The Women are always The Brave. To bring forth new life, they offer their own, laying at the sacred alter of childbirth, balancing on the edge of life and death, finding sure footing on each contraction, faith in the perils of labor. The solemn sounds of pain do, from time to time, spill from their mouths as they toil to bear The Fruit. Theirs is a holy sweat anointing the ground it falls upon. Because of it, diamonds might grow. They pray a primordial hope, so sacred a language that only Creation has heard it before. The Blood and Water they let defies disbelief to make faithful the cynic, make visionary of the blind and soldiers from the cowardly. And when, after this daunting task has completed, you hold the baby for the first time, you will never know their walk along the edge, for they will never tell you. Instead, they will simply let you hold the baby.
