Eisenstern 1.8
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Pregnancy is very unkind to me. It feels like it is unnecessarily difficult for me, where it would be notably easier for someone else. It could just be a matter of perspective. Of course, I don’t feel how someone else’s pregnancy feels for them. I am also built much differently than a woman would be. It is possible that this complicates things for me, where they would not for others.
Either way, it ends in my being uncomfortable most of the time. It feels like I always need to use the bathroom, and I am constantly tired. It makes getting through school work a little bit difficult, but I’m doing all right. So far, my studies have not suffered any, which is surprising considering how much time I spend taking care of basic needs. I take a lot of naps, and it feels like I’m constantly eating.
If I am, Drake doesn’t seem to mind. Bless that man.
As I don’t know as much about magic as Morgyn does, it felt prudent to be learning more about it. I don’t know what possessed me to try to learn more about magic while also trying to get through a computer science degree, but it is a nice distraction, something a little more homey. Strange that I would feel that way, but I suppose, I did grow up in magic realm, it makes little sense in that context that magic would feel homey. It’s the only thing I knew for a very long time.
Sometimes, it feels like I’m going down the wrong path. Like perhaps computer engineering is not my calling. Given I did grow up in magic realm, it makes sense that anything scientific would be very interesting to me and have a strong pull. All I knew before was magic. Of course, magic has a science, and science has magic, but we do not typically think of the two as being related. They have very notably different feels to them, even if they are related they do not feel like they are.
That is a strange thing to try to explain. I’ve never attempted to put such things to words before, and if no one else before me ever has either, I think I understand why.
It feels like I have spent almost all of my pregnancy trying to sleep. But the exhaustion never seems to go away, no matter how long I take a nap for. And yet, when I wake up things that I left undone tend to be done. I know it’s just Drake doing things that I meant to do when I am unable to do them, and I appreciate it a good deal. Still, I feel like a burden to him. Maybe that’s a strange way to feel.
If anything bothers him, he doesn’t say anything about it. Half the time, he is the one urging me to go have a nap as I nearly fall asleep at the dining room table, or at my desk. As much as it pains me to admit it, I’m not sure where I would be without him. I am very glad that I asked him to move in. I thought at the time that it was a bad idea, but he’s been invaluable support.
“You should be going into labor soon, right?” Morgyn asked.
“I guess so,” I said.
Morgyn looked unconvinced. “You guess?” Morgyn asked. “I should think you would have a better idea of your due date that I would.”
I shrugged, turning back to my yakisoba. “I don’t really think about it,” I said. “It tends to just stress me out.” I had decided quite some time ago not to think about it. It would happen when it happened, and no amount of fretting over it would make it go faster or slower.
Besides, the last thing I needed was something to go terribly wrong. The chances of something going wrong tended to go higher the more stressed out you were.
“You have a strange way of dealing with this,” Morgyn said. “You’re always so strict about keeping track of time and tasks that need to be done, I figured you would be the same with this.”
I smirked. “Sometimes,” I said, “there are things that are better off left to run their course the way they will.”
And run their course they did. Not long after, I went into labor, and gave birth to my beautiful Brynja. It was kind of a relief not to be pregnant anymore. Remind me never to do that again.
She is an easy-going child, hardly ever cries for anything. She has Sergio’s eyes, but I think she looks more like me. Teaching people how to spell her name for the rest of her life would probably be greatly annoying, so I only put Bryn on her birth certificate. That way, her name will be easier to spell, and pronounce for everyone else. Perhaps she won’t get teased about her name growing up either.
I find myself sort of wishing that I could homeschool her. If she’s inherited my magic, there are things that she will need to learn that she cannot learn from school. I suppose we will see when we get there.
“Haven’t you cleaned the desk already?” I asked. Drake was to one side of me, cleaning the desk beside mine.
“No,” Drake said. “That was your desk, not mine.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Why did you clean my desk?” I asked.
“Ezio, you just had a baby,” he said, as if I had asked the dumbest question in the universe. “That’s a lot of stress on the body, it would make sense if you were prone to getting sick in the time following labor. So, I am making sure there are no germs in your immediate vicinity that can make you sick.”
Okay, that was kind of sweet. I didn’t say anything again, just smiled stupidly. It seems I do that around Drake a lot.
Morgyn came by sometime later and met Bryn. Though the idiot wasn’t quite sure what to do with her, and spent some time looking a little bit panicked. To be honest, it was amusing. Don’t tell Morgyn, but I might’ve laughed at the idiot underneath my breath.
After spending some time meeting Bryn, Morgyn spent some extra time talking to me. The usual standard questions that everyone always asked. How are you, how do you feel, you’re a parent now how do you feel about that… I don’t know how I feel. Mostly, I think I’m just relieved to be done with this pregnancy thing.
Things changed over time after Bryn was born. My priorities changed, and watching how good Drake was with her, I started to wonder if maybe he would be equally as good with me. Bryn is not his, of course, and yet he acts like she is. Bryn treats him and reacts to him like he is also her father, and Sergio unsurprisingly is nowhere around. I did tell him that she was born not long after, but he has yet to come over to see her. I’m not surprised by that. I suspect he will probably be gone until she is much older.
Our lives have clicked together so flawlessly, that it almost feels like it was meant to be. Soon, I will graduate from University with my degree, and I will be able to start my new job. Between my paintings and Drake’s books, we’re not doing too badly for ourselves. But there’s always a little bit of concern about what would happen if one of my paintings didn’t sell for too long. I want the extra security. And Drake seems to understand. It’s like anytime I have a concern and I talk to him about it, he seems to understand without me really explaining anything.
I thought perhaps I was overthinking things, seeing things that weren’t there because I wanted them to be. So, I asked him out on a date. There was a new restaurant that had just opened in Senbamachi that I wanted to try out. The timing could have been better, but I didn’t want to leave Bryn when she was younger, and I certainly wasn’t interested in going out anywhere when I was pregnant.
We talked, and he made me laugh. So much so that it was almost painful. And without thinking about it, I asked him to be my boyfriend. It just slipped out. But even though I had done it mostly on accident, the way his eyes lit up made me decide not to take it back.
Bryn is older now, able to move around and wiggle about. Drake spends a lot of time teaching her things, but she has an insatiable curiosity. She reminds me of myself when I was her age. My father says that I was always getting into something, not because I wanted to stir up trouble, but because I wanted to understand.
I suppose, with that thought in mind, it makes sense that I would want to spend so much time on science, and would find it so attractive. I don’t know if Brynja will too, but maybe someday she will show a strong interest in science as well. I’m not sure I want that for her. There is more to life than understanding. Sometimes, things aren’t meant to be understood, but instead experienced.
If nothing else, she does seem to have a very strong interest in playing dolls. Every time I feel like I have some time to myself, Bryn wants to play with her dollhouse. It’s nothing special, just something I threw together with some leftover cardboard boxes. But Bryn acts like I gave her a palace.
It’s strange being a small human’s superhero. And sometimes, I look up at Drake and find him looking at me with the same look in his eye that she does. I don’t want to let either of them down. Even if neither one would ever outright say that they expect things from me, I know that they still kind of do. And I am Bryn’s only parent by blood, I need to do right by her.
I just wish I knew what that was.
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