------------------------------------------------------

  David

  ------------------------------------------------------

  Over the st few months, David had gotten used to a certain kind of… authority.

  That felt terrible to say, but it was true. He’d become the expert on, well, everything. Garen’s utter distaste for administration had left David as the de facto head of Tulian’s only (tiny) university, and he’d become the guy that everyone went to for advice. He’d been spending his time answering the questions of everyone, from bcksmiths and healers to shipwrights and fishermen. Some hunter woman covered in pelts and bones had once brought him the corpse of an animal no one recognized, hoping he could tell her if it was poisonous to eat. He couldn’t, of course, so she’d asked him which animal was most humanlike in its ability to tolerate poisons, and he’d told her pigs, solely because he remembered episodes of Mythbusters where they used them as human-analogues. That was how many of the questions went; he didn’t know exactly what they needed to know, but he had enough tertiary knowledge to give them a good starting point. Huge chunks of this half-baked city had pced him on the same tier as an archmage, but without the ominous magical powers, which mean he was someone actually approachable enough to pester.

  If he was honest with himself, he was getting a bit big-headed. He’d told a desperate healer that everyone in a vilge suddenly crapping themselves half to death probably meant there was a problem with the well, and suddenly he was hailed as a genius savior. He told some rural bcksmiths what carbon was and that you needed about zero-point-six-percent in steel for bdes and boom, he’d improved half the country’s tools. It was great for his ego, terrible for his humility.

  An ego that was being painfully picked apart with every pacing step outside the maternity ward, ripping clumps from hair that he really couldn’t afford to lose.

  “I’m supposed to be able to help with things like this,” he growled, pivoting as he reached the end of the room for the hundredth time. “I know things. Medical things. I’m not a doctor, but I still know a lot of stuff that people here don’t. I should be doing something.”

  “You could join them in the room,” Ignite suggested. The marine was standing guard at the hospital’s entrance, in the center of a dozen of his most trusted Marines. They were in their full battle kit, many wearing looted pieces of enchanted Sporaton armors, and they’d piled sandbags in a semi-circle around the hospital’s entrance, each leveling a musket at the door. Behind them was a row of halberdiers, then behind them another group of musketeers. The silent, crowded room was lit by gemstones only, because every one of the hospital’s entrances and windows had been nailed shut, per Evie’s orders.

  “Oh. Oh, no.” David ughed awkwardly. “No thank you. I know what giving birth looks like. Well, I’ve read about it. Blood and poop and all that are not for me. I’ll stay out here.”

  “Did you not attend your daughter’s birth?” Ignite asked. His eyes were fixed on the door, one hand resting on his holstered revolver, but he could maintain the conversation easily enough.

  “I didn’t even know I had a daughter until she was six months old,” David said. “I barely even knew her mother; we only ever went on two dates. Then she showed up on my doorstep a year and a half ter and handed me a kid. Didn’t even give me her phone number. That was a paperwork nightmare, let me tell you. I’m pretty sure some people involved in that mess still think I stole a kid, even after the DNA test came back.”

  “I can only imagine,” Ignite politely replied, utterly ignorant of half of what David was referencing. He stepped out of line to inspect his troops’ formation. “But if you do not do well with blood, I struggle to imagine what you might do to help your daughter and her wives right now.”

  “Yeah, that’s the problem.” David retreated to a chair, trying for the umpteenth time to sit down and rex. “There’s not anything I can do.”

  “Hurlish is being attended to by multiple healers, priests, midwives, and an Archmage,” Ignite said. “Any conceivable problem which may occur can be accounted for by at least one of those present, if not all of them.”

  David wanted to point out all the things that could still go wrong, the things that he knew could go wrong with pregnancies even back on earth. He’d never wanted a kid, but once he’d had one, he’d done the reading. The love that he felt for Sara had inspired a useless, retroactive terror in him as he’d learned what could have gone wrong. Stillborns, prematurely punctured amniotic sacs drowning the child before they emerged, and just the sheer pain Hurlish was no doubt suffering, which couldn’t be good for Sara to be seeing, it was all running through his head. Case studies, infant mortality rates, sterility procedures, around and around his head raced, achieving nothing more than making him dizzy.

