Gestation, Parturition

[AN: It will take a few chapters for Jonah to learn the language of Pyrrheica, but I am lazy and am not going to make a full language just to replace it with English once Jonah learns it so enjoy more dialogue than ever before.]

Now subliminally aware of having switched bodies again, Jonah stopped trying to move around and slowly accepted being a fetus. His mind was in shambles, having had a rough time transferring from a fully developed nervous system to an infant's work-in-progress brain. One could think of it as a data-compression problem: even though Jonah's original mind was devoid of episodic memories, it was chock-full of semantic ones. The fetus's mind could technically fit all the information, but the transfer came at a cost—the underdeveloped connections which stored the new data had been contorted unnaturally to make room, and thus needed plenty of time to adapt and make the knowledge readily accessible. Until then, Jonah's mind would feel like a TV with a bad connection.

Jonah continued to try thinking a thought or two through the static, getting more exhausted with each attempt. Soon enough, his willpower buckled under the strain, and his consciousness retreated into a sleep-like condition.

If you didn't include the confusion brought on by the mind-boggling process of transferring souls, the experience was quite comfortable. Being in the womb was the closest Jonah had ever been to a state of physical and spiritual stillness. It was a state more like deep meditation than sleep, really. Images from his experiences with the squid, in the underground complex, along with the dreams came and went with ease, sometimes blending together smoothly to create new scenes, but never sticking around long enough to matter.

Jonah's attempts to think and perceive would flare up once every hour or two, but within a few days they faded away completely. The less he resisted, the more his consciousness merged with the developing brain. Just as the new neurons needed to adapt to all the information which had been transmitted, Jonah's consciousness needed to be folded here and there to match the new hardware. The process would seal away his pre-reincarnation experiences along with a good chunk of his language skills, but these would slowly reemerge as the young brain matured.

The days ticked by without much change. Jonah's senses would keep sending information to a mind that could not process it. Occasionally, the tossing and swirling he experienced on arrival would return briefly, usually being accompanied by mumbling and whooshing sounds from without his vessel. These mumbles would accompany his mother's sonorous voice, alternating back and forth in conversation which would be pierced frequently by the whole-body jiggle of her laughter. Sometimes, a gravelly voice would come close and spread vibrations through his body that compared to the ones from his mother. When the sounds vanished, the constant pulsations of his mother's heartbeat and breathing were all that could be heard. Nothing could stir Jonah from his tranquil state, though, and he remained ignorant of the external voices.

That was, until after many weeks had passed, something happened which ripped Jonah from his tranquility. It started with a nudge against the womb like any other, but soon after the nudge came a flood of unknown energy which wrapped around him and danced through his flesh, tickling Jonah lightly and sending shivers all over his body. Surprised at the strange sensations, he stretched his arms and legs once more, which were now slightly more mobile. His eyes were already open but saw nothing but darkness. When the energy flow subsided, he stayed awake and could finally pay attention to the voices coming from outside. This time, they kept building until the ruckus dwarfed any of the sounds from before.

Jonah was still incapable of thinking clearly but was instinctively upset at hearing bickering from outside. He unconsciously recognized his mother's voice at this point, but had never before heard it angry, or as anxious as it was now. These anxieties were contagious between mother and baby, and the seed of fear they implanted in him started to quickly grow.

Even after the sound of the argument outside faded away, he was unable to calm down. He was aware of his body now, but the innocence of his childish mind and Jonah's previous experience combined in a detrimental manner, yoking him with sudden and acute claustrophobia. Previously he had only been frustrated at his inability to control his body, but now his closely packed surroundings inspired dysphoria. What had once been a warm and comfortable sensory deprivation chamber was now a vice pressing down on him from all sides. His body felt wrong—too compact, much too small, and his skin felt stuffy and waxy like it was coated in candle wax. The fear made him thrash his arms and legs, and his mother's muscles twitched and shook in response. More than anything else now, he wanted to get out, and get out fast.

As if in response to his longing to escape, his mother's twitching grew in violence. He found himself kicking down and pushing up, instinctively pressing against the weakest part of the womb. He felt nudges from his mother pushing against him and heard panicked shouts from outside. The world suddenly turned and bounced with motion as his mother's heartbeat and breathing quickened. He noticed gravity's pull for the first time in weeks, which now lifted him upwards, then pushed him on his side. He twisted and writhed as best he could, half excited and half terrified at the event to come, which both his body and his mind slowly came to recognize as birth.

