(Mentions of infant Kitya made with Sabra's permission)

Taijana found herself up well before the sun most days, and this was no exception. It was hard, finding a comfortable spot in the rocker for both herself, the child she carried inside her womb and little Kitya. However, over the last couple of weeks, as her belly grew and grew, Taijana found that finding any comfortable spot was practically impossible.

After tending to Kitya, she tried to relax, but even once her body found a measure of solace her mind was still far too wound up to afford her any semblance of rest.

There were days where she could almost forget about the chaos Yael, and the rest of Tendaji as a whole, had been plunged into. She'd noticed that most of their mainland travelers, what few there had been in the beginning, had noticeably retreated back to their own worlds after those...those things appeared. Many gossiped that the mainlanders had brought them here to attack Yael, and she wondered if that's why they were leaving. Either for fear of their own safety, should a mob group up, or if maybe because they really were the cause of all this.

It was terrifying to contemplate. A race of creatures, so horrid that even the alkidike spoke of them with fear. All she knew of them definitively was that the alkidike had some sort of legend about them, but beyond that....nothing. It caused her to hold her daughter a little tighter every time she thought about it, and the all true fears of bringing another child into this world, with things that could appear from portals, so close at hand to snatch them up, was sickening.

Taijana looked down at her distended womb and immediately felt sick. They should have waited; Kitya had been a surprise, but a happy one, one that she hadn't known she'd so desperately needed until the little one was safe in her arms. She hadn't expected that so soon after her daughter had been born that the Gods would see fit to give them another, and honestly, as happy as she was at times Taijana also get the weight of guilt growing immensely heavy upon her shoulders.

What kind of world had she brought Kitya into? With word of their leaders making contact with other nations, drawing up plans and stratagems, she couldn't help worrying about a possible war on the horizon. But with what? They barely knew what these things were, let alone where to fight them and how to win. They were all at a serious disadvantage, and her family was so small, so weak, that the slightest attack could-

A shadow move across the floor and Taijana squealed, instinctively clutching her child to her breast. For a moment she forgot how to breath, until a familiar snout nuzzled against her leg. The familiar form of her little Otroka, her growing limbara, stepped into the candle light and she exhaled in relief. "Don't scare me like that, I could have screamed," She stretched a little to pat his head, "And if we woke the baby we would have both been in trouble."

Her husband needed his rest as more as she, so if he didn't disturb her random bouts of rest then she wasn't about to mess with his.

Thinking on their leaders, though, brought Taijana to a line her father had told her earlier in the week; "They're stupid for leaving Yael. It would be better to fortify our defenses, and work on protecting our own people. Maybe even finally set about purging those elaria from our lands. Maybe this is the Gods way of telling us they need to go..."

She hadn't told Kieran about that. She also hadn't told Kieran about how similar her father's views were to her own. She didn't want their representatives to go to the heart of Tendaji; the mainlanders were....some of them weren't good people, and while she knew that they had their own bad seeds, it just seemed needless to spread out so thin when a time of crisis was upon them.

"It's a mistake, Otroka," She murmured. All that Taijana knew was that her place was here, on Yael, with her children and her family. She had hoped that her leaders would see it the same way, but apparently...they felt the need to reach out to outsiders who had withheld information from them and possibly upset the Gods. What if they brought more of them to Yael? Very few of the mainlanders had been good souls; the rest were nothing more than plagues that would bring misfortune to Yael and her babies-

Taijana took a deep breath to steady her nerves. She would just have to accept whatever kind of conclusion they came to, and...possibly stock up on bolts for her crossbow.

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