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 Posted: Tue May 08, 2007 8:09 am
Dear Diary.
Hi. You must be the ....gods, I don't even know anymore... you're one of many diaries. I have a shelf of them for each kid, I don't even know why I bother, they all seem to fall into each other's diaries. But I'll pretend you're my only one that I'll be writing in. And so I should pretend we've never met, Diary. I'm Neith. I adopt a lot of kids, most of which are now grown, and I only have one biological child. No... that's a lie, I have two. I just lost the other.
But anyway. My biological child is Elle and she works at this clinic place. I would drop her off and that's how I found out about them. Long story short I snuck in there when I knew Elle would be busy at the other building (they have two) and arranged a second child. How strange does that sound? I arranged a second biological child. THis one comes without birth which is great, and this one is apparently also going to be male which is even better. My entire family is a flock of females. I don't know if he's lucky or if he should be pitied, but he won't ever mistreat women with the amount of training he'll be getting. He is half me and half some random donor, and I'm not sure about much more than that.
He's 'in the works'. No one knows about him yet. But he won't be the only male in the family now- my daughter just had a son of her own. The son will have older 'sisters'. The youngest are already reaching teenagerhood, which is terrifying for the entire estate. They can be brothers of a sort, only separated by a few months or so. I'll let my daughter, Elle, know she's getting a brother when the time is right. I ...sort of lied to her about being pregnant. Which was stupid. And how I found out that she was pregnant. So she won't be amused by the news at all.
My home is pretty big. We raise horses now, a lot of elves (which he'll be part blood of) live with us on the land, and it's a nice sheltered place to live. Maybe a bit too sheltered. Just perfect. It's kind of a dump at the moment, the land didn't come with much... brambles, blackberries, a broken down cottage, but we've been rebuilding the cottage and building homes for all the elves living here. And a real estate thing along one part of the beach. People rent the houses for an amazingly crazy amount, but it is along the beach. Not to say we're rich either... most of the money has to go to rebuilding. And to the horses. And now this son which I planned.
That still sounds so weird to say. The son I planned. Names? I don't know. Something really elf and something that'll probably embarrass him when his other raced friends ask for his name. We, the elves and I, are already giggling over some silly names we could come up with.
Now we wait! As do you, diary.
Neith.
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Posted: Sun May 13, 2007 6:29 am
Neith yawned and stretched along the banana lounge on her side, eyes blurry and focused in the direction of the cabbage plant.
It was a very lovely lush green cabbage. Neith had placed it in a place of honour, complete with a orange 'don't touch, don't pick, don't eat and don't disturb' sign sitting beside it. It was strange to feel so proud of something that was still in photosynthesis stage but Neith had developed a very strong sense of pride. But she was apprehensive too. Did cabbages really grow babies?
When she'd gotten it, she'd first wondered if it had to be refrigerated or put in a greenhouse, some plants loved the cold and some loved the warm. Neith had forgotten that when you shut the fridge door... you shut off the light. Luckily she'd come to her senses before she'd thought seriously about trying either method. So it had been put in the place Neith could see clearly from nearly every room on the north side of the cottage.
The cabbage plant was rarely alone from the moment it had been planted. Neith hadn't even told anyone what it was supposed to do, other than it was 'special' and had to be left to grow, but for some reason all the residents of the small settlement had now taken to peering at it as they passed. Some had even seen Neith watching it and had offered to take shifts without even really knowing what it was they were looking for. And the kids, Neith's adopted girls and the other kids, they had even started to place sparkly things around it. Shiny colourful stones, sparklers, whirly wind things, they talked to it... the magic cabbage was already getting attention, without looking anything more than an ordinary cabbage.
Neith did plan on telling them eventually but she had wanted to tell her family first. And that was proving to be a little harder than she'd expected. They were all cranky for some reason or another.
Still... Aquene, who would be his older sister, was proving to be already suspecting something. She would be his older sister and Neith had hinted that Aquene might one day have someone younger than her to take care of, and it was hard to hide from Aquene some of the things Neith had to get. Like the cot. It was constructed and sitting in Neith's room with a plank of wood and a piece of velvet over the top to masquerade as a funny looking velvet shelf. It wasn't a bad cover if you just glimpsed inside the room from outside, was a terrible cover when someone lived there and frequently went into the room.
She was one of the most attentive to the cabbage which made Neith suspect that she was also probably guilty of sneaking a peek under the cover. Cot, magical cabbage, any kid would get the connection. Who hadn't heard the story about babies coming from cabbages? Or storks? It would just make the eventual sex talk a little harder when Neith had to explain why cabbage baby was different from stomach baby.
Neith yawned again, the fourth time in ten minutes, and shooed away one of the little furry creatures that lived in the area away from the plant. One of the elves was also sitting there with a book, so she shut her eyes and drifted off to sleep again.
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Posted: Fri Jun 15, 2007 12:20 am
Dear Diary
Well... several days of watching the Cabbage. There was a scare with a nasty frost and it looked like the snails were beginning their invasion of the Cabbage's soil... but all is well now, threat averted.
I was thinking of some names. They are all very formal. My ideas of nicknames follow more along the lines of Teddy, Snoggims, and other wonderfully embarrassing nicknames that'll make this Cabbage Kid want to crawl back into the ground where he came from.
He's also got a bedroom in the works. It doesn't look like much now. I found this giant concrete watertank so I cut it in half and making it into this half-round, half square room. It cut the building time in half. Premade round wall! I also cut a window into it. Hopefully it'll be ready by the time he's a toddler.
