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 Posted: Tue Jun 06, 2006 4:37 pm
"You foolish girl!" an old woman's voice pierced through the tranquility of the evening woods, interrupting the steady chirr of the crickets and the whisper of the leaves.
Y'Cora, known to the Arlin Clan simply as Wise One, hobbled back and forth in front of the young girl that stood before her. It was to be assumed that it was the old crone's attempt at pacing. "You muddy your family's blood and then come running to me to fix things..."
"Wise One, it wasn't as though I'd MEANT to..." the young girl murmured, shame burning in her cheeks. She was called Alcippe, eldest daughter of Cheiftain Lunus, and in place to take over his duties when his time had passed.
"Of course not. Of COURSE not. No one EVER means for this to happen." Wise One snorted, continuing to pace. Her age-greyed eyes were narrowed both in anger and in thought as her grey hair fell about her once-lustrous horn which was now cracked and dulled to reflect her years.
"What should I do...?"
"I TOLD you what you should have done when you came to me about that...that man!"
"Lamkin..." she gently corrected.
"To the hellfires with his name, girl!" the old woman sneered, bringing her walking stick down with a resounding clack against a stone imbedded in the woods floor. "When you told me to meet you here, my better senses told me that it was something like this..."
"Forgive me, Wise One..." Alcippe whispered, bowing her head. "Please...I know my father will never accept the child as one of our clan and you are the only one I can turn to now. I beg you -- what must I do?"
"Be rid of it." the old woman said curtly, making Alcippe jolt as though she'd been slapped. "Be rid of it now before you start to show, and perhaps your father will be none the wiser. That is, if he hasn't already smelled that outsider's stink on you..."
"Stop it!" the younger unicorn whimpered, trying her best to keep tears at bay. "You don't know him! You--You have no idea what its like to--"
"To have a marriage arranged for you from day one? To have duties imposed on you that aren't fair but you get no say? Aye, I know what its like, girl." Wise One sighed, relenting a bit. "And I know that it isn't easy...that's why I'm helping you before you make a mistake that you will regret for the rest of your days."
"But surely there's a better answer." she said, placing a hand on her still-flat belly protectively. "Maybe if I--"
"You know as well as I do, girl, that blood sings to blood. Mark me, if you let that child live, eventually it will find its way back to you."
She wondered, really, why that was such a bad thing...surely she could explain things. Surely there would be room for reconciliation. The child was, after all, borne of her and Lamkin....it would have its father's understanding and patience.
"Are you paying attention??" the old woman snapped, bringing Alcippe forcefully out of her woolgathering.
"Sorry...I'm sorry..." she said quickly, watching as Wise One withdrew a small glimmering something from the folds of her robes and presented it to her. It was a small unimportant-looking glass vial which was handed to her with no pomp or circumstance whatsoever.
"As I said...I had anticipated this may be what you wanted to speak to me about."
"What is it...?" Alcippe said warily, examining the green-gray contents.
"That's not important." the old woman said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "What IS important, is that it will get the job done. Drink it, and then spend a night in the woods. Return to us when it has done its work."
Heavy clarity dawned on the young woman....the contents of this vial were a poison. A poison that would kill and expell her unborn baby. Quick, easy, and for all but her, it would be painless.
"I see you thinking about it. DON'T think about it. Just do it." Wise One told her sternly. "The life of a chieftess means making sacrifices and repairing mistakes. You must consider this as your first lesson in both...now please..." She said, motioning Alcippe to leave.
The young unicorn stood numbly for a moment, her large tapered ears wilting before nodding once and turning to plod away, trying her best to keep her head high.
Sacrifices. Repairing mistakes.
As much as she hated to admit it, Wise One was right.
Something needed to be done.
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Posted: Tue Jun 06, 2006 5:19 pm
She had selected a low riverside cliff with a grassy top to sit upon, the moon bathing her alabaster pelt and making her blue tattoos stand out in ephemeral glory against her skin.
Except...there was nothing glorious about her. Not this night.
Alcippe turned the glass vial over in her hands warily and observing it from every angle. The premise was simple enough, of course...lift it to her lips, drink, and then wait for it to work and all of this would be gone.
A mistake would be erased.
Along with someone who had not yet had a chance to live.
