"I'm coming in!" Coir shouted.

"You will not! It is uncouth."

"Damn your hatred of my kind," Coir shouted, mixing Noshian with Vienwé in his agitation. "I am as much a guard of that child as anyone! I will not let you touch the babe so long as I draw breath."

Vireel laughed, without trace of sarcasm.

"You are powerless. But you are not just a human. Are you not male?"

"Well, yes."

"You must know you cannot witness a birth."

"I will sit at her head with my back to her. But I will not leave her alone."

"She is not alone."

"I'm coming in."

"It will take hours yet."

"Then I will sit for hours!"

"Vireel, let him in!" Jareen called as her contraction passed. The pains had strengthened through the morning, and now she truly suffered, unable to speak until the clenching passed.

Vireel sighed and moved out of the doorway.

"This isn't seemly."

Jareen straightened and began pacing the room again. She had been walking for hours.

Coir approached and reached out to touch her elbow, leaning in to whisper:

"I will watch her," he said, rolling his eyes in Vireel's direction.

Jareen forced a smile, and Coir went to one side of the room and settled onto the floor, cross-legged. Jareen realized the man needed more than one change of clothes. His were quickly turning to thin rags. Vireel had provided for Jareen all she needed as her belly swelled, yet she had clearly provided Coir with little. He sported a thick red beard like a Noshian dock worker. She'd always thought beards made the humans look somehow shrub-like.

She paced back toward the door, trying to listen to the birds. After so many weeks in the Mingling, the calls of the oddly plumaged birds had begun to sound familiar.

Vireel leaned over to her as she passed by.

"Do you want me to make him sleep?" she asked in a whisper.

"No," Jareen said. "Let him be."

She paced for two more hours, until she felt such pressure that she lowered herself on all fours, trying to find relief. She pulled at the neck of her robe.

"Get it. . . get it off me," she gasped.

"Turn around," Vireel sang at Coir as she knelt next to Jareen. Coir spun to face the wall.

"Here, crouch" she said, pulling Jareen's robe free from beneath her knees

Jareen pushed herself up into an arch as another contraction came. She cried out. The urge to bear down overwhelmed her. The pain was blinding. Vireel gathered up Jareen's robes and slipped them up to her neck. Jareen felt liquid trickling down her thigh as she tried to spread her hips more.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

As the contraction passed, Vireel pulled Jareen's robe free.

"Come, lean over the table" Vireel said. "Kneel."

Jareen managed to crawl to the edge of the low table, sprawling her upper body over the smooth cold wood.

"Have you been to a birth before?" Jareen asked her. Jareen had never attended a birth; she had known only death.

"Yes," Vireel said. "I have four siblings."

Jareen didn't know what to say. Why had she never asked Vireel about her family?

Another contraction gripped her. She couldn't help but bear down. Her hips felt wide, and she had the sensation that she needed to defecate. Maybe she was. The pain caused her vision to close up, webs of darkness closing in.

"I see the head," Vireel said. "Next time, push with all you can."

Another contraction.

"Bear down!" Vireel shouted. Jareen was already bearing down and screaming. There was hardly a break between that contraction and the next and the next. She screamed and pushed, warring against the pain. The pressure was beyond imagining.

And there she felt a rush of movement, the pressure released. She collapsed onto the table, gasping.

"What are you doing?" Coir shouted.

"Sit down and shut up!" Vireel snapped. "It's to help him breathe.

Him.

Jareen turned to look. Vireel held the baby, wiping it down with a cloth. Coir had stepped up to her, hands balled into fists. The babe cried out.

"Give me my babe," Jareen said.

"Get her that mat!" Vireel ordered Coir. He hurried to obey, his eyes wide.

"Lie down," Vireel commanded Jareen when Coir had spread the mat beside the table. Jareen obeyed, somehow. Vireel placed the babe beneath Jareen's breast, then slid a cushion behind her head, but Jareen hardly noticed anything but her babe. He was crying, red faced, his skin flushed. She cradled him in her arms as Vireel reached over and spread Jareen's robe atop her nakedness. Vireel placed a hand on Jareen's sunken stomach and pressed.

"Ow! Stop!" She was still having some contractions, and Vireel's pressing hurt her more.

"It is necessary. It will help stop the bleeding and pass the afterbirth. Look to your babe."

Jareen had not looked away from her base, and as Vireel's agony-inducing palpations continued, she saw the mewling babe nudge his head toward her breast. She drew him close, pressing him to her nipple.

"Ah," she said, flinching at the new pain.

"Here." Vireel stopped pressing, reaching for the babe. Using a finger to open the babe's mouth wide, she pressed him upon the nipple with an arcing motion of his head.

Coir stared down stupidly, mouth agape, but Jareen did not heed him. Her babe was there, a boy with skin like a nut and hair as black as ebony. He looked nothing like her; he was not Insensitive.

Vireel attended Jareen. When the babe slept, she helped Jareen clean with damp towels, then draped her in clean light blankets. Jareen lay on her side, warm and dry and tired, her arm beneath her head and the babe nestled against her bosom. Had she ever lived, before? Or had she just been born anew with her babe?

She dozed in and out of sleep, nursing the babe, and now that she was settled, she demanded that Vireel cease hovering and pressing on her stomach. She hardly noticed that Coir remained stubbornly in the corner. When the babe first messed, Jareen insisted on cleaning him, herself.

When the next morning dawned, Jareen was sore, but no one had taken her son from her. Coir had slept on the bare wood floor—or at least, he had lain there through the night. Vireel brought her a breakfast of cider and warm baked apple mash with cinnamon. Jareen asked Vireel to bring some for Coir. The vienu sighed and instead told Coir where to go serve himself from the next room.

"I will stay," he said.

"Here," Jareen said, offering her portion to Coir.

"I am not going to take the babe from you!" Vireel said, raising her hands in exasperation and striding from the room. She returned with another portion, setting it beside Jareen.

As Coir and Jareen ate, reclining beside the table, Coir stared at the babe that dozed upon a wide cushion, swaddled tight.

"It is Vien tradition for the father to name a son, and the mother to name a daughter, is it not?" he asked.

"It is," Jareen answered, watching her sleeping babe even as she ate.

"Among the Inevien it is not so," Vireel said. "The name is given by the oldest living ancestor."

"We are in neither Findeluvié nor Isecan," Jareen replied. "His name is Faro."

"Falo?" Vireel asked, trying to make the Noshian "r" sound and failing. "What kind of name is this?"

"It is Noshian," Coir said with a smile.

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