. “She’s almost done…almost done…”

As the lamb slid farther out, its muscles jerked involuntarily and it moved one of its legs to the side. The sheep cried out in pain as the sudden movement stretched the already-stressed skin of her labia to tear slightly, spilling a line of blood that trickled down into the grass. Cheyanne wasn’t normally averse to the sight of blood, but the vision of her sheep’s flesh splitting open from pressure made her head spin.

“L-Lynn…” Cheyanne stammered, sitting back from the sheep and staggering to her paws. “Lynn I…I gotta…I need…”
“What’s wrong?” Lynn asked, watching helplessly as Cheyanne staggered away. “Chey? Cheyanne? Are you okay?”
“Ta-Take over for me…” was the last thing Cheyanne had the self control to say before she staggered away from the shed. She didn’t stop until she reached the gate and leaned heavily against it, taking deep gulps of air as if she’d been holding her breath for the past ten minutes. Her knees felt weak and her hands trembled like leaves in a thunderstorm.

“Fuck,” she swore to herself while clenching her fists. “Fuck.” She took one hand off the gate and touched her belly, suddenly feeling very helpless and burdened by the unstoppable thing growing inside her. In just a few months, the pup was going to tear her open like that and there was nothing she could do to stop it. It was already so big, so strong. How big would the baby grow before finally becoming too much to contain? What would it do to her during the birth?
Cheyanne shook her head and took deep breaths as she tried to toss away the thoughts from her mind like a bucking horse trying to throw its rider. She folded her ears down flat against her head to drown out the laboring sheep isolating herself within the sound of her own breathing. Because of that, she couldn’t hear Lynn calling her name until the smaller dog was already running toward her

“Chey!” Lynn shouted, for Cheyanne’s attention. There was blood on hands, her fur matted down with water and dirt and other fluids, but she was grinning ear-to-ear and wagging her tail. “We did it! The lamb’s okay! They’re both okay!”
Cheyanne blinked dimly at Lynn before movement caught her eye. The awkward, long-legged lamb, born just minutes ago, staggered forward with shaky steps and made small, nasally bleating sounds while blinking in the light. Chey watched transfixed as the baby sniffed the ground around it, wiggling its short tail, before bleating again even louder, as if testing out the capacity of its brand-new lungs. Shortly, the mother sheep staggered weakly to her feet and trotted toward the lamb, bleating as her newborn bounded toward her and instantly began to nurse hungrily between her legs.

“See?” Lynn said, clutching Cheyanne’s hand. “It’s okay! It’s all okay. Everything went fine.” She paused, panting excitedly, then squeezed Chey’s hand. “Are you okay?”
Cheyanne didn’t answer at first and instead gazed thoughtfully at the lamb and its mother, feeding and grazing nonchalantly as if nothing had just happened. As if to join in, the pup inside Cheyanne began to stir, kicking against her belly. Through the horror of watching the birth up close, she’d forgotten the most important thing about the pup in her womb; it wasn’t some animal or creature, it was her son that was growing inside her. Her baby, that she already loved with a deep intensity she didn’t know she was capable of, was the one she’d be giving birth to. As scary as it was, if even a feral sheep could go through the ordeal of labor and birth, Cheyanne was prepared to go through much worse to give her son the best start at life he could possibly have.

“…Yeah,” Chey sighed after a long time. “Yeah, I’m okay. It just…ahhh...freaked me out a little, I guess.” Cheyanne smiled at Lynn. “You did great, darlin’.”
“Did I?” Lynn responded eagerly, her tail still wagging. She glanced over her shoulder and beamed at the lamb and its mother. “I mean…I just did what I thought you would do…”
“And you did great, Lynn,” Cheyanne said, kissing the top of her wife’s head. Chey paused and rubbed her own belly. “Now I know we can count on ya if the little guy decides he wants to come early.”
“I think we should let a doctor worry about that,” Lynn said. She paused, then leaned in and kissed Chey’s pregnant middle. “It won’t be so bad, Chey. You’ll have doctors and you’ll be inside and clean and…and they’ll have drugs in case it hurts too much… and uh…”

“I know, Lynn,” Cheyanne laughed. “I ain’t so worried about it anymore.” She paused and pulled away her hand, finding it and the rest of her fur covered in mud. “I think it’s about time to get ourselves washed up.”
“Oh,” Lynn said, glancing down at her fur as if she didn’t know she was even dirty. “…Yeah, good idea.”
As the two walked up the hill together, Cheyanne turned to Lynn.
“Hey, Lynn? You think…you could help me come up with a name tonight?”
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