Chapter 37: How I Met Your Mother

There were seven of them.

Seven wolf-eared kids, all sizes, all sitting in a semicircle on a rug in a house I didn’t recognize, looking up at me with big amber eyes and various numbers of teeth. I was older. I could feel it in my back. I was sitting in a chair that had clearly been mine for years, in a room I’d apparently decorated, with a mantel full of little carved family portraits, a basket by my foot and the bone-deep tiredness of a woman who has said "because I said so" more times than she can count.

One of the little ones was tugging my sleeve. Another had my tail in a headlock and was refusing to acknowledge it. A third, the biggest, was chilling on the couch.

"Mama, tell it again. Tell how you and Mother met."

"Yeah! The story! The story!"

"You always skip the good part," said a middle one, folding her arms with an authority she’d clearly inherited from the other parent. "The part where Mother wins."

[Wins? WINS? There’s a canonical version of this? My subconscious has a preferred outcome and it’s not mine?]

"Where’s your mother right now?" I heard myself ask, in a worn-out voice.

"Hunting," said four of them at once, proudly.

[Of course she is. Fenna’s out hunting while I’m on story duty. That tracks. That’s the exact division of labor she’d negotiate.]

Then the smallest one, a fox-eared one, the only fox-eared one, climbed directly into my lap without asking, looked up at me, and said:

"Mama, when’s the next litter?"

I looked down at seven expectant faces, felt an eighth kick in my womb, sighed the sigh of the thoroughly defeated, and heard my own voice begin the way it apparently always began.

"Alright, alright. Okay. So. Here’s how I met your mother. There was this tournament..."

"AAAAAAH!"

I woke up so fast I nearly fell out of the bed.

It was still dark. The weasel made an annoyed noise and relocated to the pillow. My heart was going like a drum and I lay there with a hand on my chest, staring at the ceiling, until I was sure, completely sure, that it hadn’t happened yet.

[Seven. My subconscious rounded UP. Fenna said five and my own brain looked at that number and went "let’s make it worse."]

I was sweating.

[It’s not real. There’s no rug. There’s no chair. There are no children. There is only a match, today, that I am going to win.]

I did not go back to sleep.

---

"Roll the shoulders. Good. Now the other way."

By the time the sun was up and Prue was climbing his platform to announce the round, Lily had decided she was my corner.

I don’t know when this happened. Somewhere between the dorm and the arena she’d appointed herself, and now she was standing behind the competitors’ bench with both hands on my shoulders, kneading them like she was working dough, muttering a stream of encouragement she’d clearly been rehearsing.

"You’re faster than her. She’s bigger, but you’re faster, and you’ve got more mana than anyone knows. You’re going to keep your distance and you’re going to make her come to you, and you are NOT going to lose." Her thumbs dug in. "You are absolutely not going to lose. You can’t lose. It’s very important that you don’t lose."

"Lily, sweetheart, you’re going to snap my collarbone."

"Sorry." She didn’t ease up even slightly. "It’s just... That woman said things yesterday. About you. About, um, litters, and hips, and I’ve been thinking about it all night and I’ve decided I have feelings about it, and the feeling is that you should destroy her."

[She’s more worked up about this than I am. And I had the nightmare.]

"You seem invested," I said.

"W-WELL OF COURSE I AM! I’m your roommate," Lily said, with a fierceness that didn’t quite match the sentence. "Roommates don’t let roommates get... Drafted. Into. Harems." Each word came with a knead. "So you’re going to go out there and you’re going to win, and then that wolf is going to have to find someone else to have her four-"

"Five."

"-her FIVE pups with, and everything is going to go back to normal, and we are never going to speak of this again. Understood?"

[Lily Everdawn, ladies and gentlemen. Kindest girl in the academy, currently threatening a woman by proxy over a hypothetical litter.]

"Understood," I said.

"RING ONE!" Prue bellowed above us. "FIRST YEAR, SAKANAAAA KOHAKUUU!"

Lily gave my shoulders one last squeeze that nearly dislocated something and pushed me toward the ramp.

"Go," she said. "And do a better pose this time, everyone’s watching."

I walked down into the ring.

The stands were full. Second week of the festival, good weather, a marquee-to-be, and there were more people here than for my first match, a lot more, and somewhere in the noise I could hear Lily already yelling my name.

I reached the center and I remembered, this time, that the pose was scored.

So I did one. I’d thought about it, actually, on no sleep, at four in the morning. I dropped my weight, held one open hand out low, and let the weasel scurry down my arm and sit up in my palm and fire off a clean bright LIGHT, so the two of us lit up together in the middle of the ring, fox and flashlight, and the crowd made a noise that was, for the first time, on my side.

The panel conferred. A paddle went up.

[Seven? I gues sgoing from a two to a seven isn’t bad. And also, apparently, seven is the number of the day, thank you universe, very funny.]

Across the ring, the other ramp, and Fenna Greywild came down it.

She didn’t hurry. Hands in her pockets until the last second, slouch and all, and she reached the center, pulled a practice greatsword off her back one-handed like it weighed nothing, planted it point-down in the stone, leaned on the crossguard, and grinned at me with the chipped fang fully out.

"Morning," she said. "Sleep well?"

"No."

"Good. Nerves. That’s cute." She hefted the greatsword up onto her shoulder and rolled her neck until it cracked. "Last chance to just forfeit, you know. Save us both the trouble. You lose either way, and this way you don’t get bruised before the..." She winked. "Honeymoon."

The whistle-master raised his hand.

I set my feet, routed mana down my arm until my whole core was humming full and ready, and looked across at a woman who was two years, one rank, and roughly forty pounds of muscle above me, and who was, as far as continental beastkin custom was concerned, one won duel away from making me a mother of five.

[Okay, battle against motherhood... Round one.]

The hand came down.