It would be the best for her family, the tribe, and likely for Lamkin as well in the longrun....while he would, no doubt, have wanted to look into the eyes of their child, her father would take his hatred of the young man to the next step and begin a full-blown witchhunt for him.
A shudder tore through her and tears spilled from her eyes. She could not do that to him. ....but could she do this?
It wasn't a matter of could she do it, she quickly realized....it was a matter of HAVING to do it. Some stories simply did not have a happy ending, she assured herself. And in the case of her child, this would have to be one of them.
Perhaps, if she did it quickly....
Steeling herself, taking several deep breaths, Alcippe uncorked the vial and quickly brought it to her mouth, tilting it back.
SKREEEE!!! *klink!*
She scarcely had time to realize what was happening before the vial had been snatched from her hand by an unseen source. Alarmed, she recoiled and looked up in time to see a dark shape circle the air overhead once and drop something into the water a few feet in front of her.
The vial...!
The thief screeched again and then dove downward, divebombing her once as its claws snatched at her hair and ears, making Alcippe duck and cry out, grabbing for her stave which she swung wildly in the darkness.
"Get out of here!" she cried at it. "Get away! Haven't you done enough??"
After a moment, she stopped swinging, thinking that whatever it was must have gone. What in the world was--
A sudden weight suddenly alighted on the end of the wooden stick, making her jolt. There were the sound of feathers flapping and then a series of avian growls and deep-throated chirps. Carefully, she drew the stave closer, her green eyes focusing on the shape roosting there.
A red-tailed hawk looked back at her as though it had every business being there and cocked its head sharply to the left.
It was far too late in the day for hawks, her mind informed her dutifully. FAR too late.
"...were you sent to stop me?" she whispered. The hawk blinked its beady eyes in response and cocked its head the other way, making a confused noise. Alcippe heaved a deep-chested sigh. All in one night being told to kill her child, nearly doing so, and now she was talking to a bird to top things off.
"I didn't want to do this, you know..." she grumbled. "I--I have no choice, that's all. I could never keep this child...what sort of alternative IS there?"
The hawk paused, preening at one of its wings for a moment before taking flight again suddenly, over the treetops and flying straight in the direction of the Outside.
There was a place, her father had warned, beyond the safety of the woods. Beyond where any of the spirits' blessings could protect them should they venture out. The people there were godless, he'd said. They were barbarians who were slaves to their own technology and thought only of themselves and their big noisy killing machines.
They were evil, he'd said. But...then again...he had said the same of Lamkin. And Lamkin, while he was many things, was certainly not evil.
Perhaps this was a sign...in fact, she was certain of it. The hawk was clearly a messenger of some sort, here to show her the way of a path she had not yet considered. A path that lay beyond the trees and somewhere Outside.
Rising slowly to her feet, Alcippe stared in the direction the hawk had gone for several long moments before turning quietly back toward her village.
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Posted: Tue Jun 06, 2006 5:49 pm
She had thought that lying to her father about her reason for taking an extended absense would be terrifying.
She had thought that leaving the woods behind and stepping into a new place would be terrifying.
Apparantly, Alcippe had not yet known the true meaning of 'terrifying' until she, through much difficulty and gesticulation, had found her way to the Maban Mabwysiad adoption center and now sat across from a flame-haired woman dressed neatly and tapping the end of her pen patiently on a stack of papers.
"You...don't know your name?" the woman asked in a language Alcippe could not understand as she squirmed uncomfortably in her chair. Alcippe was not the first woman to come to MM who was unable to speak english, but the few people they kept in reserve to translate were unfamiliar with the language this woman spoke. "Name." she said again, and then pointed to herself. "Skye." following which, she pointed to the young unicorn across from her expectantly.
Skye? Was she called Skye, Alcippe wondered?
"Alcippe..." she said warily, pointing at herself and wincing in case this might be a curse in these strange peoples' language. Skye, instead, quickly scribbled it down on the form. She was not going to ask her how to spell it, all things considered.
The other things -- hair, eyes, height, weight -- could all be eyeballed simply by looking at her and were likewise ticked off in a similar fashion. Now came the hard part.
"I need you to look at this list and choose who you would like to raise your baby." Skye said, speaking slowly despite the fact she knew the woman was unable to understand her as she opened the manilla folder of prospective parents and slid it across the table toward Alcippe carefully.
