Expected

Just going to keep going
Onward till the end
Because there was no one else around

That moment when you’re the most knowledgeable in your family to help the dog deliver her first litter because you were the goat midwife. (Which also was a default, because the goat was due that weekend and you were the only person who couldn’t drive granny and the children into town for appointments. So that meant it was your job to watch and aid the goat if needed.)

There are just so many jobs that people become skilled in by simple virtue of the fact that there was no other person around and the job still had to be done.

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Don’t You Worry

Alex worried about Mary.

(Alex always worried about Mary, it was practically encoded into his DNA for all that they had never met until they were both well into adulthood.)

Ever since the separation between Warren and Mary, Alex had been worried. There shouldn’t be any reason that he could think of for them to be having marital problems at. All. Much less ones that would require them to have a period of separation. So yes, Alex was very Worried, with a capitol W.

He knew that they’d had problems before.

(Somehow being unable to conceive a child had been something that they hadn’t wanted to broadcast and he had respected that. He’d never let them know that he knew…though sometimes he was certain they were just humoring him about his little attempts to know what was going on with them, but trying really hard not to at the same time.)

He’d known that Warren was having some kind of problems with work.

(Alex hadn’t known just what, exactly, those problems were, just that there was something not sitting right. He hadn’t been able to find out much more than that without letting anyone else know that he was looking. He didn’t want people to know that he was connected to Mary or Warren. It wasn’t safe to let that knowledge get out. Ever.)

“What is going on, Mary?” Alex murmured to himself.

He frowned as he thumbed through what little information he had been able to find out concerning his ‘little sister’ and her husband. The surprise pregnancy between them had been surprising to Alex as well as Mary and Warren. The fact that they’d actually found some way to visit him and talk about it.

He could still remember how that had gone…

“Mary! Warren! What a surprise!”

Alex had been both pleased and displeased to see them at the time. He’d had delicate operations going on and so wasn’t entirely certain when he’d need to go ‘off the grid’ so to speak. Then again, he was always happy to see his sister as she always reminded him that there was good in the world.

(She also randomly inspired him to donate more to charity and to foundations that looked into the cure of this or that illness.)

Mary was very pale and Warren had a pinched look to his face.

“I’m pregnant.” Mary whispered, her eyes almost as pale as her skin.

Warren did not look away, but stress lines appeared even deeper around her eyes.

Alex frowned at the couple, “Why is this bad news?”

Mary looked at the ground as Warren answered. “I’m sterile, Alex. It’s physically impossible for me to be the father of this child and yet, it is also physically impossible for Mary to even desire another now that she is with me.”

“I see…” And he did.

Someone, somewhere, had done something to either Mary or Warren that had caused this pregnancy and though it was obvious that the child had to have come about because of these two, it was impossible for the child to be of Warren’s own issue.

“I’ll try my hardest to look into this, but I’m not sure how long it could take.”

Alex wondered, now, if whatever it was that had caused the pregnancy and then the second one eight years later had been the cause of the dissolution of their marriage.

He had never been able to find out everything about how the pregnancy had come to be and a part of him blamed himself for the ruin that had come to his dear sister’s life as a result.

Muzzy Morning

She grumbled quietly as the glare of the sun filtered through the partially drawn blinds. Her head ached more with every blinking of the light as the wind rustled the leaves outside, adding to the dilution of the light through the window. Her nose was all stuffed up and she could feel the phlegm dripping down the back of her throat from it.

“Mary? Mary? Are you awake yet?”

Mary groaned, though it was no less loud than the earlier grumbling. The sound of Warren entering the room and, as quietly as he could, walking across the room gave her enough reason to actually lift her head from their bed and peer out at him.

“I don’ feel so goo’.” she mumbled, placing a hand on her aching head.

Warren handed her a glass of water and a few wintergreen mints but nothing else. Mary drank the water and munched a few of the mints before placing the majority on the end table by the bed. She snuggled back under the covers and Warren smiled slightly before kissing her in the forehead and turning the lights off.

Being pregnant seemed to bring out all the vulnerabilities that Mary usually didn’t have.

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Inspired in part from one of the FreeWriteFriday prompts and the slight cold I have this morning.

Timing Abed

She sat in the room,

Quietly in the bed

And wondered again

Where this had led.

 

She’d been doing just right

Keeping stress levels down,

Trying her best

To keep away a frown.

 

But life happened again

As it always will,

It happened quite loudly

And now she is ill.

