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Water, darkness, light, and the green of the deep forest. The dreams ebbed and flowed for far too long, long enough for me to become aware they were dreams, but only ran clearly enough to know I wasn’t in a normal environment.
Despite being a lucid dream, I could not control the narrative at all. In fact, I could barely perceive my surroundings, and have the thought that lucid dreams and psychedelic nonsense don’t usually go together. I couldn’t affect what I couldn’t sort out, after all. Visions of landscapes from long ago occasionally appeared, but without a subjective understanding of my location in them. Most of the time, it was just vagueness and uncertainty.
When I had a lucid dream as Robert, I usually tried to fly, or ninja-walk through the air in the fashion that Lhan learned how to do. It was a blast, frankly, even though I almost always ended it too early by waking up.
Once the awareness that I couldn’t wake myself came to me, I began to worry, because that’s the moment when the memory of where and when I had last been awake finally returned.
There’s danger! I need to wake up!
Although that was futile, it did bring a response. I felt a hand stroke my head and a heard gentle voice reassure me.
“There’s nothing for you to fear, Innanmi.”
My babies! My people!
“All remain safe,” the voice insisted, as she continued to calmly caress my hair.
Perhaps the unknown hand applied magic along with those words, because, for a short, blessed time, my panic disappeared. All remain safe, was, after all, the only thing that really mattered to me.
Protecting those around me, keeping them safe, nurturing them and preserving their futures. These had been my guiding desire throughout an untold number of lifetimes. In at least one of those lifetimes, my nature had even led me into a vocation similar to priesthood. My soul remained dedicated to others, no matter how many lifetimes I lived.
Did I ever wonder why? I probably should have wondered, somewhere between all those trips through Samsara, but it had always simply been the thing that my common sense told me that I must do. Now, I knew why. Protecting the mortals was, after all, the job the seniors gave me, the task I Descended from the Immortal Realm to Huade so long ago in order to perform. Even death and reincarnation never separated my heart from the mission they gave me.
Someone in each of those lives would always tell me, at some point, that I ought to be a bit more selfish. I have a suspicion that, at my funeral in my previous life, my mom Jennifer Stewart bitterly cried that she told me so. I know she completely understood my reason to throw my life away for those children, and she didn’t resent the lives I saved and frankly, she was probably proud of me. She was a good, giving person whose one and only flaw was the number of flawed men she’d foolishly allowed to take advantage of that good heart. I was in every way her son. But even Mom had told me I should think of my own future more.
The comfort my unknown companion gave me with her reassurance only lasted so long, because I couldn’t help but remember again the dire circumstances of the final moments after I attacked Cullen’s proxy.
At that time, we were losing our grip on the barrier within me, separating my Mortal Realm spiritual vessel from Fan Li’s old core in the Spirit Realm. Too much spirit had already poured forth through the crumbling dam, and my soul was losing its grip on the body that Oranos had worked so hard to arrange for me. “Amnesiac Tiana” and “Sen” became one, while the others…
Where were they? I couldn’t feel their thoughts at all.
“We’re keeping them asleep right now, Innanmi,” the voice explained. “Or rather, the Great Senior who is your eldest mother is. Probably, it would be more accurate to say, she is suppressing them.”
<That makes my action sound rather overbearing, don’t you think?>
“I mean no disrespect, Great Senior,” the other apologized.
“Mother,” I croaked. That interjected question had certainly been the thoughts of Immortal Mother.
At last, I had the hesitant thought that I might not be asleep anymore. Then a stab of panic tore through me.
I can’t feel my babies!
<That will pass shortly, dear. Try to open your eyes.>
With great effort, I managed at last. I vaguely expected it, as I had tentatively identified the voice, but I saw a blurry image of my grandmother Lâra smiling at me.
“… babies…”
What came from my throat was barely a rasp, as if I hadn’t used my voice in ages. But they understood me.
“Your babies are fine, Innanmi.”