The unicorn woman drew back, alarmed by the photographs. The shiny pieces of paper were like looking into several small pools of water and seeing reflections looking back that were not her own. All of them smiling as though they were happy to be there. Tentatively, she reached out to touch one, almost expecting the image to ripple away.
"That one?" Skye smiled, leaning forward to see who she had picked. Alcippe's finger was resting on the photograph of a grey anthro tabby cat. "That's Ajhira." she said, placing her finger on the same photograph.
"Ah-jeer-ah..." Alcippe repeated slowly, trying the title out.
"She's been on our waiting list for quite some time, really...that's why she's on the first page of the folder."
Alcippe really wished she knew what the woman was saying....she SOUNDED kind, at least...but who was this Ajhira she was speaking of? Did it have something to do with the paper she'd touched?
"Let's see if she's at home, hmm?" saying so, Skye picked up the phone beside her and dialed as Alcippe's eyes widened. She would never get used to a world where people kept snakes on their desk that they pressed to their ear and spoke into.
A conversation took place in which the strange woman spoke into the snake and the snake said nothing in return. A few moments later, perhaps finally realizing that the snake was not going to speak to her, she watched the red-haired woman lay the snake back on its rock.
"She'll be down as soon as they finish dinner." she informed her.
Alcippe awkwardly smiled back, hoping that whatever she'd just gotten herself into would end up being helpful in the long run.
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Posted: Tue Jun 06, 2006 7:32 pm
Ajhira sat in the greeting room that Maban Mabwysiad graciously provided families-to-be to speak with the mothers of their future child(ren). Alcippe sat on the other side, huddled in a large comfortable chair and looking generally awkward. She recognized Ajhira from her picture, but who was she?
"Hi there..." Ajhira said gently. Alcippe's ears swivelled into an alert position, but she said nothing. "I'm Ajhira, its nice to meet you." She had been warned before going in that this woman did not speak english, but that didn't mean she couldn't assure her with her tone of voice that she meant well... "I was beginning to think I must not have qualified...I put in our application a long time ago. Well-before we had Sharika. That's...um...well, that's our daughter. She's adopted as well."
Alcippe stared. This cat was talking a mile a minute and she didn't understand a word of it. At least she sounded as though she meant well.
"I suppose that you'll be living with us until the baby is born..." Ajhira went on. "We have a spare room for you that we can fix up and use as the baby's nursey later. If you like, we can go shopping tomorrow for new sheets and curtains. Maybe even paint it."
Still nothing. This....would be awkward.
"My husband Felix and my daughter Sharika are both in the waiting room...when we're all together we can be a bit much for some people, but I'd love you to meet them." she chuckled.
Alcippe hesitated and then hesitantly forced a laugh as well, not knowing what she was laughing at.
"I guess all that's left is to sign the release paperwork, right...?" Ajhira sighed, folding her hands in her lap. "Unless you have any objections..." It wasn't really fair to ask her since she had no idea what was being said...the deer-in-the-headlights cluelessness in her eyes spoke volumes. A translator would have been wonderful....REALLY wonderful.
Alcippe lowered her head and vented a deep sigh of frustration. She was stupid for thinking she could do this...all she had to do was wait out the pregnancy and give the child over to these people, but it had been less than four hours in this odd world and already she was frustrated beyond all words to tell it with her lack of understanding. There was so much her father hadn't told her about the rest of the world...she had thought that life in the woods was the be-all and end-all of existance.
Ajhira knit her brow in concern and then stood, crossing the room to place a hand gingerly on the unicorn's shoulder as she flinched and looked up at her worriedly.
"Its going to be okay." she said softly. "All right? It'll be okay."
"Okay..." Alcippe repeated. It seemed like a comforting word, meaningless utterance that it was to her at present. Ajhira smiled warmly and gave Alcippe's shoulder a squeeze.
"Come on. Let's go say hi to the rest of the family."
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Posted: Tue Jun 06, 2006 9:54 pm
Dear Diary,
I'm really not sure how it is I'm supposed to feel right now. Ajhira had never told me that she'd signed on for an adoption waiting list. She said she'd done it as sort of a grief reflex after learning she and I would never be able to have kids on our own, and that I can excuse. I just wish she'd TOLD me so that I could be prepared for it when they called saying they'd found a mother who wanted us to adopt her baby.
