Daggeuro paced back and forth, the sounds of screaming and cursing causing his shoulders to bunch up in tension time and again. The thickest door in all of creation wouldn't have blocked the noise.
Selena looked up at him from her seat, a comfortable enough factory-produced number in brown, magazine open in her lap. "Calm down," she chided. "You've been through this three times already, you should be used to it."
"That was different," the Ovin of Amermidst Nation spat. "I was in the room then, able to see what was going on. This? This is maddening." He sat down roughly in the chair beside her, folding his arms over his chest, crossing his booted foot onto his knee. He scratched at his leg absently. "These jeans aren't helping, the material irritates my fur."
"Keep it down," Selena warned. "We've already had one nurse see through your veil. We need to minimize the call for damage control."
"Right," Daggeuro said with a sigh. His illusion veil made him look like a handsome middle-aged human, but as his magic skills had never been more than middling, his emotional compass had to be tightly kept north to maintain it. He leaned his head over onto her shoulder, and she ran her hand through his hair affectionately. "I hate hearing her like this. How long has it been?"
"Nine hours," Selena replied. They lapsed into comfortable silence for a few minutes, and all fell quiet around them. Then, suddenly, the first cries of a new life. Daggeuro's head snapped up, and he and Selena were on their feet, waiting two feet from the door. It cracked open, and Gertrude Potts poked her silver-meined head out, grinning hugely at them.
"You guys can come in, she's being cleaned up and measured." She quirked an eyebrow at Daggeuro. "Fix your snout, it's starting to show." Kathy's mother had been remarkably accepting of the truth when Kathy and Byron decided finally to tell her about Ether Plane and all things magic. It had, after all, paled in comparison to the revelation that she was going to be a grandmother for the third time. Daggeuro and Selena had been invited to meet her and Kathy's stepfather, and they had been delighted with her folks, as they had bee with te faerie couple.
The three of them slipped into the delivery room, where Kathy lay exhausted, face covered in sweat, Byron seated beside her bed, holding her hand. She was smiling, eyes droopy as Daggeuro and Selena came to her opposite side. She blinked blearily up at them. "Hey," she said, "Imma mommy now," she slurred.
"Congratulations, dear Kathy," the kennin said. "We're proud of you."
"Make a hole," said a nurse behind them, bringing Kathy and Byron's daughter back over, all wrapped up. She handed the girl down to Kathy, then gave her a bottle of formula, since they'd agreed on bottle feeding from the start. "And we just need a name now," the nurse said gently, pen held at the ready over the birth certificate paperwork.
Kathy looked at Byron, and the strength of their bond was clear to Daggeuro. Their girl was a beautiful little cherub. Together the Awakened couple turned to the nurse.
"Molly," said Kathy, beaming down at her child. "Molly Claire Potts."
Daggeuro and Selena strode together down the corridor, both still warmed by the experience they'd just witnessed, but both also wrapped in curiosity and concern. "You noticed it too," he said to his wife, a statement rather than a question.
"Yes. I assume we're both thinking the same thing?" Daggeuro grunted, nodded. Together, the couple descended a staircase from the floor where their offices were kept to the third level of the enormous central library in Celia. Since the reconstruction began, this building, left untouched by the dragons during the Time of Quoth, had been serving as the central governing structure for Amermidst Nation.
They headed down a plushly carpeted hallway and knocked on the Head of Records' office door, which creaked open. A spartan office was laid out within, containing only a single small desk and one filing cabinet. Behind the desk sat a divar, one of the wise turtle-faeries, dressed in fine black silk robes. He looked up from the tome he was reading and smiled.
"Ah, to what do I owe the honor of being approached by our nation's Ovin and his wife, the Minister of Mortal Affairs?" Daggeuro bowed his head slightly and stepped forward.
"Sage Renken," Daggeuro began. "It is said that you have managed to recover almost all records regarding the Awakened throughout the realms. Is that true?"
"Well, on this continent, yes," replied the divar scholar. "I've only managed to read through about half of what we've gathered."
"Renken, we need you to find something out for us," said Selena, "and keep it secret that you're even looking."
"Hmm, sounds serious. What do you need to know?"
"We need to find out if any human has ever been born in an Awakened state," said Daggeuro.
"Good heavens! Why would you need to know something so unlikely to have ever occurred?"
"Because," Selena said, "we just witnessed the birth of such a child."
-Fin