Pursuit of Knowledge

Hakurei Reimu stared at Lucy Scarlet and Pheles Knowledge in shock. "You want me to tell you what?" she asked disbelievingly.

"We want to know where babies come from!" the two girls replied.

"Shouldn't…shouldn't you ask your parents or Sakuya about this kind of thing?"

"Sakuya wouldn't say anything!" Lucy pouted. "Mommy and Daddy wouldn't either!"

"We also asked Mrs. Yukari and she said to ask you since you made her pregnant!" Pheles chimed in.

'Damn it Yukari…' "Look, I don't know how to explain it. It's a very complicated thing to explain and I'm not the right person to ask. Why don't you go ask someone else? Go ask Eirin or Keine; they should be able to tell you." A mischievous glint came to Reimu's eyes. "Eirin is a doctor and Keine is a teacher, so the two of them are obligated to tell you girls!"

OOOOOOOOOO

Needless to say, Keine was not amused when Lucy and Pheles cornered her and Eirin with the question.

"This isn't something you should be asking at your age!" Keine cried. "Obligation? That obligation only applies when you're mature enough to know about it!"

"Keine, calm down, alright? What's the harm in telling them?" Eirin asked, a bit of a cheeky smile on her face. "They're going to find eventually, so we might as well tell them now."

"No! Don't you say anything!" The werehakutaku turned toward the two rabbits accompanying Eirin. "That goes for you two as well!"

"Eh? Why?" Tewi asked, earning her a small smack to the head by Reisen.

"Because they're not old enough to know, that's why!"

After the two disappointed girls left the two women behind, Pheles turned to Lucy. "Well? What do we do now?"

"We're not giving up! Let's go ask someone else!"

OOOOOOOOOO

"You two want to know where babies come from?" Yuuka asked.

"Please tell us, Mrs. Kazami!" Pheles begged. "No one else will for some reason!"

"Is that so? Well…"

"Yuuka…you're not really going to tell them, are you?" Wriggle asked warily. The firefly youkai seemed to be glancing over at Hibachi, who had been trying to draw a sunflower but was looking over at the others with curiosity.

"What's the harm? Well, I don't know how you two girls came about, but Hibachi was grown from a seed."

"I was what?" Hibachi cried out, her voice filled with dismay.

"A seed?" Lucy asked. "Was it a big seed?"

"Oh, it didn't start out very big, but once we planted her, she sprouted quite quickly and we soon found ourselves with a bouncy baby," Yuuka continued with an almost nostalgic-looking smile. "As for the two of you, you'll have to ask your parents."

"Oh…" Both Lucy and Pheles had a feeling that Yuuka wasn't being truthful, but trying to get a straight answer out of Yuuka when she didn't want to give it was not an easy task. The two girls decided to ask elsewhere and left, Hibachi's wails still ringing in their ears.

"You told me I was brought to you by big butterflies!"

OOOOOOOOOO

The girls' next source of information, however, proved just as evasive.

"Well, you see, when two people love each other very much, that love takes the form of a baby and starts to grow inside one of them," Marisa explained. "That's all there is to it!"

"But how does it work?" Pheles asked, her frustration finally starting to surface. "It can't be that simple if no one wants to tell us!"

"Oh, but it is that simple!" Marisa insisted. "Right Alice?"

"Why are you asking me? All I did was bear the child; you were the one that put little Dinah inside of me," Alice replied with a dry smile.

"Hey, hey, don't be like that…"

OOOOOOOOOO

"Well, that didn't work out," Pheles sighed.

"It's not a hard question! Why can't we just get a proper answer?" Lucy pouted. "What do we do now?"

"Well, maybe we can check out some of the books in the library…"

"But those are so hard to read! It'll be just as bad as asking everyone!"


My sincerest apologies for not updating; I've recently gotten caught up in a few things and could not write as much as I wanted to.

I still marvel at how such a simple question becomes so hard to answer when asked by children.