She said she didn't think anything would come of it and that's why she'd not said anything. She didnt' want to get my hopes up. I'm not sure if I believe that, but...what can I do now?
So now we have this new housemate. She's clearly from a tribal community of some sort -- doesn't speak english, is decorated in all sorts of blue tattoos, and is...well, I can't think of a nice way to say it, so I'll say she's barely wearing the leathers she's got on. We might need to see about getting her into some normal maternity clothing while she's staying with us. Its not that WE mind, but the neighbors will start to talk.
That and Sharika wanted to know why it is that the new girl gets to run around half-naked but she can't. It took me MONTHS to convince her that everybody wears clothes all of the time, and this might be a setback. The last thing I need is another call from the Jacobs complaining that she's naked and jumping around in their birdbath again.
--Felix
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Posted: Wed Jun 07, 2006 3:01 am
Diary,
This is so exciting! Alcippe has been with us for nearly a month now. She's beginning to show her pregnancy, we've done up the nursery/guest room in a celery green color.
We'd worried at first about the language barrier, but Alcippe is learning her way around the house and how to convey what she wants and needs. She's even learning a bit of english here and there and seems much more at-ease with herself. I'm still not sure where she came from, but its not my place to ask her about that sort of thing.
Sharika is very excited at the prospect of a new baby brother or sister, or perhaps just at the prospect of not being the youngest anymore. I'll need to take her aside one of these days and go over the ground rules for the new baby with her. I'm sure she can handle them, she's a very smart girl, but it never hurts to be safe.
Must go, dinner's not going to make itself!
--Ajhira
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Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2006 11:00 am
Alcippe curled in a lawn chair on the back patio, watching the sun sink behind the clouds as her alabaster skin absorbed the first cool kisses of the coming evening breeze.
Life, at first, had been very chaotic at this strange residence with these equally-strange people. Felix and Ajhira obviously meant well, but they were so very noisy. Not at all like her people who dwelled in the moonlight and were swift and silent as the breeze in all they did.
Ajhira made her nervous because the woman was very much like a little finch....constantly on the move, constantly twittering, constantly trying to make conversation with her. Felix was moreso of a calming presense, but he was constantly parked in front of that horrid clickclickclick machine watching jumbles of words and symbols appear on the odd portal in front of him. And Sharika...well....she avoided the little girl whenever possible. She didn't much appreciate having her hair randomly chewed on or being accosted with a blue marker to attempt to augment her tribal tattoos.
But she had adjusted as well as she was able, learning their language in bits and pieces, and even becoming bold enough to venture out of the house with them occasionally. And all the while, the child within her continued to grow.
Placing her hands lightly over her bulging stomach, Alcippe sighed. Things might have been different, she thought with chagrin. Had she stood her ground against her father and the rest of the tribe, perhaps he finally would have relented and accepted his impending grandchild. Perhaps with him or her, they would have accepted Lamkin as well.
It was nice to dream, at least....
There was the flutter of wings and a throaty squark from above, making her idly turn her head up to regard the red-tailed hawk that perched on the edge of the drainpipe and glared down at her with its calculating stare. Its presense no longer alarmed her as the bird had become quite a common occurrance anymore, seeming to watch over her more and more intensely as the pregnancy progressed.
Closing her eyes, she tried to bring a clear picture of her lover to mind....Lamkin had been unlike anything she had ever encountered before. Imposing and dark, the only flecks of color on him having been the pale blue of his eyes, like twin stars in an endless night sky.
He was not unicorn-borne as she and her tribe were, and on his back had rested a pair of powerful black wings. His very gaze commanded obedience, and yet with her, he had been gentle. He had sympathized with her situation and had wanted to heal her with his touch. With his presense. With his love...
A smile touched her lips as the hawk readjusted its stance again and turned to preen at one of its wings.
~You will be just as bold as your father...~ she thought directly to the baby within her. ~You will not fall into any of the same traps I've fallen into. You will answer to no one but those who wish to look out for you.~
As if on cue, there was a strong pang from within her as the baby kicked and shifted, making her wince a bit, her green eyes cracking open. It would not be long now...another week, perhaps. Two, if she was lucky.
