Page 155 of To Free a Soul
April 11th, 2023
After landing in front of her cottage, Lindiwe turned from an owl to a human, proceeded to drop to her knees, then grabbed her hair and had to swallow down the urge to scream.
“She’s pregnant!” she exclaimed, so utterly stressed out about this news that her breaths were frantic, shallow, and her heart raced. “She hasn’t even known him for a month! Oh god, this is so bad.”
Ready to start ripping her hair out, she untangled her fingers so she wouldn’t. She covered her face and shook her head.
“How could this happen?!”
“Well, she did give him her soul readily, and they must have had intercourse since then,”said Weldir, being utterly unhelpful and obtuse about it.“What is that human saying? ‘When a mummy and a daddy–’”
She couldn’t believe the trickle of humour in his alluring baritone voice!
“I knowhowit happened, just not how they got to the sex part!” She leaned back and crinkled her eyes at the skydramatically. “I didn’t even have time to prepare them! He shouldn’t have known what sex is, or that he has a penis. Things like this should have come much, much later. I was hoping to give them some advice once their relationship progressed, but they went from barely knowing each other to being intimate.”
“Isn’t this a good thing? It means they like each other.”
She shuddered, simply because it had been so awkward having to tell her own son he’d gotten his bride pregnant. Then she’d explained what babies were and how they were formed.
I had to have the birds and the bees conversationafterthe bee already fucked the bird.She wanted to wail because this was all so backwards.
Once she finished getting her anxiety out of her system, she sighed and let her arms fall. The backs of her hands rested against the grass, and she was so tired from being on edge for hours that she just wanted to close her eyes forever.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for them,” she said, staring up at the cloudy sky. The rain had come and gone, but the dreary weather continued to linger and threaten them with another downpour. “She seems nice, and she cares for him. She’s a little shy and reserved, and it’s obvious she’s pretty depressed, but I can imagine how confusing this all is for her. She was thrown into the Veil, barely saved by me, became the bride to a Duskwalker, and is now going to have his baby all in less than a month. It’s... a lot. For anyone. I had time to adjust to all these strange changes. Even Reia is still adjusting. Delora has been thrown into the deep end of the lake headfirst.”
It’s a lot for me to take in.
She’d had no intention of staying in Austrális once she’d given birth. She’d actually been in the mountains of Mongulien with both her babies when Weldir informed her that Orpheus had called out forMagnar, as that was Fennec’s new name apparently.
She’d been over the moon when she’d learned that Magnar had discovered how to heal, had protected his new human, and then had obtained her soul. The woman was pretty, nice, and weirdly enough, accepting of the silly monster who was trying his best.
She’d had no intention of interfering.
Magnar and Delora had Reia and Orpheus to guide them.Except they’re moving too fast to be guided!Things should have progressed at a slower, more normal pace. Not... not this!
“Oh well,” Lindiwe murmured as she rose to her feet. “There’s nothing that can be done now. I’ve told Magnar to take her to Spiral Haven. So long as they get prepared, all should be well.”
“Does this mean you’re staying in Austrális?”
“Of course. I can’t leave now, not when they really need me the most.”
“What about our current young offspring?”
“They will have to wait. I can’t give them their skulls and horns yet.”
She’d need to stay with them for a year or so after they became adults to help guide them and protect them from nasty Demons. She also needed to stop them from massacring the first town their curiosity led them to and help them get used to humankind. She needed to make sure Demonslayer organisations in that part of the world didn’t harm them either while they were finding their feet. Not to mention stopping them from drowning or falling off a cliff.
Basically, she had to keep them from accidentally – temporarily – killing themselves. They had a habit of doing that in a long list of ways.
I like being near when they’re just starting out.
She opened the front of her cloak and reached in to grab one and then the other, holding one in each hand. They both gavea cute squeal when she lifted them into the air and rubbed her nose with theirs, one at a time.
“Once I help Delora give birth and things are stable between them, I can head back to Mongulien.”
It was just a few months. Lindiwe had held onto some of her children for over a year.
April 17th, 2023
