Athena squinted in the filtered ocean sunlight for a moment, before looking back down at a blooming sea flower. Managing, with some difficulty, to sit on the ground, the Queen of Atlantica let her slender fingers dig into the sand and she smiled. Letting her eyes shut for a moment, she gave a contented sigh. Gardening had always been a relaxing hobby for the mermaid, even when she was a baby who was barely able to swim. And with so much in happening in her life these past few years, relaxation was hard to get by, despite the doctor's (and not to mention her worried husband's) strict orders to take it easy. Letting out another contented sigh, Athena felt her shoulders drop as she started to drift off into dreamland…
"Momma! Momma!" A sticky, small hand and a voice as loud as thunder startled Athena out of her near sleep. Instinctively, her hand flew to her large, pregnant middle, and her eyes fluttered open, ready to protect her unborn child in the worst case scenario.
The sheer fabric of her maternity cloth felt comforting beneath her fingers, almost like a second skin to protect her child (pregnant merwomen usually wore sheer maternity cloth's that were the color of their shells and incidentally could be hooked onto the bottom of them. For most, it was to hide stretch marks or any other unsightly things that came along with pregnancy; for Athena, it was sort of like having extra skin to protect her child, if necessary.) from any harm. But, as her eyes met a pair of green orbs that mirrored her own, the woman felt herself give a sigh.
"Attina, dear, let Momma rest for a few minutes, okay?" Athena murmured, almost sleepily as she let her body relax once again, trying to fall back asleep. As the fates would have it though, this was not to be. The minute Athena closed her eyes once more, her oldest daughter's sticky little hand started to shake her mother's shoulder back and forth. Athena planned to ignore her child's complaints and fall back asleep, but the baby inside her womb decided that he or she wanted to test out their new tail at that exact moment, and started kicking like crazy.
"Momma!" Attina's complaining voice ringed in Athena's ears. "Momma, Daddy said that if you felt sleepy than you had to go to your room and take a nap! And you promised you would teach me how to make flowers today, so you can't go to your room and take a nap! Mo-mma!"
Athena sighed, and finally opened up her green eyes. She wouldn't be getting any rest any time soon, that was for sure. Managing to sit up just a little bit more, the eight month pregnant Queen shook out her sleepiness, and looked over at her daughter.
At the moment, Attina was pouting in what must seem to her as an annoyed way, but to her mother made her look rather adorable. Only six years old, the girl was far more mature than her age would suggest, in part because she was the oldest of six girls. Subconsciously, Athena lifted her hand under the maternity cloth, and rubbed her stomach. She loved her six daughters, really, truly, she did…but she was still hoping that this baby would finally be a boy. After all, when her six girls became teenagers…Neptune help all of Atlantica, the merwoman was going to go crazy. It would be nice to have at least one boy so that the insanity of six teenage girls didn't drive the poor mother to the brink…
"Mo-mma!" A tugging at her arm made Athena immediately break away from her thoughts, and finally make full eye contact with her oldest daughter. Blinking for a minute in surprise, she quickly shook it off and tried not to let her thoughts stray. She was still getting used to Attina's hair being tamed in a fashionable up do, instead of being loose and all over the place.
After her first day of tide school earlier that same year, Attina had come home nearly in tears because a boy in her class had pulled her long hair all day. Though Triton hadn't been happy about someone (no less a boy) pulling his daughter's hair, Athena had quickly shushed him and reminded him that he'd done the same to her when they'd be children. The mother had quickly devised a solution to the problem; pick up her daughter's hair. It'd been Attina who'd chosen the style, (with some prodding in the right direction from her mother) and the orange spikes that would, according to the child, serve as a weapon if that boy made pulled her hair again. And wouldn't you know it, the next day in tide school; the boy couldn't do anything to the young princess's hair.
Oh no. Her thoughts were already drifting off, and Attina was starting to look as though a tantrum was not to faraway. She'd better answer the child now or Neptune help her...
"Alright, alright." Athena said with a smile, holding up her hands in surrender to her young daughter. "I'll teach you how to—"
"Make sea-flowers!" Attina finished the sentence for her mother, eagerly awaiting for the woman to start teaching her. Daddy had told her earlier to keep a special eye on Momma for him while she and Momma were out in the garden and the other children were inside taking their naps. And more than anything would Attina hate to disappoint her Daddy, so she made sure to watch her Momma at all times.
