Isabel
"You'll take care of yourself, right?" Arkarian whispers in my ear, enveloping me in his arms. We're preparing for our first battle against the new Order of Chaos. After all these decades, our complacency has finally been dissolved. A new leader has emerged to head the Order, and rumour has it that she is the child of Lathenia and Marduke. She has taken it upon herself to continue her mother's legacy and has built up a following of many thousands. She has declared war on the Guard.
I look into Arkarian's eyes. They are creased with worry. We got married when I turned 18, and our life together has been filled with bliss and happiness. Will today be the last of these blessed days? No. I refuse to think so. The Guard will triumph again, and we shall be reunited. I grip Arkarian through his chainmail, and place a kiss on his cheek.
"I promise. I'll see you tonight."
We go our separate ways, but I can feel his eyes lingering on me. He is worried that I'll lose the child that I've been carrying for the last few weeks. Preparing for a baby has been difficult for us. At first we had been convinced that we would never be able to have children, because the pain of watching them grow old and die would be too much. I took all the precautions to make sure it never happened, guarding my body through my healing skills. Then one day, as I was inspecting the barriers I'd erected in my womb, I felt it. It was the tiniest flutter of life inside me, but it was there all the same. Despite all odds, the seed had implanted itself and was now growing in me. It was the most terrifying thing ever to happen to me. I was so unprepared for a child, no matter how much I loved its father. It had seemed to me that our life was complete already. I was ready to give up all the things that came with a normal life for Arkarian.
To me, I made my life-changing decision at the age of 16. I could either be with Arkarian and only him, or marry a normal man I had yet to meet in the world and have a family with this stranger. Children had never been a part of my plan with Arkarian. I knew that when I accepted his father's gift of agelessness. And I had been prepared. Arkarian was already enough for me. He filled my whole day and made me complete. We would hang out as he watched the sphere during the day and I never felt anything was missing. When I was needed in the healing chambers in the Citadel, or he was meeting with the tribunal, I'd miss him and be impatient to get back to him.
When I found out I was pregnant with his child, my world was thrown off balance. There was suddenly a third person to think of all the time. It was no longer just me and Arkarian. I had to share Arkarian with this intruder, and I wasn't sure how I was going to handle it. I panicked; I wasn't sure if I wanted a child and I was prepared to remove it from my body if Arkarian felt the same way. And I was sure he would. He was the one that suggested we never have a family in the first place. He explained that he'd already witnessed so much death in his lifetime that he couldn't bear watching it happen to someone he truly loved. He'd watched each of his countless apprentices lose their youth and blithness, develop lines in their faces, become bent and cumbersome with age. He had watched as each of them slowly loosened their grasp on life, as their souls left their bodies and they expired. To witness it happening to his own child, when he himself couldn't be part of that cycle, would have destroyed him. He didn't want to be like Shaun and Laura and have to outlive his child.
Little could I imagine how wrong my assumptions were. When I told him of the life growing inside me, Arkarian was shocked, yes. He questioned how it happened. We had been so careful. But after the initial shock, I saw how happy he actually was. I hadn't seen him so overjoyed, ever. He told me how excited he was that I was going to be carrying a piece of him everywhere I went for the next 9 months, a thought that made me flush with pleasure. It was as if he'd suddenly forgotten all the complications he'd anticipated would come with a child, and when I reminded him of them, he told me that none of it mattered any more. We were going to have a baby and that was all the mattered anymore. When I saw his excitement I couldn't help but feel the same way, and I suddenly realised that this was what I wanted. I didn't need to choose between Arkarian or a family of my own. I could have both and this realisation sent tingles all the way down my spine and my toes.
Before I knew it, Arkarian was no longer the only center of my world. There was suddenly someone else next to him. My sky had two suns instead of one. I hadn't met my baby yet, but I already loved it as much as I loved Arkarian, something I'd never thought possible. I thought my heart would burst from this sudden augmentation of my feelings. I couldn't wait for us to be a family together. I couldn't wait to hold our baby, to feed it and to share Arkarian with it. Yes, I couldn't wait to do the very thing I had been afraid of. I would no longer receive Arkarian's undivided attention, and I was so excited. This baby was going to be physical evidence of our love. It was literally us. After all these years, I finally realised that my life wasn't complete at all. It had been missing a huge chunk without me ever realising.