Co-written with miss mika namariya. We own nothing!
The unfortunate thing about sitting for a portrait was that it had given Kyoko a lot of time to think. Normally, this wouldn't be a bad thing - time to think meant time to plan strategies - but Kyoko happened to be pregnant. Which was a great thing! It also just meant that her hormones were… well, everywhere.
Which is why Kuon found his True Love sobbing on their couch. When he sat down next to her and asked what was wrong, she sobbed harder. Then she turned to him, fury in her eyes. "You were SO RUDE to me at first!"
"What?"
"When we first met! Before we were in love!" She scrubbed at her eyes.
He wisely chose not to argue that he had, in fact, fallen in love with her the moment she'd held a knife to his throat. "I'm… sorry?"
"You made fun of me because I'm smaller than you, but that's not fair, Kuon, everyone is smaller than you!" She puffed out her cheeks as she looked up at him, then continued, "And I can still kick your ass about it!"
Unwisely, he replied, "I find it very hot when you kick my ass."
She crumpled against him. "No, that would be awful!" Her sobs redoubled. "I would kill anyone who tried."
"I know." He rubbed her back. "Hon, nobody's going to try. You're way too scary." He lowered his head and kissed the top of hers. "How can I help right now?"
"Keep - keep rubbing my back, please." She hiccuped. "But I might not be done yelling at you yet."
Kuon cleared his schedule immediately.
Later, when he met up with the advisors with whom he'd been supposed to meet, he explained that he had to reschedule their meeting because his wife needed to yell at him. Then he realized how it sounded, and said, "No, wait. It's not a mean thing, it's a pregnancy thing. She's not actually mad, just upset. She said so herself."
The advisors glanced at each other, clearly not having asked.
"Like, yes, she's terrifying, but in a sexy way." His eyes glazed over as he thought of his beloved.
The advisors stood there with awkward smiles pasted on their faces. On one hand, they couldn't agree with what the prince said. He was a jealous man, and also, they did not have weapons fetishes. But on the other hand, they absolutely could not disagree with the prince, as he was a Hizuri and thought the sun shone out of his True Love's every orifice. So they were just forced to stand there, smiling, until the prince switched topics. But hey. It's True Love, which meant the weather was good, the kingdom was secure, and the crops were bountiful. So it's whatever.
"This really is nothing compared to that one time 4 monarchs ago when the queen was technically 100 years older than the king," one would say later.
"True, but wasn't she asleep for those years? So it's a little less weird." But really, they tried not to think about that, especially with how awkward the linguistic drift was at first.
"Maybe. Also, didn't she bring those seven dwarves as her attendants?"
"No, that was the queen 6 monarchs ago. Honestly," the advisor half-laughed, "compared to ones like them, the prince and princess are downright normal!" After a pause, they added, "Well, no. Not quite normal." They all collectively thought of the frogs.
"Oh, remember the one queen who used to be a swan and still mostly ate breadcrumbs? At least the princess eats solid food!"
"And isn't a swan."
"Yeah, the hissing was really something else." They shuddered. It had been a tense time to be an advisor, they'd heard. Their predecessors had kept rolls in their pockets at all times.
"Plus, I've heard she can sleep anywhere," one cut in, eager to keep the conversation flowing away from swans. "Better than the queen a few queens back who could only sleep on freshly stuffed mattresses because she could feel even a single pea through them - I can only imagine how many mattresses they went through."
"At least our current king and queen have a more normal love story," an older advisor said, "being chased together by a goose in the market. A True Love trope if there ever was one!"
"...Wasn't that one of her great-aunts, though?" another asked. They glanced around, then lowered their voice to continue, "Do you think the queen can't cook because she's got… y'know… geese in her family line?"
Kyoko's team, who had of course been eavesdropping, were alarmed and reported this back to Kyoko immediately. After all, geese were a natural predator of faeries… and Kyoko was a changeling. So perhaps that was why she'd found the queen so intimidating at first (aside from her beauty, of course).
