The Fire God

Chapter Eighteen

     A few days later, Asperia entered her travails. I was never far from her during that time and I took her to the bed that had been chosen for the birth. Mu hobbled in, had a basket of dragon salve and dragon oil. She lit a candle near Asperia made from dragon oil. 

    Memories were alive in my head of Lucretius's birth, of the hours of laboring, the pushing, breathing, sweat, blood, tears. The numerous stories I'd told her. I would tell her stories again. But I could no longer tell her the stories my mother told me of Arcadia. Arcadia was no longer a fanciful place. A dream it may have been, but it was quite real.

    Mu smoothed the oil and salve into Asperia's vaginal canal, rubbed it over her stomach. Asperia suffered a few contractions, but our daughter slipped free of her mother in a little over an hour. It seemed a miracle to me.

    Mu cleaned her up. I hungered to have her in my arms. Calm came over me as she was settled against my chest. My smile expressed my contentment. Asperia announced that she was glad her months of carrying were over. She walked away from us, bathed herself.

    My daughter was born with blue eyes. All infants are that way and I should have known that with all my experience with the animals, but it didn't occur to me. I imprinted my daughter's blue eyes on my mind. Noted that her face was square like mine. She had cupid's bow lips. When I had been small, my lips had been like that, but they had thickened as I aged. The shape of her eyes, they were like mine. My daughter.

    As I watched my daughter's eyes change from blue to dark brown, I noticed the scent I'd grown accustomed to wafting from my daughter's skin. That of the dragon. I kissed her balled up hand, put it out of my mind. A few days after that, I checked the histories, found no, no previous Phoenix had been a parent after they'd been selected.

    We chose to name our daughter Arcadiana, since Arcadia was our home, our saving grace, the reason she existed at all. I meant to call her Cadia or Cadiana, but we called her Diana.

    Asperia nursed her. I sensed her to be slightly more maternal with Arcadiana, but only just barely. If I came into the room while she was holding Diana, she'd pass her to me.

    "She prefers you," she would say.

    I would take my daughter from my wife, gaze into her eyes. A very deep brown with flecks of caramel. I relished peering into those eyes, those portals to her soul. I took up drawing just so I could capture my daughter's face.

    I made a point to continue my worship of Asperia. I sketched Asperia as I first saw her, a fake picture of our wedding day, a picture of her in the present. That sated her temporarily. I would kiss her, but Asperia shied away from sexual couplings for almost a year. She spoke to the Elders, which she never did, before finally consenting to join with me again.

    Diana was growing fast. She crawled for perhaps a day or so before she pulled herself up and started walking. She was an infant, and yet she was tumbling through a run across the field after the goats. She was very close to bald her first year. She was three before she had much hair.

    "She looks entirely like you," Asperia said. She was glaring at Diana by the hearth where we cooked our meals. She was tugging at a twig doll Fumi had made for her.

    Asperia continued, "If only she could look like me. But no, she has to look like you. Her temper is mine."

    I took Diana into the fields with me. Diana preferred the goats. She liked the baby unicorns. As she grew, she would hike after the older unicorns. Mu approved of her entirely.

    I never understood what parents said about children growing fast until I started watching Diana. She was a weed, grains of sand slipping through my fingers. Time had lost meaning for me shortly after I made Arcadia my home. I had no sense of it at all as Diana grew.