Divinity Rescue Corps
63- The Hatchening

The sun got fully into its role as Tara and I relaxed in the bough of one of the boogie trees. I relished in the warmth of the sun on every bit of my exposed skin. The spongy green sphere that served as its leaves allowed us to lay there and cuddle, enjoy the puffy iridescent clouds, and discuss how things were going. Tara, for her part, kept rubbing her hand over her abdomen in a way that concerned me… a little. When I asked her if she was ready to be a mother one day, she just gave me a smile and told me not to worry about it.

I blinked at her, and tried to follow her advice.

Although I didn’t level up as a Pleasure Seeker, the UI made sure I knew my relationship status with Tara had fallen in the week she’d been gone. It was now back to confidants. My special ability from forking her multiple times, Eagle-Eyed, didn’t advance yet. It would take more romancing before that happened.

 “Fletcher, you beast!” she said quietly.

“Hm?”

“Ivy and Isabelle are a couple, aren’t they?” she asked, then seemed confused to learn that Ivy, the more butch of the two, was more bisexual and needed to use me as a dildo sometimes. Isabelle, on the other hand, was far more of what you’d consider ‘girly’ than her girlfriend: long hair to Ivy’s close-cropped mohawk, cute clothes and mannerisms to Ivy’s general bullishness. She was also more reluctant to have a man inside her. “And you did them both… at the same time?”

I shrugged. I still wasn’t entirely clear on what they wanted from me, or if Ivy would just decide every once in a while that she needed a bit of dick to tide her over until she and Izzy could get back to the land of strap ons. I also thought Tara was probably trying to distract me away from the question of her eventually getting pregnant.

I mean, the first time with her had been under the influence of a god. The subsequent times… that was all her doing.

“What about Chrysta? Or Larelle?” Tara said, pulling us further away from my possible future baby.

I waved her away, until I remembered that Larelle was ready to disrobe and get in on the action when I’d been brewing up the cure for the God of Footfalls. Now that I had Adaptability, I thought maybe I could… no, she was still far larger and stronger than I was, and I had plenty of gorgeous female companions already. There was no need to add Larelle to the possible conflicts.

“Here’s the thing,” I told her, “Cinzy thinks I’ve only been having sex with Vellenia.”

“Who?”

“The native. My bond.”

“And you and Cinzy…”

“Last night.”

“You’re unbelievable,” she said. She wasn’t wrong. I couldn’t quite believe it myself.

“Anyway, I have to ease her into the idea that I also have human partners. So we’ll have to play it cool for some time. Ivy and Isabelle don’t care; they’re doing each other. Regina obviously doesn’t care. But I don’t know about Cinzy yet.”

“Wow,” she said. “Just wow. Wow wow wow. I can’t believe it, honestly. When I met you, I thought you were kind of puppy dog cute, and then the Lovers happened to us, and all that changed when I got to know you… carnally.”

“It was not planned, that’s for sure,” I said. “Speaking of which, how are you feeling about all this information?”

She thought this over with an adorable look on her face, peering up like she was examining her own brain.

“Look, I won’t lie that I’d like more of you. I like having you around. Like, I wouldn’t mind being a couple. Hugging against you and looping my arm around your elbow, but I know about your other class. You’re simply not as effective if you’re only plowing my field.”

I nearly winced at the mental image of sowing seeds in her field.

“I can take you out from time to time,” I told her. “I’m thrilled at the opportunity to make you feel as beautiful as you really are. I’d be a lucky man if I could take you out on a date and parade around with someone as good looking as you.”

“You’re going to have to keep flattering me like that, a lot,” she said, wide eyed and serious.

Tara agreed, calling me a sly dog. She wasn’t wrong. I just wish I was as sly as she gave me credit for. Finally, conversation concluded, we headed back to the village where I could do what needed doing.

One piece of good news was, upon heating up and then concocting the anti-magic pill mixture as it was laid out in the instruction manual tablets, was that I leveled up my Healer class.

One look at the level up bonuses and I was a hundred percent on board with it.

Level 13: +1 Ingenuity, +2 skill points

My Attributes were looking very respectable.

Attributes:

Affinity 5

Durability 6

Ingenuity 8

Likability 5

Physicality 4

I sure was a long way from where I’d started, with all 1’s and 2’s.

The increase in Ingenuity, like all of the other attributes, didn’t feel any different. Physicality sure eventually caused me to look different, and increased my physical capabilities to levels they’d never been at before.