 

The babies are safe.

That’s what the doctors said,

And safe they will stay

As long as she’s abed.

 

So she’ll stay here and wait,

Make sure they’re all right.

She’ll stay here and wait,

Until the time is in sight.

---

I’ve mentioned in at least one post that one of my sisters is pregnant with twins. Yesterday we received a call that the water on one of them had broken. They’re not due until the end of July at the earliest. Luckily, she was able to get to the hospital and didn’t lose either of her little boys. She now has to stay at the hospital until they have developed enough to come out into the world.

This has not been an easy pregnancy and she’s already had a bleeding out scare. She’s doing everything she can to keep her twin boys safe and is blessed to have a wonderful husband who will also do all he can. I thank God everyday that she is still here.

Monday, May 2, 2011 – Part 2

Lydia went from pregnant with her 2nd and just moved in to a house in West Valley to already having her baby and an apartment in Murray. No mention has been made of Rotha, maybe he’s visiting Cambodia?

For some reason talk of a ‘leading man’ named Balthier makes me laugh.

Must go eat tater tots now.

Oh, and I’m wired, as in, actually have wires on my head. And there are puppy-dogs in the backyard who are impersonating squeak-toys.

Fear is a Four Letter Word

With so much going on,

I never have enough time

To find the comfort needed.

 

An early wake up call,

A mother in need,

Drive there as fast as can be.

 

Quick, take your wife,

Your beloved companion for life

To the hospital to make sure she’s all right.

 

Children are sleeping,

Dreaming sweet dreams

Unaware of the fear surrounding their parents.

 

And here I sit at home,

All alone and yet not,

Praying that no more pain will come.

 

They’ve been through so much,

Five pregnancies, three of which turned out all right;

Please don’t let this one go like the first.

 

A child was lost so long ago

And though there have been three cheerful smiles since,

These two unborn lives might be at risk.

 

So I sit here,

Wrapped in my fear

And Pray that it will be enough.

---

One of my sister’s had a scare this morning in the wee hours. She’s currently pregnant with twins; they are her fifth pregnancy. She has three beautiful children, but her first pregnancy was a miscarriage. Her husband was able to call another sister of ours to come and watch their young children this morning while he drove his wife to the hospital. He let us know that both heartbeats are going strong at the moment, but is still very shaken.

Mom went over an hour ago to help out for the day.All I can do is to pray that they will be all right.

Longshot

When they first realized she was pregnant, they weren’t sure what to think.

It hadn’t been several months when she realized something was wrong. Shew as hungry for things that she’d never wanted before and when she checked her calendar, she realized that it had been several months since she’d had a monthly. That alone wasn’t enough to clue them in, though. She’d never had a regular monthly, she’d sometimes go a third of the year before she’d have one. The fact that she was hungry and then she started having problems with her feet as well as never having enough sleep had shown her husband that something was wrong.

Warren had insisted that she go see a doctor. Her health was important and the fact that she was having symptoms that she’d only had before she’d met him (before she’d come to his world) made him worry. She wasn’t the kind who got sick, she was never tired and she didn’t eat more than she needed because she did not feel hunger the same way that he did.

“Warren, I don’t need to see a doctor, this will-”

“Mary, you don’t get sick. You told me that the last time you couldn’t explain your body reacting like this was before you emigrated.”

Mary said nothing, just looked away from her husband in silence for several long minutes. (She was silent for 20 whole minutes, Warren counted, but he waited in silence with her.)

“All right,” she whispered into his shoulder finally, “All right, I’ll go see someone.”

When they got the results back that she was pregnant, they kind of just stared at one another in confusion.

Warren was sterile. There was no way that the child was his, but it was physically impossible for Mary to have anyone else’s child. She literally could not get pregnant by anyone other than her Bonded, which was Warren.

How did she come to be with child?

“Whatever happens, Mary,” Warren assured his wife that night, “We will get through this, because that’s what we do.”

---

Written for today’s Daily Post prompt: https://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/03/04/daily-prompt-against-all-odds/

The Price Is Right?

Was this the price of his power, his ability to become more than just some backwater nobody living for nothing more than that moment?

As a child he had wanted simple things, but before he’d hit the double digits his father had passed and his mother had slowly gotten sicker and sicker. He’d had no siblings to help care for their small farm and the neighbor’s weren’t really interested unless they got to keep more than they really needed. They weren’t interested in being neighborly towards his family, small though it was, so he wasn’t really interested in giving them any of his father’s and his grandfather’s hard-won land. They’d taken this from the forest and he’d give it back to the forest before he’d let them get their greedy, selfish hands on it.

