The slug-girl turned to go, shutting the door behind her. Cass smiled to herself. Tareme, she thought. Tareme eyes - but in a young woman's face, not a moe-blob. She couldn't remember if she'd noticed that when they'd run into each other the other night (if so, she hadn't paid it any mind at the time,) but it was quite obvious when she was in direct contact with her.
I wouldn't have figured, she mused; she seems too serious for that...too serious for her own good, really. Still, I guess it makes sense; she does seem awfully sensitive to the idea that she might've hurt others with this...and really, could this new world have sprung from the mind of anybody who wasn't a bit of a dreamer at heart?
Chuckling softly to herself, the anime woman started getting ready for her next class.
Lunchtime
Jon sat down at what had sort of become her group's accustomed table - off in the corner, where their conversation didn't draw much attention. Brittany, as usual, was already there, as was Karyn; Tim was right behind the slug-girl. She'd explained about her little circle to him; she'd tried to emphasize that he didn't have to be a part of this, but he'd accepted as soon as she offered. And now she had another thing to share with them...
Just as she'd started to explain, though, Haru showed up. Jon was a little surprised; granted, she didn't actually have class with the younger girl, but she thought she'd at least have seen her in the hallway or something; this, however, was the first she'd seen of Haru this morning. Karyn looked more concerned, though. "Hey!" she said. "Ken told me you weren't coming today. Are you alright? How are you feeling?"
Haru smiled weakly. "I'm...okay," she said. "Tired. But...I thought I should tell you the whole story..." She looked over at Tim, then at Jon. "Um, but it can wait. Y-you were saying something?"
Jon blinked, a little confused. "Wait, what happened to you?" she said. "Is everything okay?" She wasn't sure what had happened, but if one of her people had gotten hurt...
"It...it's okay, really," Haru replied. "It's kind of a long story..." She glanced a little curiously at Tim again. "...um, I guess the Dark Moon has something to do with it..."
Jon blinked. "The what?"
Karyn stared at her. "The new moon? The big dark one?"
Tim frowned. "Wait, there's a new moon?"
The cecaelia-girl stifled an astonished laugh. "Okay, where the hell were you two last night!? It was only all over the news..."
Jon flushed a bit. "I, uh...we were just hanging out...I guess we didn't notice? We weren't watching TV..."
Karyn bit her lip so hard trying to stop a smirk that she thought she was going to draw blood. "You were...hanging out?" she said. "Gotcha. 'Dja have fun?"
Jon spent a moment trying to figure out the knowing smile that Karyn wasn't quite successfully hiding, then blushed a bit. "W-we...we were with some o-other people we met," she stammered, embarassed and a little irritated. Then she stopped and took a deep breath. "We...we met the other keepers of the keystones," she said. "Um, and Tim knows about all of this now, by the way." The drow-boy nodded in confirmation.
Brittany gasped. "You met the others?" she asked. "All of them? Here!?"
Jon nodded. "Well, two of them aren't from here...one of them Karyn and I met yesterday, she came from Germany looking for me...the other's from Brazil, she was just...here, for some reason...actually, uh, you know the angel-lady Ms. Wilkins's been dating? That's her." She sighed. "I suppose we can't take you to them, though...and I doubt we can just get three random adults to have a closed-door meeting with a group of students inside the school..."
"And the fourth is actually from around here?" Karyn asked. "That's nuts. All four, in this one town..."
Jon nodded. "On top of that, we think Tiffany might have some kind of inkling about us...she was the one who got us all in the same place at the same time. And then I found out that there's this group of...um, magical girls..." She felt a little silly saying that, but...well, this whole situation was so many different kinds of strange that she was starting to lose track of just how odd to find any given situation. "One of them's Becca," she said. "I haven't asked about the others yet...I know there are four of them...they're saving the world from some kind of 'Enemy' or something, and...my family knows about them..."
She exhaled heavily, feeling better for having gotten all that off her chest. "Um, so," she said. "Yeah. A lot of stuff happened last night. Uh, Haru...what did happen to you?"
Haru sighed. "I...my third eye was...hijacked," she said. "Possessed. Some outside force wanted to use it to search for something..." She frowned. "I think they had something to do with the Dark Moon," she said. "And Ms. Wilkins's...girlfriend...helped get it out, and she mentioned something about an 'Enemy...' I dunno if she meant it like you meant it, Jon, but the way she said it...it kinda sounded like it."