When she timidly brought this up to Julie one day, the queen just laughed and hugged her. "It doesn't matter now, darling, when we're so close! I'll just make sure I stay away from you during my transformation time, just in case."
"I'm sorry, your WHAT?" Kyoko yelped, pulling back from the hug.
Which sent her into another peal of laughter. "Hon, I'm kidding! I can't turn into a goose. That'd be absolutely ridiculous."
She squinted suspiciously at her mother-in-law. "Would it?"
"Of course." She winked, then, not at Kyoko, but at an unseen observer, one who knew the shape of the words she spoke, one who could see them on a magic mirror.
"Who are you winking at?"
"No one, darling, no one. Now let's have lunch, I'm sure you must be starving! Growing a baby's hard work!"
Kyoko let it drop for the moment, because she was, in fact, starving. It seemed the Hizuri appetite skipped a generation.
Later, however, she would thoroughly investigate the mattress and every pillow in her and Kuon's quarters for down feathers that might belong to the queen. She wasn't quite sure how she would spot them, but she had to check. Just in case. Which is why Kuon walked into her cutting open their mattress with a knife.
"Love, why are you destroying our bed?"
"I'm looking for signs your mother is a goose," she replied, not looking up from her work.
Whatever he'd expected her to say, it had not been that. "...How much health juice have you been drinking?"
"A normal amount."
"So, none?" A trace of worry vanished from his brow. "Did your cravings stop?"
She looked away, a little embarrassed, and corrected, "A normal amount for a pregnant woman."
"I'm pretty sure that most people would say that's also none."
She puffed up her cheeks at him, frustrated. She looked so cute that he couldn't even focus on the fact that she was systematically dismantling their bed.
LINE BREAK
One day, when Maria and Lory had joined them for tea, the topic of the academy came up. Namely, the fact that Maria did not attend, a fact that Kuon found very odd.
"Oh, it'd be too dangerous," Lory said with a wave of his hand.
"Oh, so now you admit that so-called school is dangerous -" Kuon started, but Lory cut him off.
"No, not for her. For my students." He cast a half-doting, half-frustrated glance at his granddaughter. "Someone can be very vicious and doesn't know how to hold back her black magic."
Kuon almost dropped his teacup. "Her what?"
"Oh, it's fine, she's got it all under control. Evil sorceresses get such a bad rap." He shook his head; Kyoko and Maria nodded along emphatically. "What's so bad about a powerful woman wanting to express her independence? I've never understood why people are so quick to judge. Besides," he gave Kuon an amused smile, "she adores you both, so I daresay she won't menace your kingdom."
"Of course not!" Maria interjected. "I would never! Well, not anymore." She shrugged at Kyoko, who laughed with her.
"Why do you think I abandoned all those mines?" he continued. "She needs a good place to practice and keep her giant spiders."
While Lory continued to melt Kuon's brain, Kyoko and Maria carried on their own conversation. "You know, if we ever get back in contact with the witches we met in the forest, I can introduce you! I bet they'd love you, and they're looking for apprentices."
"Only if they're okay with spiders! Theobold's my familiar, you know."
"Of course! I'm sure they'd find him very charming." She took a sip of her tea, then added, "You know, I've been meaning to ask about acquiring some of his venom to microdose. I don't know if I've encountered a poison like it before."
"Oh, don't worry about that," she replied, reaching for a cookie, "you're already immune."
"You microdosed me?" Kyoko asked, genuinely touched.
Maria blushed, a bit ashamed. "No. I tried to poison you a little bit early on when I first heard that Kuon's new bodyguard was a woman. Jealousy can be such an overpowering emotion, you know, but that was before I knew you! I never would have -"
"Oh, good! Nice thinking." She nodded, snagging a chocolate cookie for herself and slathering tomato compote on it.
Maria was so distracted by her words that she didn't even comment on the casual food crime. "You're not mad at me?"
She rolled her eyes, laughing a little. "Of course not! If I hadn't been able to survive that, I wouldn't be fit to guard the prince, now would I?"