"Hold on sweetie." Athena said with a laugh, a smile coming onto her features. "I promised I would teach you how to tend to sea-flowers, not make them. There's a bit of a difference dear." And right now, the mermaid knew that she couldn't teach Attina how plant seeds, put the flower in the right about of filtered ocean sunlight, and then wait a few weeks so that it could grow. She only had a limited about of time before her other daughters woke up from their nap, and any peace she might have held onto was shattered. In the good way, of course.
"There is?" Attina soaked everything up in her mind like a sponge, wanting to know more and more and more, even when there was no more to learn. But that was how most children her age were, so it didn't really surprise her parents…much. After all, Attina was their first child. And there was no rule book for how a child should and shouldn't be behaving a certain age…Athena and Triton were more or less in uncharted waters.
"Mhm hm." Athena murmured, reaching out a gentle hand to her daughter. Pulling the girl closer to her, the mermaid sincerely wished she wasn't so far along with this child at the moment, so that she could let Attina sit in her lap without being bombarded by a giant stomach. "Making flowers requires a lot of patience…I'm still not all the way there yet." Athena let a smile fall across her lips at that. Triton constantly teased that she was the most impatient woman in all seven seas…and he had a good reason because Athena had never been one for just sitting around and waiting.
"What's…pay-cents?" Attina's face scrunched up as she pronounced the unfamiliar word on her tongue. This was something her Momma said that she didn't have all the way down pact! And her Momma had and knew everything; she was the Queen of Atlantica!
"Patience is…ah…um…" Athena furrowed her brows as she thought hard to explain this in the simplest of terms to her young daughter. "Patience is when you want something, but you have to wait awhile for it." There, that was a definition worthy enough of a six year old, the merwoman thought to herself with a satisfactory grin. Attina let her own eyebrows furrow in thought of what her mother just, before brightening up when the perfect example popped into her mind.
"Like the baby!" Attina exclaimed loudly and proudly, but her mother's eyebrows only shot up in confusion and wariness. Once again slipping her hands under the maternity cloth, she let them run over her swollen stomach, gently rubbing the sore spots where the child had kicked too hard, and at the same time she tried to soothe the unborn baby from the unexpected loudness of its sister's voice. "We want the baby to come out already, but it can't, so we gotta have pay-cents!" Bright green eyes met another pair of more amused green eyes, and a tinkling laugh could be heard coming from Athena.
"Exactly." Athena smiled widely and even a bit slyly towards her daughter. "I knew you were a smart little—whoops, I meant, big—girl." Maybe too smart, Athena thought to herself. There was no telling what kind of trouble a clever girl like Attina might get into…blast it! The baby was kicking again.
Groaning in pain, Athena fell backwards on the soft sand, closing her eyes and rubbing her belly. If she was worried that Attina might get into trouble, than she had to be doubly worried for this new child of hers. If it was this active in the womb, imagine how it would be in real life! Groaning again, but this time at the thought of having a rebellious child, Athena let the smile slip from her features and turn into a frown.
"Momma are you okay?" Attina's unsure voice floated into her mother's ears, and Athena gave a slight grimace, before managing a smile through the unborn child's water aerobics in her stomach.
"I'm fine sweetheart." The mother assured her daughter, finally opening her eyes in relief when she felt the baby stop kicking. "The baby just really wants to come out, that's all." And the reverse could be said for Athena. All of her six earlier pregnancies had been leisurely swims on the reef compared to this one. The baby kept her up at all hours of the day and night, trying in vain to free itself from its mother's stomach. Rubbing the sore spots of her belly gently, the merwoman gave a soft sigh, and propped herself upwards by using her elbows. In this position, she could at least see Attina, if only a little.
"Oh. Okay!" Attina, thankfully, was an easy to please child. It saved her mother a bit of a hassle if she wouldn't have been. Suddenly though, Attina's bright expression turned into one of deep thought, before she looked back at her mother with very serious green eyes. Lying on her stomach, she rested her chin in her small hands before asking the most dangerous question that any child could ask.
"Momma, where do babies come from?" Athena's eyes went wide, her mouth dropped open, and alarm rang throughout her entire body. Oh no. Oh no. This was bad; this was very, very, very bad. She wasn't prepared for this! Of course she'd known there'd be questions from her daughters about the fact that she was pregnant, but in Poseidon's waters, she hadn't expected Attina to ask this! Struggling, she tried to sit up, but eventually fell back on her elbows when it seemed that the unborn baby had won this battle.
"Well sweetie…um…You have to understand that…ah…Attina, that's not really an appropriate…uh…Sometimes babies are…oh Neptune." Athena gave a shaky laugh, looking upwards at the surface for a moment and gulping. The baby, she noticed, was for once quiet in her tummy. What Athena wouldn't give to have the child start kicking again! To create some sort of distraction, to ward away these thoughts from her oldest daughter! After all, Attina was only six! And if Athena didn't word the explanation of where children really came from in a careful, yet explanatory way, she may end up scarring her oldest daughter and having to deal with the consequences when the girl got older.