As the stars began to wink on, Alcippe grudgingly rose from her chair and moved to head back into the house. She had been warned that the night draft might be bad for the child and, against everything she had been brought up to do, she had begun sleeping at night.
It would be hard to explain to the others when she returned, but at least it would be easier than explaining a child...
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Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2006 1:01 pm
"Alcippe, what's wrong?? What is it??" Ajhira asked breathlessly as she bustled into the darkened guest room/nursery where the unicorn woman was curled tightly on her side, her face a mask of agony. "Alcippe??"
"Hurts..." she moaned. "Hurts bad..."
"What hurts? Is it the baby?" She reached out to turn the prone woman over gently, feeling her tail bristle as her fingertips encountered moisture.
Oh god, please don't let that be blood...
When her fingertips came back sans-red, she was momentarily relieved but then instilled with a new sort of panic. The moisture in question saturated the lower sheets and the mattress...it was far too much to be any sort of "accident", which left only one possibility....
"Alcippe? Listen to me, okay? Just listen....your water broke. We need to get you to the hospital now."
"Broke? Broken??" Alcippe whimpered in alarm, her hands going protectively to her protruding abdomen. "No..." In the snatches of english she'd learned, she knew that the term "broken" was never a good thing and was often associated with something Sharika had smashed beyond recognition. Was Ajhira telling her that her baby was broken??
"Shhh...nono, its okay." Ajhira tried to assure her, sitting on the edge of the mattress and gently stroking the younger woman's hair. Now was not the time for pandemonium... "We need to go see the doctor." she explained.
"Doctor..." Alcippe repeated, wincing as another contraction hit.
"Yes, Doctor. The one we went and visited last time? The one who put the jelly on your stomach so we could see the baby pictures?"
Alcippe remembered. It had not been the most pleasant of experiences and she still did not understand how it was that everyone else was seeing a baby in the grainy smudges of black-and-white when she saw only meaningless masses and twitches. That wasn't what a baby looked like...
"No doctor." she said decidedly. "Hurts."
"The doctor needs to help the baby come out." Ajhira sighed, wondering if she ought to dash off and awaken Felix. There was no way they were having a home delivery...they were not prepared in any way and there were far too many risks.
"What's going on...?" Felix's sleep slurred voice inquired as he poked his head into the room, blinking owlishly at the two females.
"Go get dressed and start the car." Ajhira ordered, making him immediately snap into more of an awake state.
"Why?" he questioned. "What's--" and then his eyes fell to Alcippe. If possible, he seemed to go an even more ashen shade of white as he stumbled backward, nearly falling as his ankles tangled together. "The car...!! Right!!" he stammered, turning and skittering away.
Alcippe's eyes squeezed shut, tears rolling from beneath her clenched lids and sliding down her cheeks. She was aware of Ajhira's touch and her voice repeatedly assuring her everything would be 'okay', but would it really? It was an incredibly frightening feeling knowing that something was about to happen that she would be unable to stop.
No one had warned her it would be this way. As another contraction hit, making her feel as though she was being squeezed in an invisible fist, she drew a deep breath and tried to ignore the clammy sweat that was matting her hair and the weave of discomfort she was entangled in.
Perhaps....if she wished hard enough, it would all go away....
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Posted: Wed Jun 21, 2006 4:26 pm
The drive to the hospital was brief, filled with skids and fishtails, and Felix's spastic yelps and demands that the late-night traffic get out of his way. By some grace of god, however, they managed to arrive at the hospital where three attendants hurriedly bundled Alcippe onto a stretcher and bustled her up to the maternity ward.
"What do you MEAN I can't go in with her??" Ajhira demanded, distracted from the mountain of paperwork she'd been given to fill out on Alcippe's behalf.
"I'm sorry, but if you're not family..." the secretary began.
"But I am! ....sort of..." she argued. "She's been living with us over the past few months because I'm adopting her child."
"Hold on just one minute, please..." the woman at the desk stated, snatching a phone off of its cradle and hurriedly dialing a number. "Gabe? Its Karen down in recieving. Listen, I've got a woman here who's the appointed guardian of that incoming to maternity we just got and she wants to go up. Right...the unicorn."
