8. Questions
Arya's sudden shift from drinking in every detail he shared to being so solemn and sad gave Eragon pause. He contemplated what could have been responsible, replaying their conversation until the answer struck him. Then it was so obvious, he wondered that it had taken him the few moments it did to identify. Matching her mood, Eragon gravely regarded her and asked, "Arya, do you wish you could have a child?"
Eragon was sure he already knew the answer from piecing together all the relevant memories: the way Arya always spoke about children with reverence and delight; her anxiety over Hope's birth deformity, and her insistence that Eragon heal the baby; her serious declaration that she would never allow a child to come to harm; and her obsession to save the children Galbatorix threatened to kill when they confronted him. But before assuming anything, Eragon wanted Arya's confirmation.
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Arya regretted that she couldn't better hide her reaction from Eragon, for she then anticipated his question and wished she didn't have to answer, knowing how it would affect him. Should she deny the truth and spare him the many more difficult questions that would follow this first? She could tell from the look Eragon gave her that he already knew the truth, which was made clearer in her overly long pause before answering, and that he was simply awaiting her reply. She knew she must be honest, so she quietly said, "Yes, Eragon. That's something I have always wished, like many elves."
Eragon had stopped walking at his first question, an indication of how seriously he regarded the subject. He sat on a nearby boulder and motioned for her to join him, keeping his face a smooth mask of what Arya guessed were the many emotions conflicting inside of him. His eyes became distant as he then asked the first of the follow up questions Arya had expected.
"Would you soon want a child?" Eragon inquired. "Just yesterday was the first time you ever seriously considered marriage. Perhaps having children is something you did not soon anticipate."
Arya sighed. "Eragon, though I have wished, I never anticipated that it would be fulfilled. Many elves have a secret wish to bear children. We wonder if we might be the fortunate one to next conceive a child and continue our race. Though I had not previously considered marrying, that doesn't mean I also never thought about having a baby. Elves do not typically marry before engaging in intimate expressions, so I actually have given this matter considerable thought. If I believed it was possible for me at all, I would dearly wish to have a child just as soon as I could. I'm over a hundred years old, plenty old enough to know that I'm certain of this."
Already knowing what his next question would be, Arya steeled herself as Eragon said, "And have children ever been born to a human and an elf?"
Arya stared at her hands. "I do not know, Eragon. A union between an elf and a human is a rare thing indeed. Why would an elf, who is nigh immortal, enter into a relationship with a human who would die in less than a hundred years, if they had any affection for them? The loss would be heartbreaking. The few that occurred in the former glory days of the Riders, when an elf might be with a human Rider who also enjoyed relative immortality, were often short-lived and conflicted. From the superficial reading I did of the subject during my years of education, I don't recall any mention of children being born, but I didn't study the topic in depth."
"So it is likely, if not certain, that I will never be able to fulfill that wish for you?" Eragon asked, continuing to stare off into the distance, his face expressionless.
Arya tightly folded her hands, struggling to maintain her composure. She had known the conversation would turn this direction with Eragon's first question, that Eragon would doubt their ability to fulfill her desire to have a child.
"I do not know, Eragon," Arya repeated. "I truly wish I did. The infertility of the elves has long been a mystery, for it was not always this way. Before the elves began controlling magical forces with use of the ancient language, we were a fecund race like the dwarves and humans, but something changed within our very beings at that time. They were better once the pact with the dragons was instated, for the might of that race brought prosperity to our own. But after Galbatorix and the Foresworn killed off the Riders and the dragons, the curse of infertility returned in full force. In the past century or so, I was one of only a couple dozen children born among the elves. So you can see why I'm so astonished to hear that one human couple will have produced five children in ten years' time."
Arya shook her head, lifting her face toward the sky to discourage the tears in her eyes from falling. "But I do know something of the differences between female elves and female humans," she continued. "Or dwarves and Urgals, for that matter, but I'll simply refer to humans for ease of explanation. Around the middle of their second decade, the body of a female human begins to undergo changes in the reproductive organs that allow the woman's body to maintain a pregnancy. The changes also affect the development of various parts of her anatomy to be able to feed and care for a baby after its birth. After this change takes effect, the human womb prepares for the conception of a child on an almost monthly basis. If the female has an intimate encounter with a man during this time of fertility, conception is likely to occur. That happens almost monthly for the female human. Monthly," she repeated to impress upon Eragon the significance, at least in her mind.
"If a pregnancy does not occur but is desired, in only a matter of weeks the woman is once again fertile—her womb in a state of readiness to conceive—whereupon the couple may again attempt to create a child. After several decades, this cycle of preparing the womb for pregnancy ends, and the human is then infertile, for her womb is cold and inactive and her ovaries no longer produce fertile ova."
Arya could see that Eragon had followed her through much of this lengthy explanation. She knew he must be vaguely aware of the female condition most human men regarded with superstition and fear, thanks largely to his education under Oromis in Ellesméra.
But when he looked confused by her final sentence, Arya dismissed, "Never mind. It's not important that you know every term related to the female reproductive system." Then, after a second of thought, Arya nonetheless explained, "The ovaries are organs within the female reproductive system that prepare and release their supply of ova, or eggs, which are the female reproductive cells." She knew understanding as much as possible would help Eragon grasp the information she was sharing.
