93 - I'm in Good Time, Then?

Mariush reclined on the couch facing the back and fidgeted irritably. “Why can’t this be over yet?”  She turned, flung a damp cloth off her forehead into the basin beside her, rolled over on her other side.  “We were taught it was usually half a day!  Mother, you lied!”

“No my dear, I did not lie.”  Mother rubbed her back, strong hands kneading, supporting. “We taught the usual endeavouring time.  This baby is your first and you may go several days and nights so you should sleep.”

“I tried that,” she said sulkily. The ants seethed on the walls in diagrams that glittered gold, pulsing to the baby's heartbeat, counter pulsing a coppery glitter to monitor Mariush's. Both were steady, periodic washes of colour, the baby's gleam twinkling against her mother's much slower shine.

Shashi's ants and beetles waited, quiescent and dark, ready to spring into motion should there be trouble.  They were almost black against the honey-coloured walls, hidden in the edges of the room, faint shadows of emergency ready, ready to produce oxygen should it be needed, razor edged scalpel claws tucked hidden underneath.

“And you succeeded until the contractions woke you up early this morning.”

“I’m thirsty,” she whined, and Shashi gave her a glass of honey’d water.  Mariush drank it down and restlessly got up and paced. 

Mother settled down on the divan and propped a pillow behind her own head.  Her dragonflies, ranged blue and green all around the edges of the pillow, fanned her with glass wings. “From my experience you have another day perhaps, lovie.  Save your strength.”

“The barbarians... the Trovi... they have tubs of water for birthing mothers to float in...” Mariush knew she was being awful but everything was so irritating.

“And if you had been the Emperor’s, rather than a cast off zardukar I’m sure he would have had the precious fluid set up for you.  Unfortunately we are in the Dry.”

“Mother it makes no sense for me to be birthing in the Dry.  Why do humans do that?  Everything else is most fecund in the high spring not now.”

“We are still strangers here, daughter.  And our kind... our bodies... have not yet adapted to this land.”

Mariush muttered angrily and wiped her face and head with the wet cloth and curled up around her stomach, arms loosely clasped over her quivering belly as it began to tighten up again.  “Ow.  Ow.  Ow,” she said dispassionately.  “This is uncomfortable and I don’t like it.”

“I know daughter.  Believe me, I know.  The first is always the most annoying.”

**

Shashi’s voice rose, alone in the middle of the night.  A soothing song... a lullaby for a weary mother.  An endeavouring mother.  Diryish padded down the spiralling way inside the wall and touched three pads to open the door.

He stepped into Mariush’s rooms behind a carved screen and took in the scene in front of him.  How many times have I seen my daughters, my grand-daughters, labour so hard?  How many babies have I seen born in my Loggia?  The person who has been killing my brood, I will find and sting to death if I can.

Mariush lay in the bed, restless, not sleeping not really waking, dozing more than anything.  Shashi, heavy herself, sat on the bottom of the bed, cradling her own stomach, looking wilted.

Thriti was just waking, splashing water on her face from the basin, raising her sleeves and tying them off.  He stepped out from behind the screen.  “I’m in good time then?”

Mother nodded at him.  “If you are strong enough, you may be her couch.  She’ll be in transition soon. All the bugs have been passing on data.”

“I might be old, woman, but I can sit and have my hands seized and crushed by a birthing woman still.”

“Let me check her.”

A whispered word to Shashi who stopped singing and nodded.  She moved to lie down where she was, watching.  Mother checked Mariush and laid a hand on her shoulder.  

“Do you feel ready to push?”

“I’ve been wanting to push for the last while...” she snarled.

“Come along then.”

Mariush didn’t even blink at Diryish being there, so wrapped in herself that she would not notice.  She settled onto the padding on the floor and leaned back against Diryish’s knees.  He wrapped his wirey old arms around her and she grasped her knees and pulled up on them, hard.