<As for your other incarnations, it was important to keep you focused on one personality for the moment. The dissociative identity architecture that you adopted is an excellent method for your underdeveloped personality to coordinate the multiple trains of thought natural for your volume of spiritual substance, but allowing more than one personality to operate would have made reconnecting your soul and body far too complex. They are all fine. As this youngling suggested, think of them as asleep.>
I had yet to be able to turn my head. I could still barely even see Grandmother clearly.
<Your spiritual sense should be returning now. Try to sense your babies.>
In a vague mental blur, my awareness through [Fairy Sense] came first of my own position. I could feel my grandmother’s arm beneath me and my head on her shoulders as she held my upper body above water. I wasn’t wearing anything, and I could feel the warm sunlight on my face and chest. My waist felt a bit bloated, and my legs weren’t there at all, as I was in mermaid form, my long tail floating idly, far past where my feet should be.
At last, my [Fairy Sense] sharpened enough to check on my babies, and I found them instantly. Even more heartening, they felt far stronger than they had ever felt before.
My vision, which had yet to truly recover, blurred instantly, as the tears of relief began flowing. They shouldn’t have. I should have still been worrying about everyone in the castle, and everyone at the mountain summit, but the comfort of knowing my babies were still with me became unbearable and I could only lay there and sob, while clinging to Grandmother.
This place wasn’t Heaven, or the Afterlife Organization, or whatever. My babies weren’t dead. I could clearly feel their vibrant little lives within me.
“Great Senior, we of the Human Clade are quite perverse, aren’t we?” Grandmother mused as she continued to stroke my head. “She cries as hard that they are safe as she would if she had lost them, and I somehow feel some tears coming to my own eyes as well.”
<Tears are not sadness, child,> Immortal Mother answered. <They are the release of overflowing emotions. It’s natural for the result to be the same.>
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At long last, after the last tears had flowed and the last sobs finally ended, I began to be more aware of my surroundings. It seemed to be Grandmother’s fountain pool, the little annex separated from her lake by a weir. But I could feel clearly that the density of spiritual energy was far too high.
Immortal Mother told me. <Your pets fashioned a recreation of her home, to make her comfortable while she stayed here with you. The lake made an excellent environment for your therapy as well. Your mermaid form provides many advantages for treatment of a pregnant patient.>
As expected. I was in Sky Ocean, my small world.
“Speaking of pets,” Grandmother said with a smile, “One desperately needs your attention right now.”
I wiped my eyes and looked where she had inclined her head. A cute auburn-brown dog, half pomeranian and half sheltie, was giving a good impression of being ready to explode. Momentarily sitting, then pacing, then sitting again, then up on her feet again. I don’t think she could stand waiting even another five seconds.
“Little Jia?” I called out.
That was sufficient permission, apparently. She yelped, happily called out in spiritual voice, <Commander!>, then dove right into the water, desperately dog-paddling her way to where her mistress waited. Once she realized that this was the slowest method possible to reach me, she morphed into her dog-girl form and switched to the breast stroke.
With a sigh, I averted my eyes. Her nude form looked more than a little bit… underage.
I transmitted to her, <Jia, either use a swimsuit, go back to dog form, or put a few more years on.>
I mean, she’s thousands of years old, but I have never subscribed to the ‘loli who is actually thousands of years old despite looking twelve isn’t pedo’ theory. It’s the body of a child, dude.
Without missing a stroke, she obediently matured her form to match my apparent age. In other words, college student-ish. Which I might have regretted for a different reason, but honestly, as my small world’s system and my spiritual beast, not the mortal beast-kin girl that she appeared, she wouldn’t trigger my vampiric instincts. I really didn’t feel anything but, mm, nice, as she arrived and stood waist-deep next to me.
She glomped on me as firmly as I expected, while I managed to get an arm around her shoulder to welcome her.
“She has been so terribly worried for you, child,” another voice came.