After having had the team capabilities talk, I now understood that the Guardians each had a Physicality or Durability that was above 8, and the other above 7. In contrast all their other Attributes were quite low. Cinzy had a Likability of fracking 12, and an Affinity of 5, but everything else was under 3. In the meantime Trent spiked in Affinity first and Likability next, while Alan had an even split between Affinity and Ingenuity. With our two casters, everything else was super low.

Only the Rangers and I had fairly even stat arrays. I’d be willing to bet that Drat specialized in Ingenuity and Physicality, though I couldn’t be sure. I couldn’t even be sure he was anywhere within a 5 mile radius right now, given his stealth.

All the girls were thrilled to take their doses of the magic restricting medicine, even though it was pretty gross tasting not in pill form. The only way I could do it was to spread it over some flat bread and let it dry in the sun, and have them eat it. The other option would’ve been to just have the gross herb mixture all alone, and it was bitter as hell. We all had a good laugh at the others, watching their faces scrunch up as they tried it.

Alan and Trent were more hesitant about taking it though. They felt a better connection to mana and their magic powers this past week. I let them know I wasn’t going to order them to take the medicine, but we didn’t know what would happen if they didn’t.

As for my own body, I had gotten very green hair, along with veins of green running throughout my body. They had been pulsing with glowing green. Thankfully, those retracted back toward my heart, and my regular brown roots showed soon after I ate the awful bread.

Well, medicine was only delicious on earth because we had hundreds of years of experience turning everything sweet. Honestly, I was glad not to live in a place where corn was somehow transformed into high fructose syrup. The food here alone was trimming fat off my body.

I had just settled down to begin the research process again when Trent and Isabelle burst through the door. I dropped the thin clay newspaper sized tablet to the table and watched in horror as it broke into some thirty bazillion pieces. Or just thirty, whatever.

“Guys ohhhhh!” Isabelle’s excitement turned to horror, and she looked up into my eyes looking for the punishment that was to come. That broke my heart a little.

“Hey Alan?”

“Hm?”

“You got a magic spell to repair things?” I asked idly, smiling at Isabelle.

“Y-y-y-y-yeah.”

“Clean up on aisle 2 then,” I told him. “Sorry for dropping it, my man. Isabelle’s really sorry too.”

“I am sooooooooo sorry!” she called to Alan.

The Wizard just laughed and waved it off. “N-n-no big d-d-deal.”

We watched silently as Alan grabbed up his magic wand, dangled a length of thread in front of himself, and chanted the words in a language that sounded vaguely Latin and sort of alien.

And wouldn’t you know it, but as soon as the string—and another component, a piece of clay—dissolved into the spell, the pieces drew together in a wash of bluish glowing magic, and fused back together like they’d never been broken.

“That is so cool!” Isabelle said. “Isn’t it cool?”

“You had news to share with all of us?” I asked, arching an eyebrow.

“Oh! Oh!” She started jumping up and down. “The eggs! The eggs are hatching!”

“That is too many exclamation points for one message,” Drat said from directly beside me, in his same laconic fashion. I tried not to jump right out of my skin.

Isabelle practically dragged me to the new hatchery, a large house in the village, home to something like thirty Marshins. It was longhouse shaped, like what you’d see in a Colonial American period movie, but with beds hanging from the ceiling, pots and pants and accumulated living stuff hanging from below those, and a couple of pet-shaped Nakamamon running around the floors pestering some of the larger Marshells, which were like gigantic clams with little kids hiding inside. Some of them poked their little white and green faces out of their shells and petted their dog and cat-like pet creatures, while others just sat nearly closed, with the little ones barely peeking out.

In the center of the whole thing sat a large cooking fire, and ringing that at a good remove sat the clutch of eggs. All thirty-one of them shone with pristine white, with green blotches, and not a hint of brown sticky infection to be seen anywhere.

Two of them already held jagged cracks and several others could be seen wobbling.

Isabelle took her place next to Ivy, in the cluster of Guardians. Cinzy was already there, and beamed one of her incredible smiles my way. Man, those were truly capable of making a guy feel lighter than air.

Drat, Alan and Trent fanned out around the room, where Marshins met them and took their hands, talking in low and animated tones. Everyone knew they weren’t supposed to hog the limelight here, and just let the miracle of life happen as it would.