"Anyway, with elves it's different. As far as we know from our extensive observation of our anatomy, the female elf's reproductive system is identical to the human woman's. She has all of the same organs, thereby making it theoretically possible that a child could be born to a human and elven couple if their reproductive cells were compatible, which is not known. However, the major difference is that the elf's body does not undergo a change toward fertility at a given time, as is the case with a human. Her womb is not cold and inactive, like an elderly woman, but rather in the state of youthful inactivity prior to the commencement of fertility in humans—healthy and capable of maintaining a pregnancy, though it has never undergone the changes that lead to the production of viable eggs.
"Some have speculated that magic is responsible for this predicament. Elves now enjoy unnaturally long lifespans, appearing to be frozen at a youthful age for centuries, which may confuse the body enough that it does not know when to begin being fertile and when to cease. There are only a given number of eggs within a female's ovaries at birth. The amount never increases during her lifetime, but instead decreases as one is released each cycle in the chance of being fertilized.
"A man, on the other hand, has the ability to constantly produce new reproductive cells on a daily basis for most of his adult life, which ability also begins around the middle of the second decade in humans. Most believe that the infertility of the elves is primarily a result of the stillness of the woman's reproductive system, though there are some who believe that elven men are also less fertile than their human counterparts."
Eragon's expressionless mask had dissolved into keen interest, and he interjected here, "But there must be some knowledge that a change takes place in a female elf, for children are born, albeit infrequently. And since the elves study this subject extensively, surely they take care to observe in detail any changes leading up to a coveted pregnancy. Right?"
Arya nodded. "Yes, that's right. I once asked my mother if she noticed any changes within herself before I was conceived. Her account matched the observations other elves had made of changes preceding pregnancies in recent decades. Nothing is concrete. Though it was a terribly dark and violent time, during which Galbatorix and the Foresworn were wreaking havoc on the Riders and dragons, my mother said it was a time of great peace and happiness in her personal life, especially in her relationship with Evandar, my father. She felt particularly content and assured of his love and began to feel stirrings within her reproductive system. Some of the cyclical changes that happen in humans to increase the likelihood of conception also appeared in her own body."
"What changes are those?" Eragon asked.
"Well, as I mentioned, each cycle the female human body prepares for pregnancy. In the days leading up to what is known as ovulation, or the moment an ovary releases an egg, the woman's body undergoes certain changes to improve the chances that her mate's reproductive cells will survive within her body long enough for one to fertilize the egg. She produces a certain fluid, analogous to the man's semen, which gives his sperm a medium to survive in. Her womb also softens and widens at its tip, in a sense opening the gate into her body and providing easier passage for her partner's sperm."
"Sperm?" Eragon repeated.
"His reproductive cells," Arya patiently clarified. "Do humans not learn anything of this?"
"No," Eragon admitted. "I did learn the basic anatomy and physiology of the human or elven body during my studies in Ellesméra, and I obviously have a general understanding of reproduction. But I didn't learn all of these details and terms, particularly about a female. It makes sense that the elves have discovered the logical explanation and understanding of the actual processes most humans regard superstitiously. So these changes occurred in your mother before she became pregnant with you, thus signaling that her womb was ripening for conception?"
"Yes," Arya said, pleased by his quick grasp of the new information. "And it seemed to be spurred on by nothing more than love, contentment, and happiness, which is hardly a scientific way to assure it could happen again. Yet this is why we believe that a child born to an elven couple is considered evidence of a true bond of love. It has led to some speculation that the custom of the elves in casually sharing intimate love whenever they desire, without first creating the foundation of love, commitment, and therefore contentment that humans do with marriage, is at least partly responsible for their infertility."
"So is there any possibility that a female elf, like you for example, if very happy, peaceful, and in love in her relationship with a male human such as myself, might also undergo the necessary changes to become pregnant?" Eragon postulated.
Arya couldn't help but smile at his unambiguous example. "Yes, Eragon. I would think that based on the information available to us, that would be a possibility. But there is still no evidence that conception can even occur between the reproductive cells of an elf and human, which would be dependent upon whether or not they were compatible. Just as in the animal world, most animals can only propagate with other members of their own species. Perhaps our races are similar enough that pregnancy would occur, as with the crossing of a horse and a donkey to produce a mule, but as I said, that is not known. Pregnancy is so rare, even with two elves, that I don't know what to say in our situation."
A/N (May 14, 2018): If you thought this chapter was awkward or unnecessary, you are not alone. So you don't waste your time if you have strong objections, I want to prepare you that this is only the beginning. Throughout the remaining four parts I often describe the female menstrual cycle, pregnancy, child birth, breastfeeding, and other "holistic medicine crap," as one reviewer recently put it. I warned potential readers that this happens in my informational listing entitled The Cycle Continues.
Some readers find the inclusion of these topics boring, distracting, or irrelevant, but it was actually the reason I finished this story and posted it here. Other readers have said this isn't the place to educate the masses about such topics, and while I partially agree, I also felt that incorporating this information and these practices might help what I envisioned as a predominantly female audience in their later teens to early twenties. I didn't expect many male readers to gravitate toward a romance, though I am thrilled so many have! Just a head's up. Thanks for reading!