Jenny thought for a moment. She knew a little bit about how this worked; she couldn't remember exactly where she'd learned it, maybe she saw it in a book or something. But she was a bit fuzzy on the details. "Well," she began, "it's like, moms and dads can do a thing together that makes a baby inside the mom, and-"
"What is a 'baby?'"
Jenny stared slack-jawed at her once-counterpart. Did she really not know!? How could you not know that? Was it just because the Enemy didn't tell her this kind of stuff, or did even they not understand how people worked?
"It's, uh..." She fished for the words. "Well, it's like a li'l person, even littler than you an' me an' Lilly. So a mom an' dad can do something-"
"What kind of thing?" Melanie didn't understand; what was the use of an even smaller creature? Even these forms were limited. She thought back to the fight, when Muriel had tackled her; had she not been tapped into Four's power, the larger woman could easily have overpowered her. Yet the larger ones would take some kind of special action specifically for the purpose of making even smaller ones?
Jenny blushed. "I, uh...I don't 'member." She felt a little embarassed even trying, though she couldn't quite figure out why. "Just...a thing, I guess. Maybe it's a secret." Lilly flushed as well, under her fur; she didn't remember much more than Jenny, but she did know she got kind of grossed out thinking about it. She clamped down her ears with renewed vigor.
"Um, so then that makes a baby inside the mommy," the magical girl continued. "An' the baby grows inside her for months an' months, until it's ready to come out and grow up inta a boy or girl."
The insect-girl thought about it for a bit. "How does it get out?"
Jenny looked a little more embarassed, though she wasn't sure why she felt that way; they were all girls, weren't they? "It, um," she said, "it comes out the...you know." She gestured down towards the area in discussion. Melanie frowned for a moment, but then seemed to realize what she was talking about. "They hafta do it in a hospital, I think, 'cause it hurts. But then it's all over an' the mom gets to take care of the baby 'til it grows up!" She glanced over at Lilly, who was still covering her ears, but seemed to be cringing a bit.
Melanie tried to figure this out. The larger creatures would put time and effort, and surely valuable nutrients, into a process culminating in physical pain, for the purpose of producing a small creature incapable of fending for itself? What was the purpose? Four had said that the smaller creature would grow into a "boy" or "girl." "Girl" was what she had identified the three of them as...but she'd said that "girls" would some day be capable of the same. Was "girl" a transitional form, then?
"Baby grows into girl. Girl grows into...mother?" she asked. Jenny shrugged. "Not all ladies have babies, I guess," she said. "But they can."
"Why?"
Jenny couldn't keep herself from giggling at that. "'Cause they're nice!" she said. "It'd be lonely if there weren't any kids, and then there wouldn't be any more people, neither!"
Melanie stared into space. "Oh." The whole thing was a species-continuation mechanism, then? To what end?
Mr. Saunders frowned. How to put this? He knew how he remembered things, but he didn't want to just give his side of the story...as much as it still hurt to think about, he wanted to be fair to his ex-wife.
"When your mother and I were first married," he said, "it was...well, it was all very spur-of-the-moment. We were in love, I proposed, and we got married inside of three months. We didn't even discuss much about it aside from the wedding plans, not until the honeymoon was over and we were looking at settling back into life together."
He smiled wistfully. "Eliza was always like that...impulsive, unpredictable. It's what drew me to her in the first place. But she wasn't an organized sort of person at all. That's...I mean, that was okay, that's something we were able to work around, but...I think part of it is that she...just didn't like to be 'tied down.'" He sighed. "But I didn't realize any of this at the time. So we talked about our plans, and I wanted to have children. Eliza wasn't sure about that, but she went along; I think it was just another adventure, to her."
Tiffany winced slightly. "If...if she didn't want...kids, why'd she stick around at all?" "Kids," she'd said, but she knew she meant "me." If she'd simply never known her mother, that would've been one thing, but for her to just suddenly up and leave halfway through Tiffany's life...
Her father shook his head. "No," he said, his voice firm. "Tiffany, it's not that she didn't want you. She was as excited as I was, and she loved you, too. You remember that. Never doubt that."
The horned girl buried herself in the mug of cocoa. "Th-then...why? Why leave?"
Mr. Saunders sighed. "I think," he said, "I think...she didn't really understand the responsibilities that came with being a parent. She was glad to have you, but she couldn't see why that should have to mean adjusting her own expectations. I...I tried to explain it to her, tried to make her see, but..." He stared down at the table, his eyes getting a bit moist. "I pushed her too hard," he said. "I made her feel boxed-in, and...I didn't notice. I should've been paying more attention, but I thought if I just explained things, that would be good enough..."
There was a long pause. Neither of them said anything, but Tiffany shifted her gaze up and down, from her dad to the table to her cocoa and back.
"I didn't try to understand her feelings," her dad said, after a while. He seemed like he was talking to himself as much as to her. "And she didn't say much about it, but I think she must've been feeling...cramped. Weighed down. I guess with that festering, there was only so long before she couldn't take it anymore..."
"Why are you defending her!?" Tiffany snapped. The lines on her body lit up under her robes. "She abandoned us! How can you excuse that, just because she was...was bored with m...with us?"
Her dad shook his head. "It's not an excuse," he said. "I know that what she did hurt you, even more than it hurt me, and no amount of explanation can change that. But...it needs to be said. Tiffany, that's the thing about...about divorces. There's rarely only one person at fault. I share the responsibility for this, same as your mother does."
Tiffany was crying now, the tears gleaming as they ran down her gently-luminescent skin. "But you didn't leave!" she said. "It's been nine years, Dad! Nine years, and I see her...what, twice, maybe three times a year? She's off with somebody, doing something, she's never here! How is that love?"
He sighed. "I...I wish I had an answer for that, honey," he said. "Like I said, it's...complicated. I'm sorry..."
