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It wasn’t worth the argument at this point. I changed the subject, “How long until you believe yourself ready to give birth, milady?” But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to keep pursuing answers. Nor did Petra expect me to – she knew I was ultsi to the core. She just didn’t want to be disturbed at the moment. I hadn’t even touched upon the most disquieting notion of all: predators. Every ecosystem has predators, and they almost always strike without warning, when they think you’re most vulnerable.
“No more than two sennights in this body milord. Your instruction in the art of ‘necris’ as you name it has been most helpful. All of my existence I’ve been hearing women complain about ill-effects, yet you’ve enabled me to avoid any I do not desire to experience. It would seem I’ve made a fortuitous choice of husband.”
She’d learned much in the year we’d been together. “I am happy in thy choice milady, yet I am concerned you’ve not allowed me to share in raising our daughter as of yet.” Ultsi children were awake in the womb before birth. I’d been looking forward to helping keep my daughter amused and beginning her education, yet Petra was determined to be the only one in rapport with her until birth.
“The experience is demanding, milord. Yet I cannot but believe it is my own to enjoy. Mayhaps this is the effect of the change to my nature I chose.”
“You have done well with what I have taught thus far. But there is much more to learn, and techniques to aid learning that I have not yet taught. Our daughter may need what I could have taught her.”
“Husband, you’re not in the place of your birth. There are no other ultsi likely to come in search of us.”
“I concede the former, but the latter is not a given, milady. Especially given this new ability to create ‘splinters’ of one’s consciousness. Where before, there were perhaps two hundred of us, now each of us can pursue ten or twenty different interests, and be in as many different locations. I don’t know how my brother and whomever else found Aescalon in the first place, but given that at least two different ultsi have done so, the solution cannot be particularly difficult for us. Nor are ultsi the only danger.”
“There were ten thousand years between. With as little time until birth as remains, milord, I’m minded not to worry overmuch. My decision stands.”
I could have overpowered her. Petra wouldn’t have a hope in the world of resisting me if I made a trial of it. But I couldn’t do that to her. She’d spent ten thousand years set apart from humanity by her divine curse. I was the first one to treat her like a human being instead of a lust object or a hated rival. If I betrayed her, it would maim her psyche for all eternity. I couldn’t have done that to her even if the risk to our daughter was likely greater from it than from me waiting for her to be born. After ten thousand years alone in the universe, Petra had chosen to become pregnant within months of our marriage. I could no more betray her than I could stop being myself.
But when I conceded the issue, she continued the conversation, “Milord husband, I find myself enjoying this time with our daughter, enough that I am minded to volunteer to become mother to your other child.”
“You mean the one in stasis?”
“The very same.”
“That is a generous offer, milady, and if you are certain you wish to become his mother, I’m minded to accept gratefully. Yet there is no rush, and our wisest have established ‘tis better for a child to be allowed a few years before the appearance of a sibling. Let us spend some few years with our daughter to nurture her on her path before giving her a brother. And if you change your mind, I do possess an alternative.”
“A soulless machine? I think that a very poor alternative for a mother.”
“But our people don’t simply allow the machine to work. We have just as much contact with such children as with those born naturally. It simply relieves the mother of the physical burden. We still nurture their minds if they are awake. But when the time comes, if you still wish to carry him as well as nurture his mind, I will accept.”
“To change what I was, I chose to become a matron on your advice milord husband. Nurturing and motherhood are part of my nature now. To deny me this is to deny what I chose to become.”
“I accepted that when I asked to marry you, milady wife. I’m not advocating that you change it, merely that you focus it upon one subject for a time.”
“Perhaps there is virtue in that advice, milord. Yet I find myself wanting more.”
“Tell me, milady: when you began your previous role as a seductress, were you as proficient as you later became?”
“I do not remember my beginnings, but I was never irresistible, as milord husband knows full well.”
“Special circumstances, milady. I was aware of your divine curse when first you arrayed your feminine wiles against me, yet I have no desire to resist them now.” Teasing, “Would this not argue you have become more proficient?”
“Beast,” she replied, also teasing, “Yet I have come to enjoy our dalliances as no others before. Come, tell me what guise I should take upon myself, that we should enjoy one another’s company in the manner of husband and wife?”
“I shall revel in whatever guise you should care to assume, my lady wife, including thy current shape.”
She smiled. “I thank thee, my husband. Yet my current state makes certain matters difficult to enjoy as they should be. I shall choose another shape; the delay of our child’s birth by an hour is an acceptable price to pay for the convenience.” Instead of a slim compact dusky brunette, she became an athletic lighter-skinned honey blonde, perhaps a little more ‘padded’ in certain areas, but missing the distended belly of end-stage pregnancy.
I hadn’t known she could still do that, but I was certainly not going to complain.
Copyright 2020 Dan Melson. All Rights Reserved.
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