He could feel his mother's chest contracting, tightening around him in evenly spread waves. Gravity had settled now, pushing down on his back with his chest towards the ground. He felt something move in the fluid above his head, and right after that the pressure surrounding him dropped. He heard more shouts from outside, now clearer than ever and still improving, while he felt the fluid around him slowly flowing up and past his head.

His mother's contractions continued, pushing him bit by bit up against what now felt like a small opening in the ceiling of the womb. It slowly but surely grew larger, matching the increasing tempo of her pulses of pressure. The hole grew and eventually was large enough for Jonah's head to start pushing through, and when he did its edges wrapped around his head in an tight circle. He could feel a hormonal swell which inspired him to keep moving upwards, but then felt something tubular tangle around his leg, halting his outward progress. He held that position for a few minutes, feeling desperation set in at the unexpected resistance. He also felt a hint of déjà vu.

More shouting from outside ensued, with his mother's voice going up in pitch severely. The noise abated rapidly, until it was quieter outside than it ever had been during the birth. All he could hear was his mother's breathing, until the energy he had wakened him came flooding back, causing a tickling sensation much stronger than the last time. He twitched in response, as if trying to shake the energy off, but instead of withdrawing it compressed towards his hindered leg, hovering around the part that had gotten tangled. It stayed there for a few seconds before vanishing completely. Next thing he knew, the fluid around his leg started twisting and turning, pushing his leg up and freeing it from the knotted cord. With the resistance gone, he resumed his push for freedom.

It was a harsh and grueling trek to be born, and the sounds of shouting and grunting never ceased. A dim light from outside appeared all at once to his blurry vision and the sounds became clear as day as his head made its way out into the open. There was a constant howl of wind in the background, and with it the steady pitter-patter of light rain gave a calming contrast to the heavy, rapid breaths of his heaving mother. He could hear the whispers of two men near to his head and could feel a pair of hands supporting him. He kept progressing, twisting now to fit his left shoulder through, then twisting further to free the right one. At that point, one of the men's voices spoke out more loudly than before. It was the same gravelly voice that had so frequently reached him in the womb, speaking in a foreign tongue.

"Oh, my love, you've done so well. Come now, let me help you. He's made it out far enough, the rest will be easy with my help."

Between grunts, his mother let out an answer.

"I've already told you… hah… you moron… you've wasted enough of… your energy on me… just let me—"

She was cut off by her own shouts of pain. Jonah could feel the energy swirling around him once again, pressing now instead of tickling. He felt it push against his still-submerged lower body, while simultaneously massaging the surrounding flesh of the birth canal to relax it and dilate it further. He slid out smoothly, umbilical cord and placenta following behind him, as his mother's groans were replaced by joyous cries of relief—and then by Jonah's crying. Up until this point, he hadn't realized that he had passed the time in the womb without taking a single breath, and now desperately he sucked in air.

"Araion," the mother said after recovering her breath. "…call him Araion."

"Araion it is," the gruff voice spoke. "Your forefather's name, and so he will take my family's name."

"And pray what family have you, you wistful wanderer?" the other man mocked.

"No jesting at my son's birth, Thiron. He will bear the name Araion Kulgnar, and he will carry on my lega-"

"Oh, would you just shut it with your revenge fantasies. Let me hold my child." Jonah's mother cut off what must have been his father—but he was no longer Jonah now, though he had yet to acknowledge it. His mother lifted her child up and nuzzled him against her bosom, softening his shrill screams until they faded away. The father cut the umbilical cord with a blaze of light that lit up the room. He then transferred it along with the placenta to a nearby bag made of thick, waxy cloth, marking an end to the struggle of birth.

Araion Kulgnar was born in a timber-walled room, where his mother had laid on a cushioned table covered with a white sheet. Other than two additional chairs for the men assisting the delivery and a large wooden cabinet, there was no furniture, giving the room a spartan appearance. On one wall was a heavy iron-framed wooden door and facing it on the other side was a round porthole letting in the dim red-orange light of the setting sun peering through grey clouds. Araion took his short silvery hair from his mother and had a sharp nose and deep-set eyes from his father. His irises were a deep Tyrian purple where they met his pupils which faded to a clear and snowy white by the time they reached his sclerae. His pale white skin was covered by the waxy vernix caseosa left from the womb, and a small segment of cord covered his belly button. Despite the grisly remains from his time in the womb, the cuteness of a newborn shone through.