  But saying any of that to Ignite wouldn’t do anything worthwhile, so David dragged himself back to a chair and shut his mouth up. Per Evie’s exceedingly specific orders, these soldiers would be guarding the hospital until Hurlish was hale and hearty. That could be dozens of hours after a successful birth, even. The poor guards didn’t deserve to hear him whining the entire time.

  David checked his watch. It had been an hour and a half since he’d arrived, which meant Hurlish’s water had broken about two hours ago.

  Before he realized it, he was back on his feet, wearing a track in the floor.

  ---------------------------

  ------------------------

  ---------------------

  “Is a birth supposed to st this long?” David asked. They were four hours past when Hurlish had first started going into bor.

  “This long and longer,” Vesta confirmed. She and her wife had arrived an hour or so earlier. “From the moment my water broke to hearing my first son’s cry, it was nearly a full day. It got quicker with each child, however.”

  “A day? Twenty four hours? A full day?” David groaned, dropping his head into his hands. “I’m going to have a heart attack before this is over.”

  “Did you expect anything less?” Vesta asked curiously. She’d been better prepared for the wait than David, having brought a folding desk and a pile of paperwork. Oddry was reading from a thick book at her side, occasionally flicking her gaze up whenever David spoke.

  “I guess?” He said. “I think it didn’t take that long back on Earth. We had medicine to help with it and stuff. But I don’t know.”

  “Unfortunately, even the greatest of healers do not possess the ability to speed a birth, no matter how many women have wished for it.” Vesta picked up a finished paper and waved it back and forth to help the ink dry, then set it aside. “If it is any consotion, I have heard that births are easier on orcish women, on account of their stature.”

  David perked up. “Is that a fact? Like, have people studied that?”

  Vesta smiled her sympathy. “I cannot say. It is simply something I heard at one point or another.”

  David slumped down in his chair, blowing out a long, long breath.

  ---------------------------

  ------------------------

  ---------------------

  Ten hours after David’s sanity had started circling the drain, the door to the waiting room creaked open.

  He didn’t react right away. After spending so long with his nerves fraying at the razor edge of a panic attack, David had started to ignore people coming in and out. He couldn’t leap to his feet every time one of the healers or midwives came to get a drink, not without tearing some kind of muscle. The st thing he wanted was Sara, in the middle of holding her wife’s hand through the birth of their child, finding out her dad had been so stressed he pulled a hamstring in the waiting room.

  That was his excuse for why he wasn’t the first to recognize his own daughter right away. She peeked through the crack in the door, found that most everyone save the guards were asleep, then slowly stepped in.

  And it was only then that David’s blurred eyes focused enough to recognize her. Her bck hair was in a mess, tangled with sweat, and her eyes were ringed with dark, haggard circles.

  But she was smiling.

  David rocketed out of his chair with both hands clenched in fists over his head, drawing in a massive breath.

  “Shh,” Sara shushed, holding a finger to her lips.

  The breath that he’d sucked in to scream in excitement froze in his lungs. He turned it into a slow, whistling exhale as he scurried forward.

  “Is everyone asleep?” Sara asked. Even her voice was tired. Scratchy and raw.

  “Yes,” he stage-whispered as he approached, cinching up his belt and tucking in his shirt. “Do you want me to- why are we- why quiet? Is everything alright?”

  “Everything’s good,” she assured him. She swung the door open wider, inviting him into the hallway. “Just… I don’t know. There’s not a lot of room. Better to let you come in first, have people come in a few at a time. C’mon.”