His mother hadn’t lasted the year, and he just knew that it hadn’t been a completely natural death. The remnants of different types of strange things that he had found around an on her spoke of something else, something…more…than natural.

He hadn’t known what they were and he hadn’t wanted anyone else to know either. He’d kept some of the things in a field journal that his father had given him and took notes and sketches of them before burning them and his mother’s body. He’d sold what he could to start his new life and then traveled.

He hadn’t sold any of the land though, just let the neighbors know that he’d be back for it, and kept all the proper papers with his field journal as well as filing a copy of them with the magistrate in their area.

That was all decades ago by now. Most of those people were gone, dead or moved away or not even the people that they had been before. He certainly was different. None of his peers from his childhood would ever recognize him now and not just because most of them were gone as well.

He wasn’t the same poor farm boy, a nobody who only held land because his grandfather had come with a sizable family, only to lose them because of sickness and accident and injury.

“My Lord,” his majordomo bowed to him and took his cloak, “I hope that all went well on your latest journey?”

“It did, Marcus, it certainly did. Anything new come about while I was away?”

“No, my lord, your lady wife is still ill, just as before, I am sorry to say.”

“Mayhap what I found whilst out will aid her in her recovery.”

“One can only hope, my lord.”

He moved away from the man behind him and he was alone once he’d reached his wife’s chambers. No one but he was allowed in these rooms without his express and written permission and even then only for a certain amount of time. Once he was in her chambers, he moved towards the door that led to her tower, taking a key out from around his neck and opening the door that led up and up and up the stairs. They seemed higher than they actually were and well they should. He had no need to brush a hand against the runes carved into the walls here and there.

Once at the top he found his wife, sickly looking, but with a smallish bulge at her hips. Her eyes were closed and her breathing labored. This wasn’t unusual and he pulled a small hip flask from his belt and sat at the edge of her pallet. With one hand he lifted her otherwise waif-like body and when her mouth fell open with the aid of a thumb he slowly but surely fed her the liquid from the flask. He was careful to rub his fingers down her throat in order to make sure she swallowed the liquid instead of drowning in it.

She would need several more doses of from the ever-refilling flask at least twice more before he retired for the evening. He had to make sure that the child survived the pregnancy.

Combining species that had never successfully procreated together before was a tricky business.

But, he thought to himself as he laid her back gently on her little cot, it is certainly worth the rewards.

He left the small tower room, his wife never once awakening during his short visit.

In order for his wealth and life and riches to continue, he needed viable offspring with which to continue his work. He could only go so far with unsuccessful and dead fetuses.

---

Written for this week’s Dungeon Prompt and this wasn’t how it was meant to end, but when a story’s done with it’s little scene, then it is done.

http://theseekersdungeon.com/2014/01/09/dungeon-prompts-season-2-week-2-the-price-of-civilization/

Different Life

The room spins about her and she is lost, so very lost. She has never been dizzy before in her life, at least, not physically. Now it is too common a thing and her husband assures her that it is normal for someone in her condition to have sudden cases of vertigo all over the place.

She has been confined to bed by the doctors that her husband hires to check up on her and she takes all the medicine that they prescribe, worry for her small blessing pushing her to trust in the better knowledge of such people. The fact that her child will be very different from other children does not lower her worry, it heightens it instead. Even with her natural healing abilities she worries that her fledgling will not live to see it’s birth.

What she is not aware of is that the ‘medicine’ that she is taking is not all healing. A great many of them are instead for something far more sinister. normally she would have been able to tell. Her senses were better than his, but they were also dulled after spending so much time away from the natural aromas of earth. The pregnancy of a hybrid child was also throwing her senses even further out of balance.

“I wonder where my life will go after this.” she whispered to herself as the lights in the castle, for it was a proper castle now, were slowly extinguished.

She watched out her window as soon the only lights were in the corners of the castle as the watchmen kept the grounds safe. She never interacted with the men in the castle, other than her husband and the doctors he hired. She didn’t interact with a lot of the women either.

Human life was far more different than she thought it would be when she had been plucked from her forest home.

---

Written for this week’s Trifecta challenge:

http://www.trifectawritingchallenge.com/2013/11/trifecta-week-105.html