The second man left the room only to return minutes later with a basin of clean water. He took a bundle of clean rags from one of the cabinet's drawers, wetting one and passing it to the mother, who started to clean off the wax covering Araion. His father opened the bag with the placenta, in which the rag was put once dirtied by the birthing custard. Another rag was wetted and passed over, and the process was repeated until Araion was fully clean. After being dried, he was swaddled in a sturdy black cloth embellished with numerous gold lines. Once swaddled, a golden aura wrapped around the infant's body briefly, quelling Araion's last cries and giving him a look of amazement. The third man, Thiron, looked on with noticeable envy.

"You had best appreciate that cloth, boy. Men would kill if they knew of its power."

"Hush now, grumpy Thiron! Don't dampen my joy. It's just a… small gift from his mother."

"Small gift, eh?"

Thiron laughed quietly, but opened the door and left the new family alone. They sat in silence—Araion's mother stroked his back with affection, listening closely to the soft and now steady sounds of his breathing. His father looked on with a tinge of a smile brightening his saturnine face as they sat and all three recovered their energies. After a moment, he turned to the rest of the clean rags and starting using them to clean the blood, placing them in the box. Once all was cleaned, he picked up the bag with the placenta and moved it to the box as well, which he then sealed.

Unknown to them, Araion's consciousness had significantly stabilized as a side effect of the birth process. During the birth, he had exerted a not unsubstantial amount of effort to push out of the womb, which in rebound had brought the linguistic information brought by Jonah's soul into closer synchronization with Araion's native neural structures. Though there was still much progress to be made, he could form rudimentary English thoughts once again.

'Magic blanket!' Araion thought with glee after feeling energy emerge from the blanket and wrap around him. 'There's magic here! I can go wizard! Yes! Yes! Yes!'

His eyes were already open and he had noticed the different people in the room and the strange sounds they were making. His mother was whispering a word over and over again to him which he started to think was supposed to be his name.

'My name? But my name is Jonah...' Araion thought confusedly.

He tried to tell his mother his name, but his lack of familiarity with his new vocal cords and diaphragm distorted anything he tried to say into high-pitched whines and bubbling. Instead he just reached up and patted his mother's neck repeatedly. She had soft pale skin, with minute scar-like blemishes scattered around her face between her abundant freckles. Her silver hair was blended with the occasional strand of a midnight black. Such a look could only be produced by dyes back on Earth.

"Awww!" she hummed happily in response to his touch. "He recognizes his mama!"

"You had better feed him soon; he must be exhausted." Said the father.

"Good thought there. Give me a moment." She replied.

Before Araion could deduce what was about to happen from the brief exchange, his mother unwrapped the white robe which had covered her torso up to this point and brought him up to her breast. His body and his mind disengaged when his instinct to feed took over. Internally, he started screaming with disgust. In time, this revulsion, which had sprung from the vestiges of a mindset of a grown man, would fade away, but today it dominated his emotions. The whole situation was made worse by his physical inability to resist; the sucking action was a reflex which defied conscious intervention, and his mother's hold kept him locked in place. After a few minutes, the instinct faded and Araion stopped suckling. He started to feel overly full, and shut his eyes momentarily out of drowsiness, but kept screaming and cursing on the inside.

Alas, his internal tumult was invisible to the others, and the whole room was incredible placid—but no peace can last forever undisturbed. The father stood up from his seat, picking up the bag of dirty rags and flesh which he had set down earlier in one hand and gesturing towards the door with the other.

"I must return to deck to dispose of this and tend to the crew, my love. Let me help you return to my quarters to rest with our son." The mother frowned in response.

"Did you really have to interrupt my cradling with your overweening practicality, Captain Vai?" she said with emphasis on the "captain" part, pursing her lips in disappointment.

"Sorry, but not sorry, Thellya. Time stops for no man, not even my son. And you know that I think that a petulant face looks cute on you, right?" The father called Vai replied while stretching out his arms and smiling devilishly.

