Partner

Really short. I've had a rough couple of days, hence why there was no update. Although yesterday and today were my crazy tuesday/wednesday thing, which likely made my issue quite a bit worse. I'm going to go curl up in bed now.

Lisa? Asked a few questions and I think I might have gotten them explained here. Maybe. Bits of it the Sidhe weren't exactly willing to explain and eventually Paw put his foot down (literally) and said this is the way it is.

Anyway. Like I said. Short. Night? Possibly.

Read, Review and Enjoy.




The next few days were a blur. When Mik wasn’t working, he was sitting at Essuan’s side, helping with the babies. Because Paw had ‘contributed’ to the babies, he and Mik would become the second couple, Essuan had decided. Souse had argued that Paw’s age made him hardly suitable to raise a child, as he was almost a child himself. Essuan had, in turn, pointed out that the only person Souse trusted with her life was Paw, so how could he entrust her child to someone else?

During his helping with the babies, Mik learned a startling fact. Sidhe babies looked just like people babies. Genitals and all…

It took a few days of almost blurting out that the babies were both male before Mik got a hand of talking about the mesa as its instead of hims. Paw had spent several hours, after everyone had rested and with the help of Souse, explaining that Sidhe babies do not magically gain genitalia, and therefore sex, at the age of five. No more than a person who turns eighteen gains wisdom when they come of age. It was tradition that a child of any gender be treated all the same by the Sidhe.

Any gender.

As in, Sidhe had, in the past, had issues with ones being born of neither sex or of a confused gender. During the first five years, a child is not put into one category or the other and no gender needs be pushed onto a child until they reach their sixteenth year.

At five, children began doing chores with the elderly and were paired up with an elderly of the same gender as themselves, or the closest gender. From the elderly the child would learn the gender roles of the tribe and about sexual interaction. Between five and fourteen a child watched young adults couple and court and enjoy one another, learning how to perform sexual acts ‘properly’ before taking part in them.

It was the way it was.

Was the way Paw explained it, with a shrug, when Koln asked for the reasoning behind it. Paw had said that and then made several hand motions and said that it was tradition and bad luck and better for a child’s mind not to be forced into any kind of role whatsoever. Let a child be a child and expect nothing else of them. Plenty of time later to label and catalogue a being.

The name was for a more complex reason. Paw said that if a child were named before its first year, then the… something, some kind of creature, would come down and sup on the child’s soul, stealing what made it Sidhe and leaving an empty husky behind. The survival rate, Paw snarled at Mari, had nothing to do with names.

So his days were passed. At work a sort of philosophical debate had begun as to the Sidhe beliefs and traditions, especially those involving children.

At the end of the week, both children were still alive, healthy and kicking.

Sidhe children may have looked like people children, but it seemed the similarities ended there. The babies didn’t scream or cry at night, slept the whole night through, and were crawling before the week was up.

The tribe gathered, at the end of the week, in Essuan’s apartment. To see the twins and the mother and to hear who would be taking the second child. Mari had tried to offer cribs and all sorts of baby necessities and the Sidhe had scoffed and refused it all.

So Mik had none of the baby necessities and had no idea how to care for a baby, he could hardly care for himself after all and he still had work to do and more paperwork than usual and his mother was flying to and from Jay’s place and that wasn’t healthy and. And.

He put his head in his hands and groaned as Paw cradled the second born twin. His head was swirling in an odd sort of way and his stomach felt like it had dropped out of his body. He hadn’t really eaten in three days, hardly been sleeping and what little sleep he got was plagued by dreams that he didn’t recall.

Paw seemed to be having about as much luck with sleeping as Mik did. The Sidhe more often than not slept on the couch or curled up around Lillow than in his own bed. Nightmares were bothering Paw, but the Sidhe refused help for them and got upset when Mik said that he was having issues sleeping as well. Paw blamed himself and slept on the couch that night.

This was not exactly what he had hoped for. A new baby, one that was theirs but not really. They should have been excited, elated. Instead Paw put on a fake smile and gurgled to the child he held, rocking it to and fro gently. Mik tried not to be sick.

Neither was certain whether it was taking the child into their home that was causing the issue, or if it was something more, if it had to do with the nightmares.

If only Mik could recall what he had dreamed. Then he could, maybe, get to the bottom of it all.


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