She could just picture it now; the oldest Princess of Atlantica, about to ascend the throne…but wait! The woman in her mental image was miserable, a spinster, with a crabby attitude and had never even had ruined her every chance with boys. And, to make matters even worse, she had wild gray hair, a twitching eye, and about twenty catfish surrounding her. She was a miserable catfish lady, and she stared at Athena, who was mourning how her baby had turned out. The woman's lips moved and her eyes went wide as she said 'This is your fault Momma. You made me into a crazy catfish lady…'
"Momma! Momma!" Athena jerked out of her daydream-nightmare, before looking with a paled face towards Attina. The child, thankfully, only blinked and tilted her head to the side in confusion, before tugging on her mother's sheer, light purple, maternity sheet. "Momma, are you okay? Is the baby trying to come out again?" In her young mind, Attina was picturing that the baby would kick open a hole (using its tail, of course) in her Momma's tummy, come bursting out right after, then swim away so fast that no one would find it ever again, and then baby would be lost.
"I'm f-fine dear." Athena stuttered for a moment, before sucking in a big breathe and trying to calm her system. There was no chance she was going to allow Attina to become a miserable crazy catfish lady! She would have to word this next sentence very carefully if she wanted to avoid Attina becoming a crazy. "But, to answer your earlier question…ah…well, you see…when a Momma and a Daddy…love each other, very, very, very much, they decide to show each other…by—"
"Good job bringing Attina out here dear. Now we can eat her without anyone watching!" A booming, laughing voice that immediately filed Athena with a sense of calm, relief, and a bit of butterfly-fish in her stomach filled her ears. Over her giant stomach, she could see her husband reach out a hand towards a shrieking Attina, and gently lift her up into his strong arms.
"Don't eat me Daddy! Don't eat me!" The little girl cried out, over and over, struggling between fits of laughter to escape from her father's strong arms. Laughing himself, the King of Atlantica managed to grasp his daughter's tail and incidentally hold her upside down by it. At this, the child shrieked with uncontrolled laughter, but she still tried in vain to escape by wiggling about in her father's grasp.
"Hm…I think we should start with the tail first, what do you think Athena?" Triton asked in a teasing tone, as Attina shrieked with even more laughter and wiggled harder to escape. Knowing that if the girl kept this up, she eventually would hurt herself, Triton gently lifted her upright once again and released his grip on the child. And Attina wasted absolutely no time zooming over to her mother. Wrapping her small arms around the woman tightly, she buried in face in her mother's chest, the safest place in all seven seas.
"I think you should leave my precious big-girl alone, Triton. I don't want her to end up hurting you." Athena replied, wrapping a protective arm around her oldest daughter. Though her voice was mostly a rebuke towards her husband (he knew very well that she didn't like it when he held their girls upside like that), it still held some teasing. The fact of the matter was that Attina, though ferocious during bedtime, was only a little girl, and Triton, a rather large, muscular merman. You be the judge who would win in that fight.
"Attina, beat me? Nonsense! I can take her any day! Right Attina?" Triton looked over at his daughter, who was not answering his goading for some reason. That was odd. The child loved to show off to her father that she was 'stronger' than he was. Coming over to his pregnant wife, he rested one of his large hands over her belly and the other on his daughter. His fingers slowly turned the girl's face upwards, and what both parents saw surprised and amused them at the same time.
Attina, apparently all tuckered out, had fallen fast asleep.
"Less than a minute. That must be a new record." Athena lowered her voice considerably, as not to wake the sleeping child, but her tinkling laugh could still be heard. Resting all her weight on one elbow, she let her other hand gently brush back tiny strands of hair that had come loose from the young girl's usually tight up do. "Speaking of new, I got a new question from this one today."
"Oh?" Triton quirked up a brow, and stared into his wife's deep green eyes. His hand that was still on her pregnant middle gently started to massage the sorer spots of where the baby had kicked. The soft, sheer fabric of the maternity cloth combined with his warm, massaging hand instantly made the pain disappear, almost as though it'd never been there in the first place.
"She asked where babies came from." Athena didn't have to look up, she already knew what her husband's expression would be…but she couldn't deny a certain maleficent glee inside of her that wanted to see it with her own two eyes. She held back a smirk when she saw that her assumptions as to what his face would look like were proven true.