  “Okay, okay, that makes sense,” David whispered, following after her. “I can’t believe it! Everything went alright, right? Was it-”

  Several steps ahead of him, Sara stopped. Turned. Put her back to the wall. Then began to sink down, sliding down the stone until she was crouched on her heels. She was staring straight ahead, arms wrapped around her knees.

  The world seemed to warp around David. The fear in his gut for his grandchild, for Hurlish, the nerve-wracking anxiety that had been tearing him apart for hours, vanished, repced by a neon light blinking over Sara’s head. One that said Help me, Dad.

  “Hey,” David whispered, taking a gentle step forward. He put a hand on her shoulder. “Hey. It’s okay. You said everything went okay, right?”

  “It did,” Sara croaked, bobbing her head in a jerky nod. “Hurlish is okay. Kid’s okay.” She wiped her nose on a sleeve. “A boy, by the way. It’s a boy.”

  “A boy. That’s great!” David pressed himself to the wall next to her, slowly sliding down. He put an arm around her shoulder as he nded, squeezing her tight. “A boy. Have you decided which name you’re going with?”

  “Not yet.” She swallowed hard, throat bobbing with the motion. She was still staring bnkly at the wall.

  David let her stare. He sat next to her, holding her. She slowly began to tip leftward, until she was resting her weight against his side.

  After a few minutes of quiet, he bent his head aside, resting his temple atop her head. Like there was a movie on the far side of the hallway they were both watching together.

  “Do you… want to talk about it?”

  “No,” she whispered. She took a breath. “But I should, shouldn’t I?” Her voice cracked as she spoke.

  “It might help.”

  The silence stretched. David waited patiently. If there was one thing he’d learned from years of raising his daughter, it was that there was no forcing anything out of her. She had her limits, and no amount of poking or prodding would force her to cross them.

  “It’s just… I don’t know what I’m doing,” she eventually said. “I’m a mom now. It’s…” She took a shuddering breath. “It’s real now. I mean, I saw him. My kid. Hurlish is… she’s holding him right now. And he’s so…” she lifted her hands from her knees for a moment to make a squeezing motion, pinching invisible cheeks. “He’s so cute. He’s so tiny. And he’s my kid. And I… I don’t know. Hurlish wanted a kid. I wanted a kid too. So we had a kid. But now he’s here, in that room, and he’s my responsibility…”

  Her mouth kept moving for a moment, words failing to form as she choked up.

  “I know,” he said, giving her shoulder a firm rub. “Trust me, I do. I know.”

  His daughter trembled slightly, tucking herself even harder beneath his arm. Trying to snuggle beneath it, like she did when she was little. She was too big by far to do that now, but David would be damned if he didn’t let her. He stretched his back out as much as he could, raising his arm higher, giving her as much room to shelter in as he was physically able. It was an awfully uncomfortable position to hold, but that wasn’t going to stop him.

  Sara’s voice came back to her with a wet crackle.

  “I’m twenty-three, Dad. I’m twenty-three and I have a kid.”

  “You’re ready for it,” he insisted firmly. “I know you are. You’re going to be a good mom, Sara.”

  “Will I?” She looked up at him, eyes red. “I’m going to be leaving soon. I have to. I just had a kid, and now I’m going to be running off into the jungle. How long will I be gone? Months? I’m going to miss so much. I’m going to… to leave Hurlish on her own.” She let out a bitter, self-loathing ugh. “Who knows what I’m going to miss. She’s going to be taking care of him on her own. That’s not what I should be doing. That’s not what a good wife does.”

  “She’s not going to be taking care of him alone,” David said. “I’ll help her with anything and everything. I raised you, you know.”

  “And it was hard, wasn’t it?” She pointedly asked. “You struggled. You weren’t ready for it.”

  “No. But I was on my own. Hurlish won’t be.” David nuzzled his head into her hair, making even more of a mess of it. “She’ll have everything she needs to help. You’ve got so many friends, Sara. Vesta, Oddry, Ketch, me, Garen. We’ll all help. You’ll be fine. He’ll be fine.”