Tim arched an eyebrow. "Okay, is it, uh, normal for you guys to have all these...weird connections cropping up?" he asked. "I'm, uh, still kind of new to all this..."
Jon shook her head. "This is new. Well, new-ish. We've kind of run into some odd coincidences before, but nothing like this."
"It may simply be that this place has become a nexus for this sort of thing," Brittany observed. "After all, it was here that Jon changed the Sun and started to bring magic back to the world - and now all four of the keystones are gathered in one place. It would only be natural."
Karyn frowned. "How long can we expect that to last?" she asked.
Brittany shrugged. "I cannot say. Perhaps a year; perhaps a millennium."
"It's not even like I wanted this power to begin with," Haru said, not quite sotto voce. "It's just...having it taken like that..." She sighed. "I dunno...it'd be easier if I just didn't have it..."
Brittany turned to her, a look of sympathy on her face. "If it is any comfort to you," she said, "I've heard many stories where the power of second sight...is not permanent. Of course, you're not the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, but...all the same, it may be only one phase in your life."
Haru brightened a bit. "Really?" she asked. "Is there, um...anything I can do, or do I just have to wait, or...?"
The ghost-girl hesitated a moment. "I...they are only stories I have heard," she said, trying to brush the matter off, but Haru was expectant. "...As I've heard it in some tellings," Brittany said, relenting, "the power belongs to...maidens. That being also merely one phase of life..."
Haru frowned. "So I've just got to wait until I'm an adult, then?" She sighed.
"Ah, no," Brittany said, looking a little sheepish - unusually for her. "Maidens...girls who have never known a man."
Haru frowned, parsing that one out, then gradually flushed bright red.
"I did say they were only stories," Brittany said.
That evening
Andy would have expected the return from her first day on the job in four years to be jubilant, especially since it had gone quite well. And she did, in one sense, feel good about her prospects for the future - if she made sure to keep putting everything she could into this job, she could keep it; she could go back to being a productive member of society, back to providing for her family. But instead of ecstatic celebration, she felt more caught up in a feeling that seemed to be equal parts foreboding and anticipation. She felt as if something was about to change, big-time, and she wasn't sure whether she was terrified or excited about it. Of course she wasn't sure, she had no idea what "it" might be. But the air itself felt dense and electric around her as she walked from the car into the house.
Sue was there to greet her, of course, and for the moment her sense of import was forgotten as they celebrated. He'd prepared a lovely dinner, and Alex and Sally were caught up in their parents' good mood as well. Life was good, Andy thought. But after dinner, after they'd cleaned up, she found the feeling beginning to overtake her again. What was it that had her on edge like this? Was it that thing this morning? But Sue had said that wasn't her period! Maybe it was just the whole notion of even having one getting to her? But she found that idea more just gross and unpleasant than...whatever this feeling was.
After the dishes were done, she headed upstairs to use the bathroom. Sue caught her just as she was entering the master bedroom. "Andy, honey," he said, "I, um...I need to talk with you about something."
"We need to talk" is not a statement that puts anyone's mind at ease, and Andy was already on edge as it was. But, mostly thanks to the soothing effect her husband's voice still had on her, she was calmed a bit - not that she felt any less confusedly nervous, but the first bits of panic that had been starting to run through her system were quashed. She sat down on the bed, folding her legs underneath herself, feeling...detached, like the first moments of weightlessness after a leap off a precipice. She looked the naga-man in the eye. "It's...about this morning, isn't it?" she asked.
Sue nodded. "I told you that it wasn't menstrual bleeding, and that's true. I also told you I'd explain later. Andy, that little bit of old, dead blood, that's probably implantation bleeding. It occurs when a blastocyst implants in a woman's uterine wall..."
The rabbit-woman stared off into space, listening and recalling some of this from somewhere, but unable to connect it to anything concrete. There was a brief pause, then Sue cleared his throat, took a deep breath, and stammered, "A-Andy, love, it's...it's possible that...you m-might be pregnant."
It's possible I might be pregnant, Andy thought, parsing the sentence perfectly but not quite making the connection. Huh, how about that. It's possible I- Then it hit her, an almost physical impact. She gasped audibly, jaw slack, the weightless sensation turning into a feeling like the bottom was dropping out of the entire world beneath her. Sue saw his wife's pupils contract as she stiffened up, and he felt dread as he recalled the moments just after her change. "Andy?" he said. "Andy, you aren't having a...another panic attack? Talk to me, honey!"