Still, that conversation stuck with Kyoko. She hadn't even noticed the attempted poisoning. Maybe she was losing her edge? So she started tasting all her foods very vigilantly and cataloging everything she felt.
Kuon, watching this, said, "Two things: one, how are you going to differentiate between pregnancy symptoms and poison?"
"Oh, they're very different. Poison is much milder," she assured him.
That did not, in fact, reassure him. "Two: this is making me so stressed that I'm going to go bald." Panic struck him. "Would you still love me if I was bald? Oh, gods -"
Kuu burst into the room. "NOOO, MY PRECIOUS SON CAN'T GO BALD!"
"You're making it worse!" Still, Kuon frantically inspected his father's head for signs of hair loss.
In the background, an amused Kyoko sat down on the couch and said, "I'd love you even if you turned into a fruit bat, silly."
"That's good - wait, I shouldn't be checking Dad's head - I need to ask about granddad!" He turned, ready to run to find his mother, only to bump into her. "Mom! Did your dad go bald?"
"Well, that's a hard question to answer. We always called it molting in my family." She grinned, then added with a shrug, "I'm not sure why."
Kyoko's eyes narrowed and she patted her lap for Kuon. "Come here, let me inspect your scalp."
Kuon gladly took her up on the offer, ready to be an orange cat as his wife's fingers combed through his hair. Kuu and Julie smiled fondly before letting their darlings have the moment.
Little did Kuon know that Kyoko was not, in fact, checking for baldness. She was checking for feather follicles. Okay, it's soft, she thought, combing through it. Silky, even. But is it downy soft, or just regular, improbably soft? She did not reach a conclusion, but her husband did fall asleep in her lap.
A week or so later, Kuon came up to their rooms after inspecting the castle's chicken coop with a feather stuck in his hair.
"What the FUCK is that?" Kyoko demanded, staring wildly at his head.
He grinned. "No, I was just talking with the coopmaster -"
Kyoko practically slammed herself down onto the couch. "Head. Lap. NOW."
"Oh, absolutely," he said with delight, heading over to the dresser. "I mean, you should definitely check very thoroughly, but I wouldn't be too worried about it."
"Why are you changing into your pajamas?"
"Because having you run your fingers through my hair is incredibly relaxing and I intend to fall asleep like this." He walked over and laid down with his head in her lap.
She plucked out the feather and examined it. "This is a chicken feather."
"Yes, I was in the coop."
She dropped a kiss on his forehead. "If you wanted me to pet your hair you could've just said so."
The orange cat of a man did, in fact, fall asleep with his head in her lap. He had to enjoy this while he could, after all; soon she wouldn't have much of a lap left.
LINE BREAK
The reminder of her heritage had Kyoko worried. So naturally, she consulted Sir Hoppington about how to make sure the baby had Normal Ears. Not pointy ones or ones that became pointy when entering a Wild Forest.
Sir Hoppington just blinked up at her. "Rooooob."
"Yes, I know, all humans have weird external ears, but come on!"
He shook his froggy head. He was far more concerned that while human babies start out properly wet, they dry out alarmingly fast. He had been attending the lessons from the midwives with the royal couple, which is how he knew this. Shouldn't she be more concerned about finding a way to keep the baby permanently wet, like any good tadpole? Kyoko tried to explain to him that human babies are typically meant to be mostly dry. He only blinked wetly at her in response.
Later, he conferred with Lady Lily on the matter, and they agreed that being that dry sounded very uncomfortable. So they and the tadpoles (who were starting to properly grow legs now, such fine younglings!) vowed to keep this baby as mucousy as possible.
(In the future, as the baby grew, they would have incredible, perfectly dewy skin at all times. Outsiders would attribute this to Kuon's genes, or perhaps the blessing of being a product of True Love. But in fact, the answer was mucous. The Frogs to the Throne, ever at the baby's side, made sure the baby's skin was properly hydrated at all times. This had the extra benefit of keeping the baby safe from poison - their magic mucous that you should not question at all neutralizes all other poisons. One of the TOADS scholars would theorize about this, only to be scoffed at but later proven right.)