"Ugh. I'll have your head one of these days." Said the mother called Thellya, though she averted her gaze to hide a slight blush. She passed their son to him and proceeded to don her robe before slowly sliding herself off the padded table and onto the floor below. Managing to cradle the sleeping Araion sturdily against his chest with a single muscular arm, he grasped Thellya's waist with the other and supported her as she stood and waddled towards the door.

"How do you feel, love?" Vai asked.

"Worse than I felt after that screwed-up job in Prilpoth. Without Araion to fill them, my insides are like a crumpled glove."

They opened the door and exited slowly, Thellya bracing herself against the doorframe for support. They walked into a hallway equally spartan with the previous room and made of the same type of timber. There were no windows, but a web of glowing strings hung from the ceiling, giving off enough light to see with. There were three doors on each wall spaced a few meters apart, and the family had emerged from a middle door. One end hosted an ornate set of double doors which were embellished with a flowing, cursive script which traced out a grid of interlocking hexagons, squares, and triangles. At the opposite end was a ladder and an opening into a more spacious area. They turned towards the double-doors while resuming their conversation.

"I hate to say it, but I'm glad to hear you feel unwell. You may think I work too much, but I'll have to fight to keep you in bed over the next few weeks. Your son can come between you and your forge for only so long." Vai remarked.

"You're cruel! I would never do something so unmotherly. Shouldn't you be comforting me no matter your misgivings?"

"Not at all. It is my duty to protect my son from all danger, especially that which might come from his mother, no matter how much she loves him."

"Hmph. Good luck with that. You know nothing of what OUR son needs. Remind me, who was it that shared their meals, their breath, their very blood for months on end to provide for him?" Thellya exclaimed with exaggerated pomposity.

"I won't deny you that, but what of this? You wouldn't have even known he was a boy until an hour ago were it not for my abilities, nor that this day would come so soon." Retorted Vai with a smirk.

"Insufferable man. Cruel are the spirits that make me love you."

Reaching the double-doors, Vai opened them to reveal a cozy room furnished by a large off-white feather bed and a simple white desk highlighted with blue flourishes. A new cradle made of greenish metal stood out beside the bed. There was a sturdy carpet covering the floor, and the long wall facing opposite the double-doors hosted three broad windows opening into a starry sky dotted with the negative spaces of unlit clouds. The stars took on a greater variety of colors than could have ever been seen on earth: crimson, cyan, magenta and lavender were only some of those on display.

After leading his partner to the bed and helping her up and under the covers, Vai could finally turn his full attention to his newborn son, tracing over his features now in detail and whispered his observations to himself. The touch of Vai's fingers on Araion's face woke him up from his slumber. Opening his eyes, he saw his father's face—one scarred and leathery like that of a warlord, but freshly shaved and brightened by the presence of a heartfelt smile.

"Such beautiful eyes, such rich chroma. Purple and white are not a natural combination. I suspect the Cabal's hand is to be blamed once more. They never anticipated such a child's birth, or at least never admitted to it."

Thellya heard his whispers but chose to ignore them, already quite aware of her companion's single-minded nature. She joined him in smiling when he bent down to kiss Araion's forehead, letting his rust-colored medium length hair tickle the child's face. It was now her turn to reach out her hands and demand the return of the child.

"Give Araion here. He will sleep in my arms for now, and I will feed him as needed. Make sure to stop by once you're done being a busybody."

Vai lingered over the baby for a moment then passed Araion back to his mother. Instead of matching snark with snark, he leaned down and kissed Thellya gently on the lips. Through his broad smile and watery eyes, he whispered a thank you before exiting the room and leaving them to their rest. Araion followed him out with his eyes, before being cradled closely by his mother and turning to look at her.

'Guess I have a new mom. Or is it my first? Can't remember. So many questions. Want to do magic. Want to!' He thought. If he could have moved his body more easily, he would have tried to climb out and around, but not a single muscle responded the right way. Images of the curious things he had seen and felt during the birth flashed through his mind as he did his best to analyze them, but he could accomplish very little with a newborn's rational faculties. His mother softly rocked him back and forth in her arms, humming a slow and melodious tune which heightened the feelings of exhaustion left over from the birth. Within minutes, he had drifted off, experiencing bits and pieces of his previous memories through dreams.

His mother, noticing him sleeping, transferred him over to the metal cradle. She had no idea what sort of being she had brought into the world.