Ander - Part 6: Subchapter 127
127
This smell. Banno knew this smell. He's smelt it before. Not quite like this, though. This was a bit different, which was why it had taken him so long to figure it out, but now that he was here, breathing it in, there was no mistake.
Few knew about this, but he used to love it when the she-wolves back home fell pregnant. He used to love walking by and subtly breathing in their scent, taking note of the way they changed week by week and month by month. He liked the potential of it. That unknown quality. There could be anything in there. Anything at all.
Maybe even something real.
Wolves normally gave birth by themselves, with only their mates to help and support them, but sometimes, when things went wrong, they went to Mother. They'd lie on the ground inside the doctoring tent, surrounded by burning candles and effigies of the Cora draped in coils of dried snakeskin, and oh, how they would scream. There was no other scream quite like it; that primal, piercing scream of a difficult birth. Banno used to watch it all through a small hole near the back of that tent. He used to watch every little detail. The way Mother painted old Wolven symbols on their swollen bellies with the blood of a pregnant doe, muttering her prayers. The way she'd tilt their heads up, supporting them by the neck to give them their medicine. Sometimes that was enough. The baby came and everyone rejoiced. The father would kiss his brand new baby girl or boy, and then he'd kiss his mate, and on more than one occasion he'd even kiss Mother, apparently forgetting that she was supposed to be Shekka, the Empty One, the big bad scary witchdoctor with the pale eyes. In that moment, everyone was happy.
But not Banno. For him, those moments were nothing but bitter disappointment. He'd wait and wait for hours, sometimes even days, hoping for a miracle, but all he ever got was a crushing sense of loneliness, because those babies, those brand new 'lives' as they were so often called, were never real. They were just more pieces of bloody lumps of meat and bone, no different from all the others. He'd walk away from those moments feeling deflated, empty, hollow. What was the point of being alive if he was the only one? A single flame burning amidst an endless desert of ash?
But other times... other times the medicine didn't work at all. Those were the times Mother would take a knife, slice the rounded belly wide open, and then Banno would remember that there were still good things in this fake, empty world. Things like the subtle differences between the screams of birthing pains and the screams of dying pains, the smell of a dead baby being ripped from their mother's inadequate womb, the soft whimper of the she-wolf who had clung to life just long enough to see her child enter this world limp and silent. The sweet aroma of the father's tears, mixed with the fragrance of his family's pyre, his mate burning with her half-formed child wrapped in her arms.
And now... now there was this smell...
Banno dragged his claws across Kiana's body and ripped her dress open through the middle, revealing a milky white belly bordered on both sides by gouts of flaming orange. So pretty.
Her knee rose up and struck him a good blow beneath the chin, causing his view to jerk upwards, temporarily denying him that pretty, pretty view. It was a problem easily fixed simply by moving a bit closer, pressing his face right up against her stomach, where she couldn't kick him anymore.
Banno ran his free hand across her midriff, up and down, up and down, trying to pinpoint the exact borders of her little baby-bump.
She moaned in the cutest little way. He could feel the vibrations going through her muzzle and into his fingers. Was she moaning in pleasure? He thought she very well might be. A thin line of saliva was slowly running over his thumb and down his wrist. It felt nice and warm.
He pressed his ear against her stomach and listened. He knew that, very rarely, you could hear a baby's heartbeat inside the womb. He held his breath.
Kiana made some more of her seductive little moans, squirming beneath his touch, begging for attention, but other than that, he couldn't hear a thing. It must be too early for that. But rather than being disappointed, a huge grin spread across Banno's face as he listened to that deep, empty silence within her. It meant she couldn't be very far along. Two months, maybe? Three? Surely no more than that. She was barely even showing. That was good. That was very good. It meant that, whatever was in there, whether it was real or just another fake, it was undeniably new. This baby. This unborn little child -
Girl. It has to be a girl. I just know it is. It feels like a girl...
- hasn't been touched by this fake world yet. It existed inside a little world of its own, an eggshell made from flesh and blood.
Entranced by this idea, Banno licked her slightly protruding belly, going in a wide circle. Kiana seemed to enjoy it. She squirmed beneath his hands and cried out in pleasure. Such a hungry little Fox. So greedy for more...
But this baby, though... What did it mean? The implications raced through Banno's mind.
He knew Ander and Kiana were close. There were signs everywhere. But if he was right about the two months, then that meant she must have fallen pregnant after Ander rescued her from the sacrificial fires, not before. So did that mean Kiana was unfaithful? Did she go around sleeping with random Foxes like a little slut? Or...?
Banno slowly pulled his tongue away from Kiana's stomach, staring at it the same way his mother sometimes stared at the Cora statue, enraptured by something she could not see.
This baby is Ander's.
The moment that thought entered his mind he knew it to be true. The timing worked, the scents worked, every little visual clue, everything he knew about his freak of a brother and this little vixen all pointed in the same direction.
She was pregnant with Ander's child. This Fox was carrying the child of his brother. This child... this unborn baby girl...
Banno's heartbeat increased, and that caused the blood to flow from his torn face at an even faster rate, but he barely noticed. He was getting that feeling again, that joyous, ecstatic feeling that he only ever got from playing with Vallah and Valery.
Ander was his brother. Well, only half-brother, but they shared the same father, of that he had no doubt. That meant that a part of what made Ander Ander was the same as a part that made Banno Banno, and that part was what they had inherited from their shared father, Kadai.
Did that mean Ander was real? He didn't think so. Just because they came from the same place didn't mean they were alike in any way (assuming it wasn't the other way around and that Father only came to be so that Banno could be born). But the potential for it, that possibility, might exist within Ander's blood the same as it existed in Father's blood.
If Ander has a piece of Father inside of him, a piece of the one that acted as half of the gateway that allowed me into this world, then that means that a piece of me is inside of Ander, too, and if he then has a child, if he has a little girl... Does that mean that a piece of me is inside this unborn baby right now? Does that mean this girl is...?
Banno's chest felt tight. He couldn't breathe. It felt like he might keel over at any second.
But wait, maybe he was jumping to conclusions. Hezzi was his full brother, and he was still just a bouncy ball of meat wrapped in fur. Maybe this little one was no different, even though she was family. Even though she was partly made of him. Even though she was as yet unborn, and this fake, empty world hasn't had a chance to leech her yet, to take away that spark that made her... real?
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