Everyone still has no idea what's going on. It's kind of amusing to keep it a secret and I'm having a lot of fun stringing them on with the mystery of the magical 'not for eating EVER' cabbage.
Neith
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Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 8:48 am
"Did you expect a baby to fall out of that cabbage or did a very cute slug get past you, eat the magical cabbage and mutate?"
Neith had been napping on the sofa when one of the elves asked her that. She fell off the sofa, scrambled to her feet, snatched up a large blue blanket and rushed outside. There was indeed a baby falling out of the slug, his large blue eyes blinking owlishly, the cabbage literally falling apart underneath him. Neith knelt beside him and brushed away the dirt and the bits of cabbage.
"Good morning." She smiled at him. For a few long breathless moments, the baby stared at her, then slowly smiled back. Neith felt a flood of affection for him straight away. He was perfect.
"So you were expecting one." More people had gathered around the two by now, staring, whispering, although not looking too surprised. Gaia was Gaia, after all, there was always strange things happening.
"He's mine. All my genes. And someone elses, but we don't need to worry about that." Neith wasn't really speaking to anyone but the baby as she brushed the dirt and cabbage bits off him. The blanket was wrapped around him and Neith lifted him carefully up to her chest where she could warm him up more with her own body heat. "Little elf."
"...mum?"
Neith turned around to see Elle standing there with the grandson. Come to think of it, Neith had been forgetting to let Elle know that she'd gotten a cabbage from that place Elle worked at... "Oh, morning Elle. Surprise! It's a baby. And a friend for Jae."
"Jonathan has lots of friends. How did you get that?" Elle was looking from the baby in the blanket, to the imploded cabbage and back again with a suspicious look written all over her face.
Neith inwardly cringed at the plain human name but let it slip this time. "I got him from a cabbage. A magical cabbage. Didn't I ever tell you that babies came from them?"
"I can't believe you... you followed me to work, didn't you." Elle's voice was starting to get that edge, the edge it always got when she was about to get angry. It looked like Jae had also noticed this, because he started to wriggle in her arms and look upset. "And... stole a cabbage. Or something."
It was getting harder and harder to chat with Elle over this. Some of the elves who lived in the estate must have run to spread the news (two babies at the cottage!) because the two of them were already being surrounded by Elves. Neith just shrugged. "They gave me a chance to have a male heir, so I took it."
"Male heir... look!" Elle held out Jae. Jae squirmed and kicked unhappily, his tail whipping in tiny circles, and let out a yowl of unhappiness when he couldn't find anything to put his feet on. Neith didn't take him.
"Yes, yes, he's beautiful too. My grandson is very beautiful but grab him before he falls on his head and damages those horns. I think... I think this baby needs a naming ceremony. Being Elf, he needs it." Neith turned around to face the others, deciding that she'd let Elle get used to this new idea. There was a delighted murmur from the growing crowd. For a moment, Neith wondered if she should insist that Elle and Jae come inside... but she decided that was up to Elle. Elle could stop being selfish and join them... or go home and sulk.
"Should we go inside to plan? Tonight's moon and stars are most favourable and we only have a few hours..."
Neith let herself and the baby be ushered into the cottage's living room.
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Posted: Thu Jan 10, 2008 5:07 am
Dear Diary
Christmas came and went so fast. I think I blinked and missed most of it.
There was the feast though. Picture a giant field, all snowed in, with a mix of houses, half-built houses that have protective coverings till the snow thaws, wagons and some tents. They're all in a loose sort of circle, nothing's really in any order and buildings are built where they're wanted instead of where they're planned. In the middle is the Inn. In front of the Inn is a huge bonfire, really large, I'm not sure how they got it going in the frozen field, and smaller bonfires in a rough circle around the inn. Elves of all backgrounds are everywhere, cooking, eating, dancing, singing, drinking, loving...
Arth got spoiled rotten during the feast. I barely saw him, he was passed around, carried around, fed, had his hair brushed, they changed his clothing several times (I'm not exactly sure why but I DO know that he left in a green silk outfit, was later seen in purple, and returned in a red outfit) and stuffed him full of food till he was dead tired.
I later found him in the main room of the inn with the other two dozenish Elf kids and babies, where there'd been a 'kid's area' set up. Don't ask me when or why, I think it was decided because the adults wanted to create heat of their own? (To them, this feast is an ancient tradition that seems common amongst all groups of Elves, to remember last summer and to 'lure' spring to come faster by heating up the world. Because there's so many different groups of elves, it's hard to say exactly what it means in detail without going into each type of elf... but that's the general meaning.)
That just reminds me about how I really need to find a lover of my own. Urgh.
So there was Arth, all tucked in, in some small toddler sized bed and out of it. He'd eaten so much that his little stomach was bulging and his face was all flushed. But he was smiling too and I think he enjoyed himself. Little ladies man, maybe little man's man too, he seems to enjoy being social with adults, kids, babies, animals...
I'm glad he enjoyed it.
Then we had Christmas itself. Arth got toys, clothes, more food, a little wagon, some dreadful electronic toys from his big sister Elle... he enjoys them however... and more affection from the general population in the estate. There's nothing stranger than seeing a beautiful smooth faced Elf male trying to dress up as an old fat Santa but he loved it!
Arth is walking now, talking a bit in Elven and Gaian, he's always winning people over with that smile of his and I'm really happy with how he is. I'd already been taking him riding with me on a horse but now that he can walk, I think I'll start his solo riding training. Maybe some of the other Cabbage Patch parents might like the idea of this too? I suppose I should venture out of the Estate once in a while...
Neith
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