"Mom..." Sharika said, tugging on her shirt. "Mom, they have a vending machine, can I have a Coke? Mom? MOOOOOM??"
Under normal circumstances, Ajhira would have argued with her eldest that no she was NOT having soda this early in the morning because it would upset her stomach, but now wasn't the time as she distractedly fumbled a handful of change out of her pocket and gave it over to her canine daughter. "Here."
"Right. Okay....I'll send her up, then." the secretary was wrapping up her phone call as Sharika scuttled off to the vending machine to pick out 55 cents for her soda. "Ma'am? She's up on floor three in room five-oh-five. You can go, but only you. Its a small space." Her eye wandered to Sharika as she said so.
"That's fine. I'm sure Felix would rather stay down here anyway." she sighed, jotting her signature.
"I don't really mind one way or the other..." her husband offered, though he knew that at the moment his opinion didn't matter much as Ajhira bustled past the desk and headed for the elevator without him. He could tell already this would be a long morning.
"Mom?? HEY!!" Sharika called after Ajhira, moving to scamper after her and being restrained by her father.
"Can't do that, Gail." he told her gently. "Mom needs to head up there alone."
"Whyyyyy??" Sharika whined, screwing her face up in a look of petulance. "I wanna see the baby!"
"We can go up and see the baby when he's born." Felix explained. "Right now its just going to be a bunch of boring doctor stuff." A delivery, he knew, was anything BUT boring as the knots in his stomach would attest to, but hopefully she would buy it. Sharika in a delivery room seemed to spell disaster of all sorts.
"Is there TV up there?" she asked as he began to lead her toward the sitting area.
"No. But there's magazines HERE, so how about we try and pass the time, okay?"
The little canine huffed and grabbed up a Highlights For Kids and began to leaf through it. She hated to read...even when the book was full of pictures. She would much rather have been rummaging in leafpiles or looking under rocks.
BUT...it wasn't every day one got a new little baby brother or sister, so she would tolerate it.
For now.
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Posted: Fri Dec 08, 2006 6:13 pm
"She did very well." Ajhira was telling Felix nearly four hours later as she, her husband, and Sharika all sat huddled in chairs with the tiny baby wrapped in a bundle of blankets, basking in the new life's presence. The child was male, strongly resembling his mother, though his father's presence made itself known via the mottling of black on his body, and the pair of tiny black wings that protruded from his back.
"Isn't she going to come see the baby?" Felix questioned, turning away from the child to look at the rumpled sheets of the empty maternity bed. "Where IS she?"
Ajhira took a deep breath. "They don't know." she admitted.
"How can they NOT know? They misplaced a whole person?" Felix asked in disbelief, feeling a bit punchy from the lack of sleep.
"They came in and she was just...gone." Ajhira admitted. "Just up and left."
"Without even waiting to see her baby?"
"Maybe she thought it was for the best...I can't really speak for Alcippe on this one."
Felix sighed and looked down at where Sharika was slowly extending a finger toward the bundle of blankets to prod her new brother experimentally. "Shar, honey, don't wake him up." Felix warned.
"Oh let her get acquainted." Ajhira chided with a smile, lowering the bundle so Sharika could see him better.
"His nose is so TEENY." Sharika noted, squinting into his face. "Is he gonna be bigger than me when he gets older?"
"Maybe someday, hon, but not for a very long time." Ajhira chuckled.
"Whatcha gonna name him?" she inquired, touching the nubby horn on the child's forehead and then prodding gently at one ear. The baby sighed in his sleep, one pudgy fist reaching to grab his adopted sister's finger reflexively.
"We're still deciding." Felix told her. "I think we were leaning toward Donald, but..."
"Like the duck?" Sharika asked hopefully, obviously thinking it would be utterly awesome to have a little brother named after a cartoon character.
"....but I think that's why we decided against it." Ajhira finished for him. "EXACTLY why, actually. I'm sure we'll come up with something better, though."
"Soon, I hope." Felix added.
"I'll go over the baby name books again tonight and see what we can come up with." she shrugged. "Now that he's here, it'll be easier to come up with something that suits him."
The child sneezed softly and shifted a bit, oblivious of their conversation about him or that his mother had run out on him, perhaps never to see him again.
Sometimes the hand you were dealt straight from birth was an odd one...
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