“Hello, Yolii.” Danni smiled at the teen girl, who looked at her with wide, purple eyes much like her mother’s.
“I am m-most p-pleased to meet you,” she stuttered uncertainly. Then she whispered loudly to Navii, “What’s wrong with her head? Why is it so small?”
“Yolii!” Navii frowned at her daughter. “That is a very rude thing to say! Danni and her husband are emissaries from the Kindred! They cannot help that their heads are small. And they are still lovely people!”
“Forgive me.” Yolii bowed her head, clearly abashed. “I did not mean to offend.”
“You didn’t,” Danni hastened to say. “Humanoids from different worlds look different—that’s all.” She smiled at the infant the girl held in her arms. “Is that your little brother?”
“Yes, isn’t he lovely?” Yolii held out her baby brother proudly. His skin was a pale sky blue and his head was so big that Danni would have been worried he was hydrocephalic if he’d been a human baby. But the extra-large cranium appeared to be perfectly normal—even expected—for the H’rakens.
“He’s perfect,” she said, smiling. She looked at Navii. “May I hold him?”
“Oh, of course—if you like! Yolii will probably be glad for a little break. She tends him all the time for me.” Pride in her daughter’s good care of her baby brother was clear in the H’raken woman’s voice.
“Here you are—but you have to support his head, just so,” Yolii explained, as she carefully transferred the small blue baby into Danni’s arms. “He is too young to be fitted with support rings yet.”
“I’ll be careful,” Danni promised. She cradled the baby in her arms and—as always when she held a baby—she felt a mixture of joy and grief course through her. Joy for the beautiful new life that she held and grief because she knew she would have to give him back and would never have any babies of her own.
The baby’s big green eyes opened wide as she held him and he stared at her in wonder. Reaching up with one chubby blue fist, he grabbed a length of Danni’s long chestnut hair and pulled with surprising force.
“Oh my! You’re a strong one, aren’t you?” Danni cooed to him. “Yes, you are—such a strong little man!”
“Look at how he focuses on her face!” Yolii whispered to her mother. “Gazimba really likes her!”
“Well, she appears to have a way with children.” Navii smiled at Danni. “You look good with a baby in your arms, my friend.”
Danni sighed.
“Thank you. I love babies,” she said wistfully.
“Then I am certain the Mother Stone will grant that you have one—or many!” Navii smiled. “But for now, I truly fear that we will be late for the feast if I don’t get you dressed.”
“Oh yes—the feast.” In the wonder of holding such a new baby, Danni had forgotten about the feast and just about everything else. Reluctantly, she transferred little Gazimba carefully back into Yolii’s arms and watched as the girl took him away.
“Come—this way.” This particular house had an upstairs area—the stairs were tree branches that had been woven together. They bounced alarmingly as Navii led her up them.
“You know,” Danni said, trying to keep her mind off the fact that the steps were so bouncy. “I’ve been wondering about something.”
“Have you?” Navii looked over her shoulder. “Then ask, dear friend. Any question I can answer, I will.”
“Well, remember how Yolii commented on the size of our heads,” she began, tactfully not mentioning that Navii had as well, when Kozen had first introduced her and Bravik.
“Oh yes—children say things without thinking sometimes,” Navii said quickly. “I hope she did not offend you!”
“Oh no—of course not,” Danni said quickly. “I was just curious about the size of your people’s heads. If it won’t offend you to answer, can you please tell me how you give birth? Your people are a little smaller than mine are and I don’t see how such a large head could fit through a birth canal. I mean, you do give birth vaginally, right? Or do you do C-sections?”
They had come to the top of the stairs and Navii turned to face her with a confused frown.
“What is a seesection?”
“Oh, sorry—of course you wouldn’t know our terminology,” Danni said. “A C-section is when a woman is having difficulty giving birth the regular way so they have to cut her open to remove the baby.”
“What?” Navii’s rose-pink face went pale. “Your people cut open pregnant women?”
“Only when there’s no other way to let them safely give birth,” Danni assured her hastily. “We sew them back up again afterwards and they recover,” she added, hoping this would help.
A bit of the horror left Navii’s face, but she still looked very confused.
“But…I do not understand the need to cut a woman open when her birthing time is near. We simply give birth in the Chamber of the Mother Stone and she bathes us with her light and power and helps us open enough so that the child slides right out.”