Chapter 10

Much to Lilaena's surprise, as she'd been expecting to be greeted by yet another Dunmer, the midwife turned out to be a middle-aged, ebony-furred, female Khajit. The woman took one quick look around Lilaena's dusty old flat and decided that they should move the whole operation back to her place. Following a brief examination, she scolded Lilaena for waiting so long to seek assistance. She shook a fuzzy forefinger in Lilaena's direction. "It is almost time," she explained in her lilting accent. "Who else do we contact?"

"No one else," Lilaena sighed. "It's just me."

"The baby has no papa?"

"No... He—he's no longer with us. And my family is in Summerset Isles. So… it's just me."

"You have no friends here?" The feline persisted. "You will want someone to be here. Are you sure you have no one I might call on?"

Lilaena finally relented and named the Hlaalos as her closest associates. She insisted, however, that they not be notified until after the baby had arrived. There was no way on Nirn she'd permit an audience to witness this indignity. She'd been informed it could be quite unpleasant and preferred to keep it as private as possible.

At first, everything seemed quite bearable, and Lilaena began to suspect that the horror stories she'd heard had been exaggerated, or related by mer with a very low tolerance for pain. The midwife gently inferred that her patient's labor had begun to slow down a bit, and decided to manually break her water in an attempt to speed up the process. That's when everything took a precipitous plunge into Oblivion. Whereas before, the pain was nothing a stoic High Elf like Lilaena couldn't handle, all of a sudden she was suffocating in unspeakable, crushing agony. It felt as though a huge boulder was being slowly ground into her pelvis, smashing everything in its path. She wanted to scream, but the pain was too intense. She barely managed a strangled moan or two.

The midwife, apparently accustomed to handling much more vocal patients, complimented Lilaena on her fortitude, unaware that it wasn't courage, but utter torment that kept her in silence. Through the fog of agony, she heard the Khajit tell her to "start pushing" and Lilaena decided at that instant that this torture was not going to continue any longer than it had to. She made a concerted effort to bear down with all of her might; so vehemently that she felt lightheaded and pinpoints of dark and light swam in her vision, but she didn't care. She wanted it to be over. The midwife praised her efforts and softly placed a paw on Lilaena's abdomen, waiting for the moment when she could try again.

As soon as she was given the word, Lilaena pushed once more with a vengeance. The Khajit encouraged her and then, abruptly, urged her to hold off. "Not so hard," she purred, seemingly amused, "We don't want the baby to fly across the room!"

Lilaena did as she was told. The midwife busied herself in the vicinity of Lilaena's nether regions. All that was apparent from her perspective was that the vortex of pain into which she was being swept intensified immensely and then abruptly subsided altogether, and suddenly she heard very small, squeaky sounds emanating from the foot of the bed. She found herself being handed what appeared to be just a bundle of clean, white blankets.

"Here he is…" the midwife purred, smiling calmly.

"It's a boy?" Lilaena had more or less presumed as much, due to the baby's rambunctious behavior whilst she carried him.

"Oh yes, definitely a boy."

Lilaena moved the blankets aside to uncover a pair of steely blue eyes staring back at her from a tiny, perfect replica of her former mentor's face. He seemed perplexed at his new situation - there was some puzzled knitting of tiny white eyebrows occurring. "Hello," she whispered, smiling. "You do look like your papa…" She had to check on something. She gingerly pushed the blanket back around his miniature face. 'Oh yes, he's got the ears!' They looked quite outrageous fully exposed on his nearly bald little head, though. Poor thing; no wonder she'd never seen his father with closely-cropped hair!

"Oooh, he's so long and skinny - like saltrice noodles!" the Khajit woman exclaimed, giggling. "Look at the feet!" She retrieved a miniscule, pale foot from under the edge of the blanket, which Lilaena presently examined to make sure it was complete. The baby seemed to sense that he was safely in the arms of his mother, and promptly fell asleep.

The midwife sent for the Hlaalos, who arrived so quickly that Lilaena suspected they may have been hiding round back the whole time, and assumed the role of proud grandparents. No matter that they were a completely different race of elves and had known Lilaena for less than a year. Mrs. Hlaalo kept inventing any excuse she could think of to get her hands on the baby during their visit.

"Our son hasn't had any children yet, so this is as close as I can get to having a grandchild," she explained, smoothing the baby's downy platinum hair with one finger. She and the midwife set about showing just Lilaena how to feed, burp, change, and swaddle her newborn. "He's all High Elf, you say? He looks to me like his father might have been a Nord," she observed in her usual blunt manner. "The skin tone, you know. He's very pink. And the eyes… although I think most babies are born with blue eyes. They'll probably change."

"Yes, I know. His father was Altmer but very pale. He had white hair and blue eyes." Lilaena replied.

"Hmm, very unusual," Mrs. Hlaalo sniffed with an air of suspicion.

'Ugh. She probably thinks I banged a Nord and decided to lie about it,' Lilaena thought, irritated. She suddenly wished everyone would leave so that she could spend time getting to know her new son without interference.

The midwife handed Lilaena some papers to fill out for the census office. She'd already decided on a name for her son – Rioghnan. She'd read it meant "little king", and liked that idea. He would certainly be treated like her little king. In typical Altmer fashion, there would be no surname. She completed the forms under her assumed name and handed them back, calling the father "Aidanil" after her own father, and writing "deceased" beside it. She really hoped no one would question any of it, ever.

Finally, the Hlaalos headed home for their evening meal, promising – much to Lilaena's chagrin - to return with food and gifts first thing in the morning. The midwife wanted her to remain under observation for the night, and provided her with a simple dinner and clean sheets and nightclothes. She also pushed a bassinet up next to the bed, but Lilaena refused to put the baby down. She'd waited so long to see him and hold him; she was not about to set him aside now. She couldn't get enough of him. Even as he slept, she was so captivated that she could not take her eyes off him, smitten with his exquisitely pristine, miniature face.