This was one time I really appreciated how in-command and self-assured Siame is. Completely unfussed, she sat down beside Alay, asked if she minded her checking something, and then when Alay shook her head, bent down and rested her cheek against Alay’s stomach. Then she said in exactly the same unhurried tone: "No immediate danger, but the umbilical cord is wrapped around her throat. You’d best visit the medics."
Alay had gone completely white, of course, but Siame being so calm and businesslike helped and Mara very practically said that she’d borrow our sled and take her straight away. Jeh, Ketz and Lohn could stay to watch the kids, and of course I would be there and so were my guards for the day (two from Twelfth Squad) so there were no problems leaving them. Siame enhanced and levitated herself and Alay down to our boathouse, and Mara turned and gave Sen a sudden, fierce hug, squeezing her tightly, then trotted off after them. Sen waited till we were safely alone and then burst into tears and told me that the baby was unhappy, as I suppose an unborn baby might be if something was twisting around her throat.
It hadn’t pulled too tight, thankfully, but was apparently on the more dangerous end of occurrences. I’m not sure what the solution would have been on Earth – an emergency Caesarean? – but Taren technology plus psychics meant that a telekinetic medical technician was able to carefully untangle everything within a short time and, though they kept Alay in medical overnight just to be sure, she and the baby seem to be fine. Not fun for Maze to come back from an Ena mission to find Alay under observation in medical, and no more fun for Mara or Ketz or Jeh, all of whom are just starting to show, and all of whom really really don’t want to think about all the things which can go wrong with babies. Lianz and Kara had spent a pretty terrible afternoon as well, since they’d immediately noticed that Alay had left, and no matter how reassuring you try to be, you can’t make kids not worry when you explain things like that.
It was really good to see how supportive all the kids were of each other. Of course, they all really like and care about Maze and Alay, but when the day stopped being a swimming frolic and became a long and tense wait around the pool, I could see that a lot of the divisions which had originally existed had at least relaxed a little, and that Ys and Rye treated two children which they’d had such huge walls erected against with a good deal of sympathy and compassion. And no suggestion from Lianz or Kara that mere servants didn’t know their place or anything like that. Ys and Kara actually had a little private conversation together, and I suspect that Kara has come to value Ys' ability to get information out of the interface.
By mostly living on the same island, the senior Setari have made sure that they have a convenient support network set up for themselves – just as the junior Setari who have reserved all the land on the other islands will if and when they can take up a permanent Muina residency. Once we’d had the good news about the detangling, Lohn took Lianz and Kara over to his and Mara’s house for a sleep-over, and Maze’s parents brought them a change of clothes and so forth. It’s a very large extended family.
Maze dropped over, after he’d reassured himself that Alay was all right, and swept Sen up in the hugest hug and thanked her and ended up taking her on a quick visit to Alay so that Sen could be sure that the baby wasn’t unhappy any more. And her cheerfulness after seeing that was so in turn reassured Maze and Alay a great deal. She still had tremendous nightmares for the next couple of days, but Kaoren said to expect this because of the amount of fear of could have been everyone was dealing with. He had a nightmare too, and wouldn’t talk about it, but it’s pretty easy to guess what it was about.
After all that, the announcement of the laws the various governments had decided upon to deal with touchstones was a bit of a non-event. Especially since, other than having an oversight committee and being stricter and more transparent about what mission assignments I (and eventually perhaps Lira) am given, they aren’t really changing a great deal from the way I’m treated now. They’ve made "touchstones screwing with people with their powers" illegal in a vague kind of way, but haven’t made it illegal for me to conjure up hot chocolate or videos. When it boils down to it, they want to leave flexibility, and don’t want to risk ending up being forced to prosecute me for doing something like conjuring a dragon to fight off a Cruzatch attack. It’s all pretty much what Kaoren and Maze said we’d probably end up with, back when the whole issue was raised, but it’s nice to have it over.
My workload at the moment has been ramped up, because KOTIS knows that I won’t be doing any visualisations or projections at all if I can help it, if I get pregnant. Since they’re extremely interested to know if I have little baby touchstones, they’re quite happy for me to get married and have kids, but they’re trying to cram heaps of visualisation projects in beforehand. Not taking me anywhere near any of the powerstones, or doing things they consider really risky, but they’re keen to reproduce the teleportation platforms and the process of creating aether, and though they think they’re beginning to understand, they’d love to have some extremely confusing points cleared up. Unfortunately they haven’t found any convenient books in the Kalasa library explaining any of this, and have been working on the office I visualised once before, and other rooms like that.
Going for a fitting for my wedding dress tomorrow, and Kaoren and the kids' outfits. I had to ask Kaoren whether his sights would drive him insane if he didn’t get to see what my wedding dress looked like beforehand, and he thinks it will be okay, especially if I tell him about it generally. After the fitting we’re going to talk the kids through what we’ve decided on for the ceremony, and explain how it’s going to be more than just a wedding, and talk over issues like surnames. Sen is tremendously excited to see the dresses. So am I.
15 - February
February 28
Preparations
Just under a month to go now. I’d feel stressed about setting up a party for what will be my largest guest list so far, but now that Kaoren’s parents are settled into their new home at Liriath, almost all the wedding preparations have been taken out of my hands. It’s not too bad – if I’m very definite about the things I do want, Teor does everything to ensure that I get that. But I had to make very clear that I particularly want the kids' clothes the way I’d already chosen, and bits of the ceremony to go a particular way, and especially the family-making ceremony where we formalise the adoption of the kids. But overall, though she’s frustrated me a couple of times, I’m pretty glad Teor’s here and so effortlessly looking after marquees in case it rains and catering and transport and all that kind of stuff. She happily makes all the decisions, and some time later mentions what’s going on, and reorganises if there’s anything I want to change, but usually there isn’t. She’s only added a few non-relatives I don’t know to the guest list.
Kaoren not only has grandparents, but also great-grandparents still living, though not all of them are able to make the trip, and also a reasonable swodge of other relatives, so it’s lucky we put quite a few rooms in the guest/guard house.
I’m very happy with my dress and the girls' dresses, and highly curious about what Kaoren and Rye look like in their matching formal robes (Kaoren decided that we may as well both have a surprise on the day). The girls' dresses were the defining theme – I had a long talk with Chiane (my dress designer) about the colours which would best suit Ys and yet also look good on Lira and Sen, and Chiane basically designed a dress for Ys which really suited her, and then we worked from there, although of course that’s not how it gets explained to anyone else. The colours we ended up with were moss green, a sage and a near-white green. The girls' dresses are these deceptively simple knee-length sleeveless sheathes of the sage with side-panels of the moss green and this longer transparent material over the top which tends to swirl and flirt about their knees and has embroidery in the moss green and sage of leaves and flowers kind of caught in the act of drifting down and gathering in little curling piles about the hem. Sen’s version has no overlay and is mostly white and sage with some ribbony bits, while Kaoren’s and Rye’s robes will be longer, with sleeves and without the overlay, and with a more formal and stylised set of leaves around the hems and cuffs.