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We’d been at the beach when it’d happened. Ari was riding waves with his cousins, enjoying the wakka Makoa had carved for him, and I’d been happily floating around when I felt a startling and sudden gush from my entrance. I’d thought maybe I’d eaten something disagreeable, and the frightful awkwardness of the possibility I’d just shit myself in the ocean was enough for me to just whistle and ignore it in the hopes it wouldn’t happen again. But then came the painful cramps that had me crawling up the shore with my insides feeling like they were being crumpled up like a ball of discarded parchment. Thankfully, the others had seen me and quickly came rushing in on their boards to help.
“Ugh, it would really help if one of you knew how to fly,” I groaned.
A sharp pain wrenched through my lower back and forced a scream out from my throat that shocked everyone, including me. I had a high threshold for pain, forged through training, but this was unexpected. Ari offered me his hands, and I clenched his fingers with my fists as another wave of pain roared through me.
“We’re almost there,” Ari said, somehow calm and even despite his fingers being squashed into jelly in my hands.
“Wejustleft, Ari!” I screeched wildly. “Don’t tell me we’re almost there! I know we’re not almost there!”
Sweat drenched my forehead. Another ripple of painful cramps went through me as an awful pressure mounted in my lower abdomen.
“Maybe if you talk about it!” Makoa exclaimed. “Sometimes you can reduce the pain when you describe it. What are you feeling, brotha?”
“Like I’m either about to take the biggest shit in the world, or my insides are trying to tear out of my body,” I snapped. “It feels like I’m about to have a fucking baby!”
Ari shot a glare at Makoa, who held up his palms.
“Okay, sorry, I’ll shut up,” he said. “Kai, get those horses moving faster!”
“Any faster and we could lose a wheel,” Kai shouted. “Dammit, what a day for Visir to choose to stay home…”
Just as he said that, a shadow fell over us and a dark winged shape drifted into my field of view. Was I going crazy? That’s how it felt, like the pain had broken my brain and was conjuring up a hallucination of something that looked remarkably like my cousin. Wishful thinking.
Except, it wasn’t. The others all looked up and saw him too.
“Visir?!” Kai exclaimed. “Your timing is impeccable!”
He fought to control the whinnying horses as Visir swooped down to glide along beside us.
“Something told me I needed to come out here,” he said. “I’m glad I listened. Kai, cut the horses loose!”
Then I had an eyeful of Visir’s belly scales, and with a final jolt, the cart’s horrible vibrations ceased.
“Ohhh shit!” Makoa shouted. “We’re flying. We’re up in the air. This is happening.”
“Just don’t look down,” Ari grunted with his eyes closed. “Don’t look down.”
“Ohhhshit, brotha! I just looked down…”
Were it not for my pelvis feeling like it was about to explode into a million pieces, I would’ve laughed. The poor guy.
“You really came out here on a feeling?” Ari shouted to Visir. “You Othos never fail to impress me.”
“No, it’s not because we’re Othos,” Visir said. “It’s because we’re family.”
Kai turned and said, “You think you guys would know to come swimming for me if I was in trouble?”
Makoa grinned and punched his brother’s shoulder. “Yeah, sure. Why don’t you get pregnant and find out?”
Ari’s face quivered as he tried and failed to hold back a snort. And of course, when I laughed, I was rewarded with another awful wave of body-splitting pain.
“Stop saying funny things, please,” I groaned.
The cart touched the ground with a gentle thud, and they lifted me out and carried me to the house. The blue sky became the canopy of leaves and vines on our ceiling, and they carefully laid me down in the nest.
Kai and Makoa stood at a distance, staring dumbstruck as Ari lifted my robe and examined me. Visir waved his hand and two big leaves swung down like a curtain, blocking their view. I smiled weakly at him.
“Yeah, the baby is coming,” Ari said definitively.