  “But not because of me,” she whispered, tightening further into a ball, chin tucked between her knees. “Because I’ll be gone. I’ll be, just… fucking off, like Mom.”

  David stiffened. “No. No, not like her.” He pulled away slightly, forcing her to look at him. “Don’t compare yourself to her, Sara. You’re nothing like her.”

  “So what if I was? You always said that it was good she gave me up, Dad,” Sara reminded him, only half joking. “That it was better for her to leave me with you, so I wasn’t raised by someone who didn’t want to raise a kid.”

  David blew a long breath through his nose. “Yeah, well. Y’know. I was lying.” He shook his head, old anger bubbling up. “I didn’t want you to hate her, in case she decided to do the right thing and come back. I tried to paint it like she was a good person making a hard decision. But, like, come on. She was a selfish fucking bitch for abandoning you like that. You don’t just get to… get to shit a kid out, then drop them like trash. Especially without even telling their father about it.”

  Sara chuckled darkly. “Wow, Dad. Tell me how you really feel about her.”

  “We don’t have enough time for that. And I think I’d wake everyone up in the waiting room.”

  Another small ugh, but one that faded as quickly as it began. David waited patiently. He’d had conversations like this with her before. Not often, not with how tough Sara was, or at least how tough she tried to be, but often enough. So he knew that if she felt comfortable enough to ugh…

  Small, silent tears started falling down her face. As soon as she felt them, she buried her head in her hands, hiding from the world. Her shoulders began to shake.

  “I just… I d-don’t know what to do, Dad,” she whimpered. “Everyone thinks I’m gonna… I’m gonna be so good. Such a good mom. That I’m a… a Champion. That I’ll be able to tell whatever my kid’s thinking, that they’ll never cry because I know exactly what they want all the time, that I’m gonna r-raise some… some super kid, some symbol of the future or s-some shit. B-but I j-just…” Her shoulders heaved. “I just saw him, Dad. He’s just… he’s just a little kid. A baby. He’s so fucking cute, but he’s just a little baby. And he’s gonna be raised by me, and I’ve killed so many people, I’ve started so much shit, and he’s gonna be my kid, and everyone’s gonna know it, and it’s gonna fuck so much stuff up for him-”

  “Sara,” he whispered, wrapping his other arm around her. She tucked her head into his chest, crying into it. “Sara, Sara, Sara. Sara Brownie. Little brownie girl. It’s gonna be okay.” He started patting her back, rubbing in small circles. “It’s okay. You’re fine. You’re fine.”

  He felt her jaw quivering against his chest as she fought her sobs, trying to bite them back. He wanted to tell her that it was alright to cry, that it was alright to be worried, but he knew she’d never listen. All he could do was keep hugging her, as if he hadn’t noticed the slightest crack in the facade.

  Eventually, not even a minute ter, she stopped shaking. He kept her close all the same.

  “You don’t have to do everything right,” he whispered. He pressed a kiss into the top of her head. “You can mess things up. It’ll be alright. He doesn’t need you to be perfect.”

  “B-but-”

  “No buts. Can you imagine having a perfect parent?” He forced himself to ugh. “It would be awful. Never being able to sneak out. Never having a reason to be mad, even when you really want to be. I’d hate it. I know I screwed up, Sara. I screwed up a lot. Real bad, sometimes. But you still love me, don’t you?”

  “Y-yeah…”

  “See? It’s fine to screw up. It’s fine to have things you need to do. You’re going to be gone for a few months, Sara. He’ll never remember that you weren’t there. You’ll be back before he crawls, before he says his first word, and way, way before he starts to walk.”

  “Hurlish is going to be taking care of him on her own-”

  “No she won’t,” he interrupted. “I already told you that. But even if she was? You’re basically rich now, Sara. Being a single parent barely counts if you’re rich. If she needs to, she can hire maids, and nurses, and buy anything she needs to. Do you know how easy it would have been to raise you if I was rich?”

