Instinct
Disclaimer: The world of Emelan and the character Briar Moss are the property of Tamora Pierce. Everything else, including names, plot, words and characterization, is my own. This story was written for the fifth challenge of the Seanfhocal Circle at the Dancing Dove Ezboard forum.
A melancholic, dark-eyed, pregnant teenaged girl in rags walking up and down the streets of Hatar, weaving between the peddlers, beggars and thieves. A bruised and barefoot pinnacle of the fringes of Sotati society, but she calls herself Jenek. Any intention to name the child visible within her body is thickly veiled within those dead-alive eyes. Maybe the infant is just a trace of his long-gone father, to her. Jenek gives no hints.
The thick smoke from the burning leaves bubbled through water to clear itself before pouring along a tube and into the mouths of those who came seeking it. Like everyone else after a decent number of puffs, Jenek was lively, energetic and flirtatious. The abandoned building had plenty of little niches where the smokers, singers, players, and dancers retreated to for a little privacy. The darkness was not scary, but comforting, like the warm arms around her and the familiar flavor of the smoke wafting through the close air. Every night played out the same way; a pattern set by friends she'd met months ago.
In a similar abandoned building Jenek made a makeshift home, happy with her friends and her smoking, not needing the parents who didn't care for her changing lifestyle. She was carefree, lazily waiting out the day for night the fall and the party to start. Sometimes she sang, and often she danced. And when morning comes she easily lets a random lover out the door. Maybe he'll come back for tonight's party, Jenek thinks as she tucks herself to sleep, or maybe I'll pick a new one. She's having too much fun to worry about that, just now.
Ma is crying, Da is furious. Jenek calmly wraps another fold of blanket around her bumpy parcel, bundling it clumsily but casually on her way out the door. Where did we go wrong, why are you leaving. Other such questions brush Jenek's mind as the cobwebs brush her ankles, but she walks out. Her friends will give her shelter; they always know what to do. Besides, she doesn't need much. A little bread, a little smoke, a bath now and then, and she's fixed. She doesn't need her mother's fretting, the care of her grandmother and young siblings, nor a husband and babies of her own. No more worries, Jenek's last vow on her way out.
Disjointed images brushed in gray and gold, shadows dancing frantically on her half-shut eyelids, and the sound of drums is like a heavy patter of huge raindrops. But isn't it summer? Rags bundled into a pillow under her back, its dull ache from earlier forgotten as easily as everything else is. The only thing that cuts through Jenek's stupor is a fresh, new pain. Like cruel-hearted sirens she hears her own shrieks, and the smoke doesn't blunt the bite of her contractions. Hours later she faints.
Awake and confused, Jenek looks at the familiar little room, on the top floor of her wreck of a home. The lighting of dawn is also familiar, and the mattress and ragged blankets enveloping her. Her friend, slumped asleep against the opposite wall, is also known, although Jenek doesn't remember her name, just now. The girl stirs, a matted lock of dank black hair falling over her face. Awkwardly, she rises. Memory stirs when she places a sleeping newborn baby in Jenek's arms. To think that a couple of months ago she didn't care. He's alive and in her arms, that's all that matters.
Juggling two lives, the house wouldn't like it if they knew she strung along men for any reason other than desire. A puff of smoke is all it takes to forget, and a hug from Kovee, he turns two very soon. Or maybe he has, last week. A hug and some smoke, and she forgets the grimy alley and the stone wall scratching her back as another man presses her bodily against it. And the evidence of coins will be converted into Kovee's food by the time she returns to the house. Of course he'll never know. Jenek barely knows it herself. She's just that good at keeping the two apart.
As unlikely as it was, Jenek remembered him. Not that there weren't plenty of fine young men in Hatar, even ones with green eyes and beautiful smiles. It was worth it, like any of the better times at the house and more. She didn't know then she'd carry his child but it made no difference. It wouldn't have made him any better or worse. Not that she remembered his name. She put little stock in names, as it was. He was in his smile, his jokes, the way he touched her, and the fact that he never came back. It made no difference. She and the house were more to baby Kovee than he'd ever need.
Like every evening, she kissed Kovee and put him to bed. The friends at the house kept a watch on the tiny room where he slept, just like they always helped to care for him. She danced a little but kept off the smoke, then went out about her business. She always made sure she didn't think of Kovee when she worked. She didn't want the baseness of it to taint him. Oh, Jenek knew more than anyone that letting someone have her body for money was defiling it, just as the few honest families in her street knew. She knew what they didn't, too -- that it was very different from the men she'd been with at parties. Her choice made all the difference between feeling something and trying to displace herself, to pretend there was no flesh against hers. It was vile, and she kept her real life out of it. That was why her boy's name was not on her lips when her customer jammed a knife between her ribs, disentangled himself, and let her wet, shabby, bloody body slink to the muddy ground among the cockroaches.