I turned my head to see the petite woman whose beauty had once so stunned Fan Li. Skin like white jade and hair like onyx-black silk, red lips like a tiny rosebud…
Fan Li truly has a poetic way to see the world, but I would have to say she described Immortal Mother perfectly. Of course, the being that birthed Senhion could take on any appearance she wanted, at her level of cultivation. This, though, had long been her preferred appearance.
She was seated on a flat stone with her legs in the water, clad in a thin yukata. Her warm eyes regarded me with all the kindness I could remember from Senhion’s childhood… which I suppose is still in progress, from the point of view of a half-billion-year-old entity.
In her lap, on her shoulders and on her head, a quartet of pixies relaxed. To the eldest of them, Kiki, this would be ‘Mama’. I wondered what the Nanas were calling her. They were all watching me closely.
“So you are no longer maintaining her, Great Senior?” Grandmother asked.
“No longer necessary,” Immortal Mother answered. “She has recovered autonomous control of her physique perfectly. But keep her supported like that. Her voluntary control will likely still be quite uncoordinated for a few more minutes.”
I finally noticed, as my hand rested on my tummy, that I could feel something that was not quite right. I wasn’t far enough along to have a baby bump…
Pulling Jia out of the way, I looked down at my midriff and concentrated harder with [Fairy Sense] while spreading my fingers over the relevant area and feeling. It wasn’t a lot, but I’m a short woman who is normally very slim in the waist. Aggravatingly slim, according to Mireia. She was burning with envy during the last dress measurement, at my twenty three inches.
It wouldn’t be twenty three now. It wasn’t huge or anything, but it was definitely more than twenty three.
I should have been a few days short of two months pregnant, since Gaia had accelerated me to one month gone on the night she placed these children inside me. Two Huadean months into a ten month fairy-length pregnancy, on a calendar where human pregnancies last only eight.
A woman who was two months pregnant would barely show any bump at all, unless she had Mother’s tiny waist, at least one or two inches skinnier than mine. Even adjusting for twins, a bump this size was impossible at two months…
“It’s about four and a half, child,” Immortal Mother said.
An instant chill ran down my spine as I recognized the length of time I had lost. I cried, “I’ve been gone for ten weeks? The battle wasn’t over!”
Changing worlds complicates the Elder space and time sense. It is relative to the coordinate frame where one currently exists. Now that I could sense it, I could tell that about a year had passed within this space since I last visited it. This fact had absolutely nothing to do with how much time had passed on Huade. Except for the linkage between Sky Ocean and Huade that required the motion of time to always be positive for both, the two time flows were unrelated.
That told me absolutely nothing about when it was in Narses. I wouldn’t feel that until I returned. My worry began spinning out of control.
“Relax, Innanmi,” Grandmother chided while soothing my fretting head again. “Not even two hours have passed yet, back at your castle. Your pet multiplied your small world’s time by a thousand upon your arrival. And the enemy fell apart and began retreating once you destroyed their leader’s proxy.”
Immortal Mother added, “That youngling that has been guarding you understood the gravity of the situation well. She has also ensured that your wife knows you are safe, so she could reassure your husband and others.”
It took a moment to work out that youngling meant Rhea and wife meant Mireia. Well, the subtleties of Mortal World relationships and the relative ages of celestial maidens are probably of no matter to her.
“How did I get here?” I asked. The last I could remember, the pixies seemed to be carrying me into the sky.
“These children brought you,” Immortal Mother answered.
“How?”
“Great Senior and Gaia helped direct your portal system to open temporary entrances,” Grandmother explained. “One for you and one for me. Then she sent your sister and her grandkids to fetch us.”
“You asked me to protect those little ones within you,” Immortal Mother stated. “I could hardly ignore my daughter’s plea to protect my granddaughters.”
“Mama?” Kiki asked.
“Okay, it’s safe for you children to go to her now,” Immortal Mother told her and the Nanas.
“Big Sis!”
“Auntie!”
“Auntie!”
“Auntie!”
The four came rushing at me in a quadruple blitz, tackleglomping various parts of my body. Now, six women of varying sizes were hanging onto me. Well, four of them were doll-sized, so it wasn’t too bad.