Triton's jaw dropped. His entire face went slack. His eyes held the shock of a thousand volts. His mouth opened and closed a few times, trying to form coherent words, but none would come out. Attina…asking where babies came from? But…she was still a baby herself! She had no business asking such a question! Pretty soon she'd be asking about boys, and then dating, and then marrying!
He could just picture it now…. Attina was older, and she was holding a boy's hand. Their fingers were interlocked. Without warning, they were kissing, and then she was announcing to him that she was dating this boy. The boy was the absolute worst kind too; a few piercings, a tattoo, rude, he rode a squid-cycle, had no regard for any of Triton's rules for dating his daughter… and then, Attina's overly excited face was in his vision, and her lips were moving, and her voice came across as saying 'We're getting married Daddy!'
"Triton, dear, it's not the end of the world. Don't look so pale." Athena jerked her husband out of whatever daydream-nightmare he'd been having concerning their daughter. It really was pitiful, what father's had to go through when having girls. The melodrama, of course, and then the sadness of them leaving to be married and start their own lives. That's why, Athena thought to herself, if this baby is a boy, then he'll have no need to sadden Triton by going off to start his own life far from home, or wherever he may land up.
"Di-did you tell her anything?" Triton's usually loud, booming voice was no more than a whisper at the moment, as he gulped in the fear that his wife had told his baby where children came from.
"I was about to…and then you cut me off. Just in time too, thankfully. I have no idea what I would have said." Athena gave another soft laugh, to herself mostly, as she leaned her head down and kissed Attina's forehead. She pretended she didn't hear Triton's relieved sigh.
"She's growing up too fast. Next thing you know, she'll be drawing hearts all over her school books with her and some boys initials in them." Triton's grumble only made Athena laugh lightly again, and shake her head at her husband's naivety.
"She's a bit far away from that stage dear. After all, she still thinks boys are 'icky and ugly'. And," here Athena broke off, and grimaced for a moment as she felt the baby kick again. "remember, we still have the baby. Plus Andrina. Plus Arista. Plus Aquata. Plus Adella. Plus Alana. *Laugh* Trust me dear, we've got ways to go when it comes to our girls and boys."
"I guess." Triton grumbled still, though it was a small comfort to him that he had so many daughters to go through. If this baby turned out to be another girl (which he sincerely hoped she'd be; boys couldn't hold any sort of light to his girls) then he'd have six other chances after Attina to keep his daughters away from boys, if he somehow failed Attina, of course. And, in the worst case scenario, if allsix of his daughters managed to become smitten with boys, he was sure that if the baby turned out to be a girl, he could keep her away from all boys at all times. It was a fool proof plan. Still…
"It's just hard realizing that soon she'll no longer be our baby. She'll be…a woman." Triton grimaced; it was as though the word was acid on his tongue.
"I know." Athena answered softly, mourning in her own way the wisdom of her sweetheart's words. Pushing back a loose strand of her own lightly colored red hair, she let her brows pull together in slight hurt as she knew that one day, in the not too distant future, her daughter, scratch that, all her children, would be grown up.
Well, on the bright side, as least Athena herself was young. She'd be able to live out a long, happy life, and watch her daughters grow and see her grandchildren with her beloved Triton by her side. So perhaps her children growing older wouldn't be a bad thing, considering she'd be around for awhile to support them at every step of the way. Still…the merwoman had a small part of her that just wished that she could keep her babies at this age forever. Well, she thought optimistically, she'd make the best of her time with her young daughters before they grew up.
"Come, let's put her to bed for a little nap." With her soft words, Triton gently lifted a sleeping Attina from her mother. The child hardly stirred.
"You know," Triton commented, looking around at his wife's garden with a certain sense of pride that everything there Athena had planted (with a help from him…well, not much if you asked his wife, but still) everything. "this garden looks like it's missing something. Perhaps we should put a statue in here…"
But Athena was only half listening to her husband at the moment.
"Triton, dear?" Finally exhausted from all her efforts, Athena sank back to her elbows in defeat.
"Yes?"
"Can you please help me up?"
Okay, so another one shot-apology to all my loyal readers as an apology for being bad and not updating my stories as of late. :( The inspiration behind this one started out with me thinking what would happen if Attina asked her mother where babies came from. Somehow, I don't know how, it turned into this entire thing. I wanted to make it slightly comical at the way Athena is hoping for a boy, and with her thoughts on Attina becoming a crazy-cat lady, while still making sure that it showed her personality. No one really ever writes about Athena, so I did take some liberties in developing a personality that I thought would suit her. :) Tell me if you liked it or not.