"You're going to be a big brother Shigure!" And then she went back inside, leaving me to stand alone outside. A big brother, that implied I would have a little sibling. A sibling.

Chapter Two- Shigure's Pov

Over time, my mother's stomach began to grow larger, until she looked like she carried one of the large balls that my friends and I played with during the summer months underneath her clothes. But the summer months had long passed; now we were passing into the cold end of fall.

I sat next to Ayame, watching the pond ripple as leave fell in. We were both bundled up tightly in our coats, both of our mothers' forcing us to put them on, as to protect us from the bitter cold wind that twisted and turned through the dry and almost empty trees, lashing out and viciously biting at any uncovered skin. I hated these months. I enjoyed the warm fall, when the leaves still made that crunchy fresh sound, when we could still play with merely a long-sleeved shirt. But those precious moments had come and gone, leaving us with this.

"I'm so bored, there's nothing to do around here anymore!" I sighed, falling back onto the browning grass. Ayame did the same.

"Yes, and with Tori sick, there's nobody to annoy." Ayame frowned, obviously suffering from the lack of anyone telling him to calm down, or to be quiet. It was all the snake ever did, annoy Hatori, but secretly, I guessed that Aaya just liked Hatori, and was desperate for his attention.

But unfortunately, Hatori had gotten a cold earlier this week. Perhaps that was the reason that we were bundled in two coats and a thick scarf. Talk seemed to travel so fast, as if the walls were unable to hold any of the secrets they absorbed.

Ayame sighed once more, and leaned his head against his palm, looking at me. "What do you think it'll be, that baby?" He asked, curiously.

I shrugged. "I don't know, I want it to be a boy, girls are boring. All they ever do is sit inside, like mom, and talk."

Ayame nodded. "But what if it is a little sister? What would you do then? Besides, we don't actually know any girls; the only ones we know are our mothers. What if they do more than just sit around and chat?" I reflected on this for a moment.

"I don't know. I guess what happens will happen. My mom told me that she's hoping that this one won't be a zodiac, so she can have a normal child." Something inside of me, and I'm sure inside of Aaya, flinched as soon as the word normal came out of my lips. Normal, it was something neither I, nor the snake could ever be. We were cursed, and would be cursed until the end of our lives on earth, and then the spirits would move on, take up another body. Or so we had been told by our mothers.

Our mothers played such a large role in our lives, much more so than our fathers. Our fathers left us alone, they were hardly around anyways. They had work to go to in the city, they left early in the morning, when we were rarely awake, and came back late at night, when our mothers had already put us to bed. On the infrequent night or morning, when I did catch a glimpse of my father, or late at night when I could hear the voices of my two parents talking, my father always looked, and sounded so tired. Often their conversations would contain me, or the sentences I wish things had been different, normal. Why did this have to happen to us? And every time I heard that, every time I saw that tired and worn down look on my father's face, I blamed myself. I blamed myself for the dark circles that always seemed to appear underneath my mother's eyes, the irritation that slipped out in her voice, even when I believed I had done nothing wrong. I blamed myself for not being normal.

And the truth was, I truly was hoping, really hoping, for the sake of our family, that the new baby would be normal. That it wouldn't be cursed by the same horrible spell that had befallen me and my friends. That it wouldn't cause those dark circles, those tired looks. I hoped that the new baby, my new sibling, would bring energy to my father, bring happiness to my mother, that it would be normal. That it would be the child that my parents had always wanted and that I could never be.

"Do you know when it will be coming at least?" Aaya asked, still pressing, pulling me out of my thoughts.

I nodded. "Soon, any day is what the doctor keeps saying. He's coming in every day now, instead of every week."

"And how are your parents preparing?" I shrugged.

"They've put a crib in their room next to their bed, and they've bought all these clothes, white, blue, pink, and green. They even bought shoes, coats, and blankets. But I suppose that makes sense, the winter is coming on quickly this year. Last year we could still play in that meadow by this time." I complained.

Ayame nodded. "I know! But until the snow comes it's too open." I sighed and nodded. Ayame was right, of course. And with his heightened temperature sensitivity, we couldn't risk getting the snake cold. I on the other hand, was quite adapted to the cold, not that I liked it any better than the heat or the sunny days that summer brought.

Suddenly, I saw one of the maids that patrolled the household running towards us, shuffling as fast as she could in her tightly tied kimono.

Glancing at Ayame, we both stood up, and went to greet her since she was obviously here for us.

And the words that came out of her mouth next, should've been a shock, should've been a worry, but to me, they weren't. "You're mother's having her baby, we need to get you and your friend back to the house." She gushed, and then placed hands on our backs, and guided us to the house, where I saw many of the maids rushing to and fro.

Finally.