Is that what you wanted?

Only yesterday I was thinking how I rarely ever get angry. How I always let things roll off my back. it turns out I was giving my own life a little ironic foreshadowing.. because today, I got .. mad.

There have been subtle pains arching across my belly for 2 days now, perhaps brought on by the walk in the markets, or the sudden fear I had felt last night, or maybe just the excitement of the Love Wars. Maybe it was just closing in on Time. The whys do not matter, the pain is there. Lei has been sticking close to me. She can sense it.

She and I went to the fires tonight to go and see Fonce, she wanted to show him her doll and I wanted to show him my wagon, or at least step back into his comfortable wingspan. There was a place there for me and I felt like I had slipped a little to far to the left.

I wish I could calm down enough to remember how it happened. I was happy, I was smiling. Fonce seemed.. like himself again and I was going to ask him if he had seen the paintings. That’s when they started in on him. Silken and Seveya, two women who I thought cared for him. I had only recently learned of his aversion to the topic but I didn’t think it actually applied to being pregnant.. Women are pregnant all over the place on the plains of course, he doesn’t avoid that.. only the discussions of birth. The act of it. I do not know why and I won’t be asking yet. I will just respect the space a person needs to deal with certain things. Private things.

Silken was, I think only trying to frighten me, tease me about a baby being born backwards or something. Women could die from that sort of thing.. women have and, honestly, I could too. I was comfortable though, I had been seeing a healer of the outer wagons, who lived close to me. She had assured me that things were progressing well. My son was shifting into the lower part of my belly. Perhaps that’s what got her going, the fact that I had dropped.

The thing was that she kept going and Seveya jumped right in, asking questions and egging her on.. and laughing. I saw it coming like an ambling bosk, but with a purpose.

Birth, Babies, Blood.

Fonce rose and left. leaving my daughter bewildered and worried, leaving me without the answers to questions I had been unable to ask. I rose quickly and took Leis hand, I did not wish them well as I left and I hardly realized Mezoo had arrived.

I was angry and I did not like it, not one little bit! I did not return to the fires that night, the tightening I had felt was growing in intensity. By the time the fires were dying.. I already knew and Lei, wide eyed and trying to be brave ran to fetch the healer..

But she returned with Mezoo.