Notes: OK, if publication has been going well all these days, today is the hardest day so far I have had to endure at work. Here is hoping I do very well! (and this fic does too!)


Inigo was worried. During their dance practice, he had noticed his mother was clumsy on her feet and pale, though she had dismissed his concerns by saying they would cut their session short and double the efforts for the next to compensate. He wasn't satisfied. Specially not when she had promptly sat on the ground, leaning back against a tree and falling asleep. Surely she had been cursed, and he knew his father could help. He had just turned around to march back to camp in a hurry, when he heard their voices behind him:

"Olivia, wake up; it's not safe to sleep so far from the camp."

"Um? Not yet, I'm still tired... Wake me up in an hour or two, will you, Henry?"

Inigo spun on his heels, and saw his mother was already using his father's legs as pillows. A murder of crows gathered on the tree branches above the married couple, acting as sentinels. Not the weirdest thing he had seen around his parents, so strangely mismatched...

"Is my mother cursed?" he asked in a whisper once he was close enough, crouching down.

"What?"

"She practically fainted after a few minutes of dancing," he explained.

"Oh, that." Henry tried to shift without waking Olivia. "I can't feel my legs anymore, ha ha ha..."

Inigo winced. "Is the curse so strong it's affecting you too?" He frog-leapt back a step.

"Which curse?"

"Mother's curse! The one that made her faint? That one?"

Olivia moaned unhappily in her sleep, turning her back to him. "Please, some silence now?"

But Inigo wouldn't keep quiet now. "Mother, no! Wake up! Don't give in to the curse!" he said, grasping her arm carefully.

"It feels like my legs are being pierced by a thousand needles, he he he..."

"Father, concentrate!" the youth ordered, the pieces falling into place as he noticed Henry was just having fun over his numb legs, not putting attention anymore. "We must break mother's curse!"

Olivia groaned and pulled her hair over her face, as if it could block their voices.

"She's not cursed, I'm very sure," Henry assured him, his hand coming down to cover his wife's ear in sympathy. "If she was cursed, I would have noticed."

Inigo then ran a list of issues through his father. Had she been eating? Yes, even his share. Had she been sleeping well? Of course, but she woke early. Was she having symptoms of any illness...?

"Henry? Stop leading him around the issue, I really wish to sleep right now," Olivia practically hissed at her husband.

"She's also very moody, as you see!" his father said with a very bright smile. "So... We saw how much fun you were having with your lady friends, and it inspired us to get closer. We then had sex, and your mother is now pregnant."

Olivia bolted upright, all traces of sleep gone. She turned completely red, the same as Inigo. "You didn't need to be that direct!" they cried in unison.