31_days | [Sept. 8] [Original Short Story] New Families

Title: New Families
Date/Theme: September 8th/Twin stars
Series: Original
Character/Pairing: Karrah Citanai Kicyah/Etin Kicyah
Rating: PG

Author's Note: I wrote fluff! And I use the word 'true' twins to mean identical twins. In French, identical twin is 'vrai jumelle,' 'true twin,' and I think that people in this setting that is not so scientifically advanced as our own would use a word more like that.

New Families

"Say, don't they say that twins are hereditary?" Karrah asked. It was an evening in early spring; the snows had only recently melted and it was yet too cold to spend much time out of doors. So, the young woman was seated on the windowseat in her apartment which overlooked the street, watching the people walk by. She wrapped her arms around her knees, supporting her stomach, which by now clearly showed that she was soon expecting.

"Hm?" Her husband, Etin, looked up from the reports he'd been reading over. Pressing as they were, Karrah was so much more interesting!

"Well, don't they say that families with twins are more likely to have more twins? I was just wondering, since there's me and Kikre, do you suppose we might be having twins of our own?" Karrah's tone was calm; she seemed to just be idly speculating.

"It's possible, I suppose, if it's really true that twins... lead to... more twins," Etin chuckled over the awkwardness of his wording. "But you said you and Kikre weren't... true twins. So..."

"I don't know if you have to be true twins or not. It's just something to think on. It took me long enough to accept the fact that we were going to have a child; I'm not ready to think about two!" she exclaimed.

Etin shrugged. "The likelihood is still low, isn't it? And even if we did have twins, we do have the resources to take care of them."

"That's not what I'm worried about." Karrah brushed off this statement.

Etin half-smiled. Karrah, accustomed to luxury and high standing, could barely fathom worrying about money. But having grown up a poor peasant, Etin knew all too well the struggle for even the next meal! Oh, they were both survivors, this was undoubtable, but hunger and poverty were plagues she'd never known. Our children will know none of these, he thought proudly. This is why the new era was built. For the children, of course.

"I wonder if we'll be good parents?" Karrah murmured, jerking Etin out of his reverie. "I mean, I'd like to think so, but how do we really know? We didn't have good parents. You know how my father was, and I thought my mother would be my salvation but... you know how that ended as well. I suppose you were my salvation. But you can say the same about your own parents; they might have had better intentions than mine, but... still. How do we know what to do?"

Etin sighed. "We know what not to do. That's a start."

"I hope it's not twins," Karrah cried, anxious now. "I don't want to love one more than the other and I'm afraid I would."

Etin rose from his seat and came to join his wife by the window. "We'll be careful," he told her, then, "Besides, we're guiding the country well enough and I daresay raising a baby -- or twins -- would have to be easier than that, wouldn't it?"

Karrah smiled tentatively. "You have your advisors with the country."

"We have friends with the children." He returned her smile.

Karrah shrugged. "I suppose you're right. It will be as it should. We just have to trust ourselves."

"Life is an adventure," Etin cited, sitting beside her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. She leaned back, resting against him. He began to play with a strand of her golden hair.

"You are so sweet," she told him. Etin smiled once more and said nothing. Karrah, trying to think of some way to express what she felt, continued almost clumsily. "I mean, you're so nice to me. I don't think I deserve you, sometimes, because you are such a good person. But you take care of me and worry about me and it's almost strange to me... to have you love me."

"That's what love's about," Etin mused. "And I'm no better or worse than you and deserve no more than you do. We're just people after all, people trying to make a life. Trying to make a family."

"You are so confident," she remarked, almost smirking. "A year ago you were so afraid. I'd never seen you afraid, before then."

"Were you disappointed?" he jested.

"No," she replied earnestly. "It was the first time I saw you as anything other than... perfect. And it made you approachable, and made me think maybe I was worthy of you. Because you were scared to lose me, and I... ever since I met you, I think, I've been in love with you."

Etin shook his head. "I'm ashamed of how I acted. I was so scared of... after Lilana. And... oh, but I'm being so crass. Why do I keep mentioning her when...?"

"No, no, it's fine!" Karrah cut in. "I don't see why couples are so afraid of mentioning the names of the people they used to be with. I mean, you had something very special with Lilana once. I was just a little girl when that was happening and I was never jealous. And she betrayed you and broke your heart and it took you so long to heal, especially because you had taken so long to accept your love for her in the first place. We both know that's how it was and why should I be jealous? Even if your past was with her, that's the past! It's over!"

Etin smiled gently. but then corrected her. "She didn't betray me. It was seven years. She had all right to..."

"To drop you for some rich foreign lord? Then try to have an affair with you? And you think that was proper?"

Etin sighed. "She was never... proper. Nor, I must say, were you."

"I was proper in that sense!" Karrah exclaimed, and Etin could not help feeling a little amused that Karrah, who would break convention in so many other ways, who was married to a revolutionary for goodness sake, would cling so steadfastly to ancient traditions about virtue and innocence. Plenty of the revolutions' women had rebelled against these stereotypes; dressing how they wished, wearing their hair how they wished, sleeping with whomever they wished, and Etin, though he'd never been attracted to any of these women, did not disdain them. But Karrah evidently did. Well, she was the daughter of a lord of the old regime. Surely this was one of the last vestiges of her former status.

"So you are," he assured her.

She smiled at him as though it had been the greatest compliment.

They sat in silence for a while, looking through the window up at the stars. The sky was clear for once, and though the lights of the city obscured their view, it was a better view than they'd had for quite some time. They seemed to be thinking the same thing, because at length Etin murmured, "The stars were so much brighter back in the village."

"They were," she agreed. "I used to wonder what they were made of. I knew that they were so far away."

"I wondered the same thing," Etin told her. "Maybe all children do."

"Our children will," she announced confidently. "Our twins, if we have twins. I don't think I would really mind twins."

"Or our child, if it's only one," Etin grinned, then, "Do you want a boy or a girl?"

"A boy," Karrah announced quickly.

Etin didn't have to ask why. Shaking his head, he told her, "I want a girl. A little girl who grows up like you."

"You don't want a girl like me!" Karrah exclaimed, laughing. "There is something very wrong with me and I hope it doesn't pass on to the children. I am too strange!"

"I still want a girl," Etin told her. "Or, you know, would choose a girl. But a boy would be fine, of course."

"Ooh la la," Karrah sighed, giggling at the expression. "Have we got troubles indeed! We'd best have twins! And... you know, not-true twins. So we can have a boy and a girl at once!"

Etin's peasant sensibilities warned him to stop this discussion soon; all that business about not counting ones chickens before they hatched and all, but it was simply too fun not to speculate. Compromising, he said, "It'll work out."

"And our children will gaze up at the stars and wonder!" Karrah cried. "A little boy, or a little girl, or twins, lives like little stars that burn so bright."

"Lives like stars, illuminating the world, inspiring the people," Etin elaborated. "Lives like stars, well-lived and never forgotten. What better could we wish?"

Karrah simply nodded. It would be good indeed.

-END-