He moaned in agony. “I want to forget it happened, Nanaya, but Ican’t. Because it felt amazing until I was fucking fire-hosed in yeti cum. I’m going to be thinking about this on my deathbed. This might be the most traumatic day of my life.”
She was still giggling when he turned out the light, considering his words.If this is the most traumatic day of his life, that’s progress, right?Ris wasn’t sure, wasn’t sure of anything other than she never wanted to eat Jello again, but it certainlyfeltlike progress, sticky as it may have arrived.
Lurielle
She learned him by weight first.
Giving birth had not been the dramatic, television-worthy event she’d once imagined. She had a scheduled delivery day. An assigned surgery time. She had weeks to pack her little bag, ensuring her new bedroom slippers and cozy bathrobe were included, several pairs of lounge pants with matching button-up tops, enough underwear to last her through until she was a grandmother, a stack of ugly yet supportive nursing bras, her toiletry bag, and several pairs of grippy socks.
“You don’t need to worry about buying any pads; we provide them here,” the nurse had said seriously at one of her last appointments. “But you’ll want to make sure you buy some high-waisted panties that won’t rub on your incision.”
It had been all she could do to keep from bursting out laughing. Khash had squeezed her hand, fighting his own smile at the time, letting loose as soon as they were safe in the car.
“Hoooowee, darlin’, if they only knew. You could wrap those drawers around the whole nursery wing and still have room tospare. I’m surprised that the new aviation club hasn’t contacted you for parachute rental yet.”
“Stop it,” she had wheezed, struggling with her seatbelt. “You know laughing makes me pee! Don’t act like you don’t love my big panties.”
“You know I do,” he reminded her, taking the belt from her hand, carefully maneuvering it under the massive swell of her body, clicking it into place. “My favorite drawers in the world.”
No, giving birth was not the prime time spectacle she’d mentally prepared herself for, but Lurielledidthink she had given an award-worthy performance those last few weeks. An elf completely devoid of dignity, her body no longer hers. Her control over her bowels — tentative, at best; her ability to sleep — nonexistent. She was suffering an acne breakout like a teenager, her back achedallthe time, and she was on the verge of needing to walk around with a wheelbarrow to carry her tits.
The baby had reached a healthy size and weight, her only goal in all of this, but she hadn’t been able to see her legs in more than a month. The few unfortunate times she’d caught sight of herself in a full-length mirror had been alarming. She wasn’t shaped the way any healthy being was meant to be shaped. Her stomach was so distended by then that standing at all hurt, a relief that her bed was the only place she was meant to be.
There had been a terrible moment, maybe a month after she’d been formally put on medical bed rest, working from home and prohibited from lifting anything heavier than a sandwich, when she’d gotten cocky. She’d been in the homestretch by then, more than nine months down, the end of a visible landmark on the horizon, which only made worse the fact that she’d put it all on the line for no reason at all, risking them both.
Bed restwas something to put on paper, she had mentally decided. Something HR could understand, something that indicated her out-of-office message was to be taken seriously.It meant she wasn’t supposed to do anything . . . but that hadn’t meant she could donothing, she had decided. At least, until she’d slipped and fallen in the kitchen, thankfully coming straight down on her ass, right as Khash was coming home for the day.
It resulted in a terrifying evening in the hospital, not getting the all-clear to go home until late that night. The sonogram technician hadn’t been the smiling amphibious woman she was used to. A grim-faced harpy instead, one who spoke little and seemed not at all interested in reassuring her that everything was fine.
That antiseptic smell was going to be trapped in her lungs forever, Lurielle thought, sniffing wretchedly in the room she had been placed in to wait for the doctor. It was what she deserved. She had been stupid and cocky, so certain that she knew better, certain that she knew the limits of her body and could do what she wanted.
Nearly ten months of being so careful, of tracking her calories and protein, of taking vitamins and doing stretches, preparing the house, preparing their lives, thrown away in a heartbeat, all because she had wanted to water the garden herself.
She wasn’t sure when she’d started crying, only knowing that once she’d started, she had been unable to stop. She would never be a pretty crier, she would never be as nonchalant and brash as Ris, she would never be as poised and elegant as Silva. But she haddesperatelywanted to believe she could be a good mother.You can’t even keep him safe while he’s still inside you.
When the doctor had finally arrived, she had been sympathetic, but only to a point. “Bed rest meansbed rest, Lurielle,” she said bluntly.
The hand Khash had wrapped around her own had tightened then, his muscles emphasizing the doctor’s point by squeezing her small fingers with a near-crushing force.
“You got very lucky that the placenta didn’t tear away. For as big as he is at this point . . . Just remember, your body is doing something extraordinary right now, beyond what it was built for. You got lucky this time. Don’t let there be a next time.”
The ride home that night was silent. She had known he was furious with her. An accident would have been just that — an accident. It could have been worse, she’d tried to convince herself. Khash could have reminded her that he’d hired a landscaper for the season, a chiseled cyclops who had half a dozen accounts on their block alone, who kept everything neat, requiring nothing from her beyond doing the one thing she wasmeantto be doing — resting.
Instead, he’d been silent, and that was somehow worse than if he’d shouted at her.
They had gone straight to bed that night, Khash mumbling to himself about needing to wake up in just a few hours to face the daily gridlock on the highway to the city. She hadn’t been sure if she was relieved or heartbroken that he didn’t say anything else to her after the front door had been locked behind them, rolling over once he’d climbed into bed, falling asleep almost immediately.
Lurielle had feigned sleep the following morning, listening to him get up, hearing the sounds of the shower, the sound of him dressing, the faraway noise of him in the kitchen, and finally, the sound of the garage door rolling down, his car pulling away at last, leaving her alone in the echoing house.
The floodgates had reopened almost immediately.
“I’m sorry, little one,” she’d burbled, shoulders racked with sobs she had been unable to control. It was her job to keep him safe. Safe from harm, safe from danger.You can’t even keep him safe from yourself. She desperately wanted to be a good mother, wishing just as desperately in that moment that she hada mother to call, someone to turn to for comfort, to turn to in guilt, to turn to for help. She had no one but herself.
No one but herself, and that was all she needed, Lurielle decided at length, her tears long-since dried on the pillow.
You’re a fucking engineer. Get it together! You’ve had projects go pear-shaped before. Did you lie in bed and cry then? No. You course-corrected, found a better solution, locked in, and did your godsdamn job. You can make a healthy baby. Building things is what you were meant to do.
The next month was spent doing everything right. Reading every parenting book the Cambric Creek library had for her to check out, delivered to her doorstep, and brought in each evening when he got home. Read the back scroll of every parenting server she found on DiscHorse, joined every private forum she could find on CrowdJournal. In-person meet-ups weren’t possible at that point, but she had already scoured the community center’s website, making note of the half-dozen different groups they could join once they were out of the house.
