- "...grumlpoäääägh..."
Peri's face was scarlet red, her eyes swollen like mussels from the water pouring out of them. Some of the bile had made her hair sticky, and the convulsions shook her as she vomited from the saddle of her camel.
- "Peri... shouldn't we stop for a while?" Sarevok asked with concern.
- "NO!" she growled. "But these friggin' camels will have to go. We will rent or buy horses from the Tuigans. I can't take this waving..."
- "You know..." Imoen said pensively, "in my books, when the heroine is with child, she is lovely and radiant as she is at the very peak of femininity crystallized, unearthly gentleness in her wake, her hands unknowingly curling to protect the precious little one inside of her."
- "I have said it before," Peri spoke through gritted teeth, "and I will say it again. There is a lot of crap in those books of yours. And if I ever see the author of that particular one, I'll stuff the book up his ass in a horizontal position. Radiant fer Ilmater's sake..."
- "You do have a patent solution for all frustrations," Winski chuckled.
- "Comes sort of naturally," Peri grinned. "Like going to kill something for Sarry."
- "Giving birth was denied me in my mortal life," Jelena said, reminiscing, sad. "But I do know something about it. This morning sickness is unpleasant but will pass."
- "What about her wanting to eat peppermint candy and nothing else will do?" Sarevok asked.
- "And then when we go through considerable trouble to find peppermint candy, she wolfs down half of it, then starts yelling that the smell makes her sick and wants the candy destroyed. As in buried, or sent to the negative material plane?" Imoen continued, frowning at her sister.
- "It is not the peppermint candy as such, but the pattern, I believe, is typical," Jelena smirked.
- "I do not look forward to looking like a hippopotamus, you know the jungle beast from that picture book in Candlekeep?" Peri sighed. "But that, at least, will pass. It bothers me that I can't fight effectively then."
- "You have talked a lot to me about how I have to accept my vulnerability," Sarevok said. "Now you will have to accept your temporary own. Think about it this way - you have your loving family with you, and you can protect and 'kick ass' for all of us, as you put it, once the child is delivered. All in all, to sum up the discussion, I am looking forward to that."
Squinting, he could see a dust cloud in the distance.
- "A troop riding this way, rather fast by the looks of it."
- "Let's see what they want," Winski said, and they continued their slow-paced journey without much more reaction. Caravans, troops of merchants and nomads rode around the desert all the time, although there had been lesser and lesser travelers from the East as of late.
The riders seemed to be a tribe of Tuigans. Their eyes were slightly slanted, though not to the extent of the eyes of people from Kara-Tur. Their cheekbones were high, their faces round, and their hair black. They looked rather ragged and worn by their ride. They were wielding crudish spears, and some of them had sabers of mediocre quality.
- "Traveling to Shou Lung, are you," said the apparent leader of the troup. "It so happens that the Golden Way goes through the lands of our tribe, and you are supposed to pay a toll."
Peri took a long, large-eyed look at them. It lasted seconds.
- "Go away," she said in an endlessly tired, quiet tone.
- "Little girl, this is not the way it works," the man said, annoyed. "To make it more clear, you will pay a toll, or we will kill you. Does that make it any easier to decide?"
- "Go away," Peri repeated, looking weary beyond words.
- "Look, I don't want to kill helpless tr..." the bandit started.
- "GODS DAMN YOU I WILL SHOW YOU HELPLESS!" Peri started to shriek. "Do you know what I have been up to lately? Do you? No? I will tell you. My stepfather was murdered by my brother who was raving mad at the time and wore this really hideous spiky armor and then he tried to kill me and start a war because he wanted to become a god only it didn't quite work out as the god in question, by the way he was dead and our respective daddy as well, didn't want to co-operate and then I killed bro and then there was this elven madman who tortured me and also wanted to become god and I was in the Abyss and fought my brother again and an assortment of other baddies in the meantime and then I resurrected my brother and actually started to love him and..."
She stopped for a while to inhale, her eyes burning with fury. She seemed to almost balloon into some buffed monster, sporting fangs and claws, and her shriek shrilled in an even higher tone.
- "... and then five assholes plus a Deathstalker priestess were after my ass wanting to kill me and a solar wanted me to save the world and I killed all those baddies and also turned into a hideous monster once in a while and then finally I killed them all and I could have become a god but luckily didn't and now I travel with my family here and I am pregnant and this stupid camel is making me really nauseous and if some two-bit desert bandit tries to rob us I WILL PLUNGE THAT SPEAR OF YOURS STRAIGHT UP YOUR ASS!"
The bandits looked at each other for a few seconds, then hurriedly rode to the opposite direction.
Peri noticed that the others were looking at her.
- "What?" she asked, frowning.
