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The recumbant woman snarled and sweated. Jeraine had to hold her hands tightly to keep her from clawing viciously at her own distended belly with hard and pointed nails.
"I want this thing out!" she shrieked, before collapsing back into a gutteral rage of pain and filthy-sounding Abyssal curses. Jeraine winced as her hands drew blood from his.
"It will be soon, my fire," he cooed gently, though he knew it would only infuriate her more. He was rewarded with a fiercer dig of her nails. "Azar, you wanted this. Remember that."
She growled at him, but the nails retracted back, and he felt safe to let go of her hands. The man moved around to the end of the bed, where the sheets and towels already sagged, filthy with blood and whatever else the womb of such a woman contained. Jeraine could see the crown of the child's head, deeply black with matted ringlets of glistening hair, and he smiled. Azar hadn't a single hair on her body. The first sign of this new life held humanity. It proved that the child was his.
It was not that he doubted the woman's faithfulness to him. On the contrary, he knew full well exactly what kind of loyalty he did not have. Nevertheless, by the virtue or taint of her demonblood, Azar could choose carefully when a man would sire a child within her. She had wanted a child, and even more inexplicably, she had wanted him. He didn't try to explain it to himself. Jeraine had given up finding a rhyme or reason to Azar's decisions long ago.
Her decision or not, there it was, the child half his. Azar screamed and writhed, her normally rubescent skin now scarlet from the strain. And the heat, he added, even now looking admiringly over the body of this fire that had consumed him. Azar was a flame among flames in this dark and searing wasteland of Zanshibon. She radiated a torridity of presence and spirit, and she could burn. He knew how she burned...
"It's coming, my fire, my passion. You have a child here, just get it out."
She screamed, she strained, and soon a small and fierce voice joined hers. Jeraine's hands trembled as he reached and lifted up the tiny form, wrapping it in linen. It was a girl, crying in the tight tremolo of the newborn, the sound edged poingantly with indignation. He set her gently aside. He cut her loose. He cleaned both mother and child.
"You have a daughter, my flame," Jeraine said, and he could not keep back the tenderness he felt at that moment. He had a daughter as well.
"B-bring it here," Azar commanded, even through her exhaustion, and even though she lay weak and spent, shuddering from pains. Jeraine nodded, brought the baby to her view, and unwrapped the linen bindings. The child quieted her cries to a wimper, then was still. Mother and daughter regarded one another.
"She is unmarked," Azar spat angrilly. "What an ugly little soft raisin."
"This is what human babies look like, my fire," Jeraine admitted softly. Proudly. Azar whipped her tail in irritation.
"Care for her then. I will sleep," she muttered, and collapsed back in the bed in exhaustion. "Care for your human baby..."
Azar was still then, her fire cooled in slumber. The babe cried, but softly, and Jeraine did what he could to feed her milk from a rag. The mother had been dissapointed; he suspected she would not deign to give teat to this thing that looked so unlike her. The baby gurgled. The father smiled.
"Welcome, small one, to this life of paradoxes..." he mused. "Life and death are mingled here. Love and hate are mingled here . . . and here . . . here you are."
Jeraine watched her as she shut her eyes and sucked at the rag. He watched as she fussed, then was patient, as he had to dip it often. His eyes took in her soft, frail form, clean and dry now. And perfect. Her body showed no hint of scale, her eyes were smokily blue and unslitted, and underneath the tuft of black hair, her head was smooth and soft.
"You hide well what you are, little one," he told her, and smiled. He brought his face near hers, and brushed noses softly. "Rune. Yes, little Rune," he named her. He did not think Azar would care.
He knew that the babe might be killed tomorrow, by the whim of a passing fiend, but in his world of paradoxes, Jeraine knew that there was promise in the forboding.
She might live.
The man was quiet and consumed, yet, at this, he still felt joy.
*** *** ***
Azar hurried through the streets of Zansh, the infant slung low against her chest in a sash. It was the closest she had allowed the child to get to her heart, she mused, and all to keep her from that sentimental man. He seemed to really love the thing, and she couldn't have that spurring him to do something foolish. A child pulled close to an unmoved mother's breast to remove her from a father's care . . . Azar was human enough to appreciate the irony, and it added a sense of delight to her errand.
With limber side-steps on wide-splayed toes, she dodged through the crowd, letting her thin, short tail whip freely. Not many of those so distant from their demon sires had such dramatic signs of thier lineage. Her red and glabrous skin, her lithe and catlike legs that came to two hoof-ended toes, and the smooth tail of five handspans all marked her as points of pride. They were both beautiful and grand, and she showed herself off audaciously even as she ran.
Of course, that kind of bold cheek is what had angered Paush. It was why she was now darting her way toward the Velvet Quiver.
She clambered nimbly up three twists of a stair against a dry rock face, through a curtained and beaded doorway, and slipped into a heavy blanket of sweet fumes. A few heads nodded, and a few mouths twisted into lingering leers. She was known here. It didn't take long to locate Paush in the baths, and Azar brazenly pushed through his decadent coterie to address him.
"Great Lord, I have a price to pay," she offered with a scraping bow. He looked down on her from a height, even while sitting in the bath, that great horned head turning ponderously to regard the interruption.
"Yes," he intoned with a rich and fearful rumble, and Azar shrunk back slightly. It had been a small thing. She had merely helped herself to his wine once, but he clearly remembered the offense. "Yes, you do. Have you come to offer me your life, then?"
"Not my life, your grace, but a life of mine," she said, looking up with a glint in her eye. Paush eyed the young child that was looking up at him wide-eyed from the sling.
"That morsel? It may prove tender, but it is not equal to what you owe me," the great demon rumbled with a leonine grin and a gesture of his monstrous hand. Two winged demidemons stepped in to seize Azar by her arms, but she cried out to stop them.
"No, great one, not the child, a man! A man I have to offer, Jeraine, who has long survived these wastes."
Paush lowered his hand, and the demidemons stepped back.
"You offer me a man? A human then. And is he yours?"
"He is," Azar cackled lightly, grinning to flash her wicked teeth.
"Very well," the demon lord sighed deeply. "I claim this Jeraine and spare your life. Begone."
Azar bowed again, and as the purpose for her errand was complete, she allowed her eyes to fall on other things. The finery of the demon's attendants, the jewels at their throats, and the guilded jars and vials they bore all glittered enticingly.
"Great one," she pressed in a reckless moment, "if you will, I offer also the child, in exchange for something of lesser value..." Azar hungrilly eyed an agate and ruby choker upon a pale servant's neck. Paush did not miss this sudden lust, and he smiled darkly. The child began to cry.
The woman lifted the sling from around her neck and shoulder, and the demon took it lightly like a sack with a thumb and finger. The girl infant inside kicked and wailed. Azar received her costly trinket, bowed, and was gone.
"Give her to the matron here," Paush chuckled darkly, and lowered the writhing bundle into the arms of an attendant. "I may return for her when she is more, so keep her alive."
[R]unesong · Mon Nov 14, 2005 @ 07:21pm · 2 Comments |
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