Five years of him gone.Are you family?And now he was back.
We could have been. We’re supposed to be.
“I’m sorry, bunny. Just take a deep breath, okay? Let’s calm down. Why don’t we wash your face and put your shoes on, okay? We’re going to pack your backpack, and then you’re going to visit with Nana for lunch.”
Five years without him, only three of those years of feeling as if she had an actual purpose in the world. And now, Silva had no idea what to do next.
Lurielle
The second time around, she already knew the choreography.
At least, that’s what she thought.
The day the amphibious ultrasound tech smiled and announced, “It’s a girl,” Lurielle understood things would be different. The mother of a boy was a mirror angled out to the world, pride and achievement, raising him to be a respectful, emotionally well-regulated little gentleman. The mother of a girl was a mirror angled inward, reflecting the trauma within, a test of her own ability to let go of everything she understood those mother-daughter relationships to encompass to prevent causing her own little girl the same harm.Shewould do better.Shewould be different. She’d already proven she was great at this.
“It’s a girl,” Khash burbled above her, crying as if the news were a shooting star being presented to him wrapped in pink tissue paper, his tears wet at her temple when he bent to kiss her. Lurielle pressed into the kiss, squeezing his hand tightly.
“It’s a girl,” she echoed in a whisper, feeling the foundation of her universe shift.
Kora arrived in the world with none of the meticulously prepared planning that harkened Kael’s delivery. She should have knownthenthat failure was a dark-horse entry in the race.
Lurielle hadn’t even left work yet. The baby was smaller. Still an orc, still requiring those extra few months of gestation, but nowhere near the size and weight of her brother. She had fretted. Khash had tried not to. The doctor assured them repeatedly that it was normal.
“Don’t forget, Lurielle. You’re an elf. It stands to reason that one of your children would inherit more of your physiology. The heartbeat is strong, her spine is well-formed. She looks great in there. As long as you feel her moving and you stay on top of your nutritional needs, I don’t think we have a problem.”
Bedrest hadn’t been required. Further proof that she was crushing it. She hadn’t been as sick the second time around, didn’t feel as though the weight of her belly would tip her over if she stood, and there hadn’t been any reason for her to leave work as early as she had with Kael.
She wasn’t the slightest bit ashamed to admit — it was nice.
She loved her job, and that hadn’t changed with motherhood, not even with the second pregnancy. If anything, it gave her even more reason to take good care of herself, to stay active, to ensure she was using the little under-the-desk peddler she’d ordered, keeping her brain active and her attention diverted, preventing herself from spiraling.
She was in the employee bathroom when it happened.
She’d felt a heavy pressure all morning, as if the baby were practicing for a luge run, creeping ever lower. The pressure on her bladder had been excruciating. She had just gone to the bathroom for at least the thirty-seventh time that morning, was leaning over the sink after washing her hands, applying lip balm, when it happened. A warm gush of fluid, and for a minute,Lurielle assumed she had pissed herself just a few feet away from the toilets.
She was hiding in the stall, waiting for Ris to bring her the change of clothes she kept in the bottom drawer of her desk, when the first wave of contractions hit.
She’d never had contractions before. Hadn’t needed to. After all, Kael’s delivery had been penciled onto her calendar like a hair appointment. By the time Ris arrived, huge panties and loose skirt in tow, Lurielle was keening against the bathroom stall wall, breathless over the pain that arrived in ten-minute intervals thereafter. She had been whisked off to Healers’ and prepped for surgery. Khash had barely made it on time.
It was a portent, she understood now. A foretelling of what the future would hold, because if Lurielle thought motherhood was easy, that she was crushing it, Kora had appeared to test everything she thought she knew.
When she was placed on Lurielle’s chest, she learned the weight of her tiny daughter.
Bird boned and furious, her little hands balled into fists, her face screwed up in absolute rage, screaming her fury out into the world for the first time.
Khash wept like a baby. “She’s perfect. Look at her, Lurielle. She’s perfect.”
Perfectwas a terrifying word. One she already knew was impossible to attain. Especially for a little girl and her mother.
The first night home, Kora didn’t sleep at all.
Eating and sleeping were all Kael liked to do as a newborn, sleeping at reasonable intervals like a benevolent prince, granting his entire weary kingdom regular rest. Kora viewed nighttime as a challenge. A test. One she intended to beat.
Lurielle knew the choreography, she told herself, settling with the baby in her sturdy rocking chair, the chair she had been rocking in for two years by then. She knew the steps —swaddling, white noise, rocking, a new position. Kora rejected them all. She rooted furiously, gouging Lurielle’s skin with her little razor blade nails, rejecting the breast, demanding it, and then rejecting it once more, like a tiny lawyer finding fault in the terms of the contract.
By the time she allowed Khash to tap in and relieve her, it was nearly the middle of the night and she was soaked in sweat, her heartbeat thumping at the back of her tongue. She let him take over while she disappeared into the living room to pump, crying furious tears. Furious with herself, becauseshewas supposed to begoodat this.
They had opted to take parental leave together this time, knowing it would be a different beast with a newborn and toddler, and if they hadn’t, Lurielle wasn’t sure if she would have survived that first month at all. Those early days unspooled like a thread being pulled too quickly, snarling before an order could be established in the way it puddled, her tiny daughter holding the string.