  “I don’t want him to be raised by… by fucking maids,” she said, trying to snap the words out. Her throat was too raw to put any real venom behind it. “Nurses and tutors and all that- that rich people shit. That’s how Evie was raised. It sucked. I don’t want… I’m not going to have that for him.”

  “And you won’t,” David repeated. “I’ll be there. I’ll be helping. And you’ll be back soon, okay?” He moved his hand up, stroking her hair. “I’m not going to pretend you don’t have real things to worry about, okay? Every parent does. But don’t go imagining new problems to beat yourself up over, please. You’ll be fine. I know it.”

  She tried to say something more, but it was lost in the muffling of his chest. He didn’t ask her to repeat herself. He just kept holding her, and for once in his life, David didn’t check his watch.

  Some time ter, his daughter peeled away from him. It hadn’t been that long, in the grand scheme of things. They wouldn’t have been missed. It still felt like an eternity, though.

  Sara stood, then offered him a hand. He took it, letting himself be pulled to his feet.

  “How do I look?” She asked, rubbing her eyes.

  “Like you’ve been crying,” he answered honestly.

  “Shit. Okay. Give me a second.”

  Before his very eyes, his daughter began to change. He’d seen her do things like this since he’d been brought to this world, but never right in front of him. He’d seen her move from room to room, emerging as a different woman altogether. He’d seen her posture shift with unconscious ease, heard her accent shift and twist with every new person she talked to, always to mold herself to the person she was speaking with. But he’d never quite had the chance to watch this.

  She shook her hair out, running her fingers through the tangles like they weren’t even there, returning the long bck waves to a pristine state in a few quick swipes. The red veins that shot her eyes through were sucked away, as if they were being drained by a needle. The flesh beneath her eyes, pallid and gray from exhaustion, suddenly flushed with fresh blood, puffing back into pce, while the salty tears that had dried there vanished without fanfare.

  It was unnerving. He had seen illusion magic plenty of times by then, but this was different. This wasn’t some magical hologram. It was her body shifting in impossible ways, molding itself into an image that shouldn’t exist. In a matter of seconds, almost between blinks, she was back to her usual, perfect self, as if she’d just stepped out of the shower. When her usual cocky smile split her lips, even David couldn’t have guessed that she’d just been crying into his shirt.

  “Alright, let’s go. You’re gonna love the kid, Dad.”

  “Of course I will,” he agreed, following after her. “What do you want me to do? Do I need to stay out of the way of anything?”

  “No, no,” she said, speeding up. “Just be yourself, Dad.”

  “Got it. I can do that.”

  Sara continued to pick up the pace, the time away from her family suddenly pressing at her. Even as she sped up, however, David slowed, letting himself trail behind. She didn’t notice; she reached the door to Hurlish’s room and flung it open, darting inside. The sound of a crying baby echoed out into the hallway.

  David paused at the threshold, one hand on the doorframe. Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes and bowed his head.

  “Never prayed for anything in my life before,” he muttered. “Not once. And you know I’m telling the truth. But Amarat? If you know what’s good for her, you won’t let my daughter lie to me like that. She shouldn’t be able to get away with it. Not with me.”

  He lifted his head, blinking his eyes. There was nothing. Not a fsh of light or even a vague sense of acknowledgement. David let the moment pass, uninterested in humiliating himself any further.

  He took a deep breath.

  Be myself, huh?

  David reached down and tucked his shirt into his pants, making a vain attempt to smooth out the wrinkles as he did so. He pulled his gsses out of his shirt pocket and unfolded them, squinting as he perched them on the end of his nose. Garen had figured out a spell to fix his eyesight a few days ago, which meant the whole world went blurry as he peered through the thick lenses. He kept them on anyway.

  David moved to enter the room just as a woman in a rge yellow dress stomped her way out, rolling down her sleeves with contemptuous authority. She was muttering as she went past.