Tiny crinkling noises could be heard, and soon enough bits of shell began falling to the floor. Now the assembled villagers and my team were cooing and ‘awww’-ing with delight, as tiny faces and hands poked out, then retreated. One of them split right down the middle and a baby came tumbling out into the hands of a Marshin who was on newborn—er, hatchling—duty. She scooped the child up and brought it over toward a series of shells that had been arrayed on several long tables, along with others lining the space beneath and around.

The Marshall reached out for one of the clam shells, clenching a tiny fist again and again in its direction. It didn’t seem big enough, but the tiny baby crawled into the two halves of the shell like a hermit crab getting its improved home. Then the Marshin on duty picked up the whole deal and shuffled off, perhaps to nurse or feed the new Marshall.

“That is so cute!” Tara gushed. “I wonder if they suckle or if they get fed something. What do clams eat anyway? These aren’t clams but you know what I mean. I think clams are filter feeders. That wouldn’t make any sense here, obviously! Ha ha!”

She kept right on rambling about the new Marshells until finally she seemed to sense everyone staring at her. Then she fell silent, and buried her face against my upper arm, until it seemed to dawn on her that she wasn’t supposed to be clutching against me.

In the meantime four more of the little ones had hatched and were selecting their clam shells from the array on the tables. The new Marshells were tiny little things, basically the size of human infants, except they had stubby little fish tails and looked to be, I’d say, three to four years old. Like the Marshins they had pure white skin, mint green striping here and there, and also spots of pink. Some ran their whole scalps, others had a strip down the throat and belly. Similar, but just different enough to be unique.

Finally Tara broke off of my arm and hovered over to Regina. “I’m not allowed to say I want one, am I?” she whispered.

Regina laughed, and once again I had the question rise up in me: what was she going to do if I put a child inside her? I wanted to ask, but now certainly wasn’t the right time.

The Marshells being born was another cause for celebration, but this one was far less adult and far more about the children. The day was spent prancing around the town with them, holding them up for all the world to see, dancing and singing, while some villagers threw confetti made of flower petals or pulled leaves. Still others decorated and made food for a great big banquet dinner.

The Marshells who looked large and perhaps ready to transform into Marshins were included here. Arrayed around the largest open platform, they played a ball game, with rules I didn’t understand. Sometimes they’d let the ball roll and bump against their shells, while other times a little white and pink and mint green hand or foot would dart out of the shell and bop the ball in this or that direction. There didn’t appear to be a goal they could score, but instead at random times, the Marshins would all cheer boisterously, and clap.

The team and I would try to follow suit, but there were several times we started cheering and clapping, anticipating the natives would do the same, only to have nothing happen, and all the Marshins would look at us in confusion.

In the meantime, the caretakers to the newborns (hatchlings) paraded their charges around for everyone to meet. We got to meet every single Marshell, though in truth only three of the thirty peeked out with a face or fingers. I caught one breathing out a mostly unintelligible word. I thought maybe it was ‘thanks.’

“They’re really shy,” Cinzy said, as the fourth and fifth of the new Marshells reached out and brushed her face with their tiny fingers. She had been in so much contact with the villagers since we’d been here, she had become something of an expert.

“This is the best day ever,” Tara declared, and beamed at me.

And I hoped it was my imagination, and that Cinzy didn’t read anything into that very affectionate smile.

***

I went to bed that night after saying goodbye to my nephew and my pregnant sister. It had been a long night, with me talking a lot and them listening even more. I realized that I had a lot to tell them. With everything being alien, I had to explain it all. I couldn’t just gloss over any specific bit. What did the Marshins eat? It was almost exclusively vegetable, though they grew something identical to rice but which had a saltier taste than I was used to, and had access to sugar cane. The salty sweet desserts they made up were so strange, but delicious.

“It’s been a long night for us,” my mother said, and handed me a towel and toothbrush. When I went to take the toothbrush, she held onto it and I found myself staring into wondering eyes.

Her mouth went to form a question, but stopped in the middle of it.

“Mom?” I asked.

Instead of saying anything, her mouth quirked up in a complicated smile. It seemed that since the diagnosis, a lot of her facial expressions had a whole lot of emotions bunched up into them. It was heartbreaking that I couldn’t just get happiness or pride out of her.

Right here and now, there were both, but there was also a lot more. Grief, sadness… I knew she missed me, so some of that was in there. Relief at finally knowing I wasn’t dead.

“I’m just glad you’re home,” she said, and hugged me for what was probably the twentieth time that day.

“Me too,” I told her. Had she guessed why I was here?

This is Christopher knowing he’s not a genius, after all.