somebody is having a very interesting father's day

Midway through their week of rest, she learned her sister was pregnant. She knew she didn't like the brick, but this put the icing on the cake. It wasn't as if he had thought to use protection, after all. He just up and waved his dick around like a magic baby wand. She could only hope the child got her sister's smarts. Even still, she couldn't help falling over out of shock. She had expected this, but at the same time not expected it. And she was angry, but she, unlike she had assumed prior, couldn't bring herself to get up and rip his dong off.

Maybe she was even a little jealous of them.

Years ago now, her mother had taught lessons to aspiring mages. Mostly instructing Anya, who had been interested in the sort of magic their mother did, on the finer points of being a Warlock and how to select a patron that wouldn't do you harm, but she also taught some of the older hatchlings that lived nearby who had latent magical talent. It had been one of them that made the misfire of a spell that, at least she felt at the time, had nearly killed her. She spent a week being healed and doted upon by the clerics at the temple of Bahamut in the town they lived just outside of. She recovered nearly completely, all except for one thing.

When they informed her that the spell had rendered her sterile, she shrugged it off. She never wanted kids anyway. She'd be a terrible parent, after all, she had always thought. But here and now, she felt a twinge of jealousy. Here was something her sister had, that she could never have. And sure she would help bring up this child, they wouldn't be able to stop her, but in the moment, she'd do anything to take this burden off her shoulders, or share in it, something. Maybe Rai knocked her up with some miracle furry demon troll child or something. No, that would be dumb. That would be very, very dumb.

She heard Luth enter and greet them and was thankful for the distraction. He was always so cheerful, her small pointy dragon son. But not actually her son. In fact he probably had other parents. No, let's not get on this tract again, she urged herself. He was excited about the arrival of the smiths that would be reforging the sword that had started this whole cascade of events. Apparently, he had never seen Minotaurs before. Precious sheltered muffin.

He brought up that Her Ladyship had requested them, and she decided that was a good enough reason to sod off from here. The tension was so thick you could cut it with a butter knife anyway. She followed the young Steel dragon to the quarters she was so intimately, intimately familiar with, to find the beautiful, positively radiant, majestic Gold laying curled around herself. She looked so tired, and she wasn't dressed up. Was something wrong?

Oh, only some new clothes? Well that was alright. Her clothes were nearly shredded to rags anyway. She looked like a hobo when she wore them and had wanted to replace them since the incident with the demons. It was very thoughtful to go through the trouble... oh, there was more. Well, okay, she seemed uncertain, and she was speaking very softly...

Her heart damn near stopped when she saw the clutch of eggs the dragon had hid under her wing. She knew there was, presumably, only one possible father, but a part of her argued back that no, there was no way, absolutely no way. But the look in the dragon's eyes, the feeling of her tailtip brushing against her cheek when she asked, cluelessly, told her all she needed to know.

That night a few weeks ago, after the spell had happened... The cleric, precious cinnamon roll that he was, had found an unmarked spell in the journal they had been granted. He and his temporary pair of bird titties had been distressed by the bits-changing effects, but she had had different ideas. A harmless night of fun. Nothing will come of it, she thought. She had assumed she had been firing blanks. Apparently not, because now there was no doubt that these eggs were hers.

When she was allowed to come forward and touch them, it took her a moment to even move from her spot. Her, with kids. It was such a surreal thought. But here they were. And seven of them, no less. And they were so shiny, so stunning... she could almost see herself in their surface. These belonged to her. There were small dragons inside of here and they were hers, something they had told her might never happen. That fact only made them more beautiful. The disaster with her sister seemed small now, in light of this.

How would she tell her mothers, or her sensei?

It only barely registered when the others walked in, she was in a trance. Would it be weird to speak to them? Surely they couldn't hear her, not yet, but she certainly had a lot of things to say. Maybe it was for the best that they had arrived, though, because right now she couldn't formulate those things properly into words. She didn't even bother to mask her wonderment from them. It had a lot more meaning than they could know, anyway. Only her sister would understand.

It meant she wasn't completely broken after all, like she had felt all these years since the accident. It was a bit roundabout, admittedly, but now she really could share, in a way. And, it meant she had something to live for.

Previously, after the mess that had taken place when they went to retrieve the hilt, she had been ready to just lay down and die alone. For the first time since then, she finally felt like she had some motivation to fight. These hatchlings? They needed her. She wasn't about to leave them and their mother alone, not now. She might have been content to fade away before, but not now. Now, whatever that big stupid eyeball had in store, she was ready to grab him by the wings and rip 'em off.

She didn't dare leave that nest, or her sister's side, for the remainder of their week of rest.