  “I cannot believe the time I was forced to waste on a single woman…”

  David was all but knocked aside as she began thumping her way down the hallway. He ignored her, finally entering the room proper.

  The stone room was as packed as Sara had implied. Garen was standing in one corner with two men wearing robes, speaking in quiet murmurs, while two midwives sat nearby, using rags and a bucket of water to clean a variety of truly disgusting fluids from their arms. The room smelled atrocious in a way David knew he’d never be able to define, some awful concoction of blood, feces, and strange bodily fluids, all mixed together in a way that was utterly unique to childbirth. Sara and Evie were pressed side to side at the bed that was the room’s centerpiece, both sharing their grip of one of Hurlish’s massive hands while they looked fondly down on her.

  The woman herself was resting on an elevated bed, a massive pile of pillows behind her back to prop her up. A bnket covered her lower body, thank god, but she was still naked from the waist up. If she hadn’t been holding a child to her breast, David would have averted his eyes, but she was holding a child.

  His daughter’s child.

  His grandchild.

  David stumbled forward in a rush, only to pull up short, as if the scene wasn’t real, a reflection on a still pond, too easy to disturb with his mere presence.

  “Oh, don’t be looking at me like that,” Hurlish rasped, rolling her lidded eyes. Her voice was scratchy from screaming. “I lived, and so did the kid. You can come see him.”

  He moved closer, slowly, suddenly terrified of things that had never concerned him before. As if he might trip face-first into the bed, ruining everything, or that he might just pass out on the spot.

  Actually, between the smell in the room and his own lightheadedness, that second one was a pretty valid concern. He’d never admitted it to Sara, but he had a serious history of fainting at the sight of blood. It hadn’t really ever mattered before his daughter had turned into a somehow-even-gayer version of Xena, and once she had, he really wasn’t interested in admitting it.

  Thankfully, once he got closer, his attention was stolen away by something far more pressing.

  “Wait.” He leaned closer. “Wait. Does he have…”

  “Yeah,” Hurlish said tiredly. “Crazy shit, right?”

  David adjusted his gsses, still not quite believing his eyes.

  His grandson had green skin, a fair few shades lighter than Hurlish’s. He’d expected that. He’d also expected the tusks that were just barely poking up from his bottom lip, rounded to a dull point.

  What he hadn’t expected were the cat ears.

  “...How?”

  “Was kinda hoping you’d know, Dad,” Sara said.

  “But. I mean.” He looked at Evie, then back at his grandson. The resembnce was uncanny, at least as far as the ears went. Even matted down by fluid, the shape of their ears were almost identical. He turned to Sara. “I thought you said you used magic for you and Hurlish to get pregnant? Like, you mixed your DNA with hers?”

  “Basically, yeah,” Sara said.

  “Then how…?”

  Sara shrugged. “More god bullshit, I guess?” She leaned over Hurlish, brushing the softest possible touch along her child’s back. “See his hair, too?”

  David hadn’t, honestly. He’d been too distracted by the ears. But once he paid attention, he realized that the child had, impossibly, dirty brown hair. Evie was a blonde with only the barest flecks of brunette, while Sara and Hurlish both sported jet bck hair.

  The only one that actually had brown hair, in fact, was Sara.

  That is, the old Sara, back on Earth. Before Amarat had changed her body. Which meant that this wasn’t just a kid born of three parents, all of them women. At least one of the women’s genetic code probably didn’t even exist anymore.

  David realized that Evie, Hurlish, and Sara were all looking at him. As if they were waiting for some kind of expnation.

  He pushed his gsses up his nose, popped his shirt out a bit, and gave one sharp, authoritative nod.

  “Yep. That’s what it looks like to me.”

  “What?” Sara asked.

  He waved to the baby. “You were right. That’s some grade-a god bullshit right there.”

  Evie rolled her eyes and bent over the baby, ignoring her two wive’s uproarious ughter.