"What do you mean?" I ask, but she ignores the question. Tears are streaming readily down her cheeks now and I start to feel frantic. I grab her wrists again, only to stop her angry little shoves and make herlookat me. The despair shining in her eyes feels like a spear to the gut. "Tell me, Ah-Lanah."
"What good would it do?" she sniffles, shrugging and dropping her gaze, staring unseeing at my lit-up chest. "You can't make Josh un-fuck that girl," her words are a whisper. "You can't take me back to Earth. And you can't fix-." She closes her eyes and takes a shuddering breath, sagging against my hold of her.
"What is it?" My mind is racing right now. If I could fly her beyond the stars, back to her home, would I? I don't even know what a'Josh'is, but apparently, it is important. And that last part... something tells me, that last part - the words she cannot say are the most important ones for me to hear. What can I not fix for her? What is it?
"You know what?" she says, pulling herself free of my grip. "It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that I don't get to happily announce it, or have a baby shower. It doesn't even matter that you'll probably be gone for weeks or that you guys just hand off your own kids to the other guys to deal with so you can carry on playing with your spears. It doesn't matter that I've got to do this on my own. My mom did."
I can barely keep up with the words flowing from her like a rushing river, but - her mother? Her mother who has sadly passed onto The Promised Lands of her people? My throat feels suddenly tight and my heart-stars spike with searing pain.
"Ah-Lanah, are you... are youdying?" As soon as the words leave me I want to scramble them back. I want to scoop them up and shove them back in my mouth as if speaking them will make it true.
Ah-Lanah halts her frantic talking and blinks up at me with a furrowed brow. "Dying?"
"You are ill and I-... Ah-Lanah, please, just tell me. Maybe our healers can-"
"I'm not dying," she says, the relief blooming through me like the twin-suns' reappearance after a storm. "I'm pregnant."
She said the word with finality. Like the word itself was grave and meant to make me quake where I stand.
I do not know what this word means.
"Preg...nant?" I repeat, nodding my head slowly like I have a single clue what she means but am just making sure I heard her correctly.
Ah-Lanah cocks a hip. "Yes."
"And this is...bad?"
She throws her hands up in the air, exasperated with me. "Well,yeah. I'm stranded on a damn jungle planet with no proper maternity care, surrounded by guys who apparently all hatched out of weird egg things and I don't even want to think about how I'll cope going into labor around here." She starts to stalk away, irritated, and I follow, only making it a few steps before she whirls around again, pointing a finger directly at me. "Andyou!Mr'you-could-ask-the-impossible-of-me'," she says, mocking my words from nights before. "I can't, can I? I can't ask you to help me with this because a) it's not your baby, b) you apparently think it's fine to hand over a kid to someone else to raise and c) you don't even really like me, so I don't see-"
I cut her off by grabbing her again, holding her shoulders this time, and making her look at me. She stares up like she's begging for me to fix everything she just said, but how can I do that when I don't know what half of it even means? "I..." she watches me, her jaw set. "I like you... a little bit," I try, attempting to tease out a less frantic female with humor. Ah-Lanah blinks and then snorts out a giggle, her breath fanning over my arms, causing ripples of skin-stars to dance up the muscle there.
"I tell you I'm pregnant, andthat'swhat you latch onto?"
But then... then, another part of her tirade of words echoes in my skull.It's not your baby.
Baby?
A youngling?
"Ah-Lanah, are you..." she looks up at me expectantly. I wet my lips and try again. "Are you ready to gift a youngling to the tribe?" I eye her warily, not willing to let my hopes soar just yet.
This question seemed to make her even angrier.
CHAPTER 13: ALANA
I storm away from Mavyx before I can yell at him some more.Am I ready to gift a youngling to the tribe?Uh, no. I'm not gifting anything to anyone. This ismybaby.
Mavyx is following along behind me of course, but I can't talk to him any longer. I'd already blurted out things I'd rather keep hidden for a while longer - just until I feel more confident in myself and the path my life is going down now. But his incessant questions -gah!And then he'd actually thought I was dying?! As much as the big guy irritated the hell out of me, I couldn't leave him thinking that.
And I get that the Trixikka culture is very different from ours. I understand that he doesn't have a clue what having a baby would mean to a human, let alone a woman. All his life, the only females he's ever known have been hidden away behind that Temple wall, and occasionally, they'd roll an egg-child out and everyone has a party.
The whole thing is so weird.
"Ah-Lanah!" he calls after me. I'm weaving through the maze of huts until I abruptly run out of them, stumbling across the edge of the village with nothing but dark jungle to greet me. I take two steps forward beforehe'sin front of me again. "You're not going in there again. Talk to me. What doespreg-nantmean?"
I screw my eyes shut and sigh. Well, the cat is well and truly out of the bag now anyway.
"There is a baby," I say slowly, pointing to my still-flat belly - no,scratch that. My belly hasneverbeen flat. But it's about to get a whole lot rounder, for sure - "growing in my belly. And before you ask," I say, holding up a hand, "no, I didn't eat it. A man put it there and I hate him for it." I'm about to stomp away again before I pivot and turn to face Mavyx, although, I can't seem to look him in those pretty golden eyes of his, so I stare at his chest, instead. "Actually, I don't hate him for that. I hate him for fucking someone else when he was meant to be mine," I mumble, not quite sure why it was important for me to explainthat, of all things.