Andy shook her head, going from stiff to slack. "N-no," she said. "I...I'm...I'll be alright...I think..." How could this have happened? It'd only been that first time...well, and the time the condom broke...and the other night when she'd just wanted comfort after a long day at work...and it'd only been just over a week since she changed...this couldn't be real, could it? She looked up at Sue, fixing her gaze on him, trying to calm herself by the sight. "A-are...are you s-sure?" she stammered.
Sue bit his lip. "Not sure, no...it's difficult to be sure at this stage. This is...nine days is early, by human standards, but then you're not exactly human...I looked some things up while you were at work today, and there's some suggestions that rabbit-changed might have a slightly accelerated reproductive cycle. But...I did go out and get a test. I wanted to catch you before you, um..."
Had there been any other circumstances in which she'd have been doing it, Andy would doubtless have been mortified and irritated at the idea of "peeing on a stick." As it was, she was simply in a daze, and hardly even paid attention to what she was doing. Sue took the test from her, and she lowered herself to the bathroom floor as he watched it. She was hardly even thinking at the moment, but it did cross her mind that Sue looked almost as nervous as she felt. They'd gone through this two times before, but neither of them in these roles, respectively...
A couple minutes later - though it seemed like hours - she saw Sue's eye twitch and his jaw tense. Easy to tell what that meant. "It's...it's positive, isn't it?" she said, still feeling oddly detached. Whether she was jumping to a conclusion or not, she knew it was. It wasn't any kind of intuition, it was just...of course it would be positive...
He nodded. "It is. That's...not conclusive, but it's a pretty fair indicator. We'll have to make an appointment a little later on to be more sure, but..." The naga-man took a deep breath, and placed his hands on the rabbit-woman's shoulders. "Honey," he said, "I...I think you're going to have a baby."
I'm going to have a baby. She breathed slowly and deeply, measuring each breath, trying to keep it constant to hold herself steady as a torrent of thought rushed through her mind. Memories of everything that she knew from twice before: memories of things he had known about beforehand, things he had been surprised to learn weren't just stereotypes perpetuated in popular culture, and things he had never even heard of before Sue was experiencing them. Memories of Alex's birth, which Sue had wanted him to be present for, of feeling useless while Sue did everything and the doctor walked her through it, of knowing perfectly well that he was only there for emotional support, of seeing everything that his wife went through to bring their son into the world. All of that...all of that...was going to happen to her. She was going to carry a child, in her own body, and then...then she was going to give birth to it. And she was...SHE was going to be a mother.
Andy had been adjusting in her own gradual way to what had happened to her, slowly acclimating to the idea, but now she was pretty much slapped in the face with her own new state of being. She was a woman, and she was going to have a child as a woman, and she would be its mother. And she felt a storm of different feelings brewing inside her in response to the idea. Part of her wanted to hang on to that shred of possibility - Sue had said it wasn't conclusive, there was still a possibility that she wasn't pregnant! Part of her knew perfectly well that trusting in that "maybe" would only make it harder when she did turn out to be with child. Part of her wanted to yell at Sue for doing this to her; part of her reminded that she was a perfectly willing participant (and, in many cases, instigator,) and that this was no different to when they'd had Alex, whom they hadn't planned and spent most of the pregnancy worrying that they weren't ready for. Part of her panicked over the fact that she knew absolutely nothing about bearing a child or mothering it; part of her reminded that she had Sue, two times a mother himself, to help her through it, and fourteen years of parenting experience, even if the last few hadn't exactly been exemplary. Part of her worried that they weren't able to take care of another kid; part of her pointed out that she finally had a job again, and a decent-paying one at that. Part of her was terrified; and another part of her, stunningly, was actually excited. Every feeling she had was in conflict with another, and she had no idea at all how she was supposed to react.
She solved this dilemma by simply bursting into tears. Good tears? Bad tears? She didn't know. It didn't matter anyway; tears are as much an emotional cleanser as an ocular one, and that was what she needed right now. She had Sue here with her, holding her, reassuring her. It was...it was unfathomable, it was insane, it was thrilling, it was terrifying, but...somehow, it would be alright.
