fandomania | The Adventure continues... (Reply)

Our eggs:

¤

Our hatchlings:

The Story:

It took us a month to arrive at Tuščia Žemė on the west coast. The journey was long, but uneventful. We probably would have made better progress if Donal hadn’t insisted that we stop at every temple or monastery that we passed. Donal was becoming almost frantic with his quest to find a priest who would overlook the required mourning period and consent to marry us. But as the days and weeks passed by, the repeated rejections started getting to Donal and his usual sunny disposition was starting to change more and more to gloom and depression.

When we arrived at the little village of Tenykštis, on the border of Tuščia Žemė and Mahajatma, Donal found a young priest who was willing to marry us, but when he saw my baby bulge, he changed his mind, gave us another stern lecture on immorality, and told us to leave his temple.

There are several big double standards in our world. Men of all classes who seduce, rape or otherwise have sexual relations with women not their wives are rarely, if ever, punished. They are tacitly forgiven with the attitudes of ‘boys will be boys’ or, even worse, ‘atta boy!’

Women, on the other hand, are almost always punished if they are seduced, raped or otherwise have consensual sexual relations with a man, not their husbands. Amongst the lower classes, where virginity isn’t always required for marriage, as long as the woman doesn’t get pregnant, her lapse of morality is overlooked unless the affair is very public. If the woman conceives a child, and her lover or another man is willing to marry her, then she too is tacitly forgiven. But if the father of her baby refuses to marry her or is unable to because he is a priest or already married, then the consequences for her are extreme. She has only two choices: become a nun or a prostitute.

For upper class women, virginity is a requirement for marriage. The only exceptions are if she has been widowed or, in certain kingdoms, the king has chosen to exercise his Right of Primacy for her. [I.e. have the right to de-flower her.] Otherwise, non-virgins are denied the right to marriage, even if they find a man willing to overlook their non-virginity, and their only options are to become a nun or become a courtesan. If a married woman is caught in adultery or becomes pregnant with a child that her husband will not acknowledge, she usually is divorced, loses any children she has and any property, status or money she has. Her treatment is the same as with non-virgins.

That night in Tenykštis, Donal was so despondent.

“I am so sorry, Love. It is all my fault we are in this bind. I should have been careful and made sure you were protected.”

“No, Sweeting, it is my fault. I am the one who begged you to make love to me. I am the one to blame. I never expected to survive the meeting with Jaizel. But the world is correct. I am a whore and I deserve to be treated as one. No matter the reasons, I betrayed my marriage. I deserve this punishment.”

“Oh, Patra, no! Jaizel betrayed your marriage. You don’t deserve any such thing.”

“Maybe in your eyes, but not in the eyes of the world. Haven’t you noticed that whenever people see us and aren’t aware of our status, they assume we are married and treat us accordingly? But whenever you reveal our situation, as you have done so with many priests, they always react negatively? They know we have broken the morality code and that is why they refuse us.”

“I don’t understand why there are differences in the rules between classes. If you were Artisan class as I am, we would have been married a long time ago. But because you are Nobility, we cannot marry. I just don’t understand it. I want to marry you and make you my wife. I want our babies to be born legitimately and carry my name. I don’t want them to have the stigma of bastardy placed on them.”

“You have to face reality, Donal. That is going to happen whether you like it or not. You could legalize our relationship by your publicly taking me as your courtesan. That won’t keep our children from being bastards. But it will allow you to officially recognize them as your children and then they will be allowed to bear your family name and inherit from you, if there are no other legal children to do so.”

“No! I don’t want that! I don’t want to bring shame on you nor have people treat you shamefully. You are the woman that I love. I will not stop trying until we are married.”

“Why would a priest risk scandal and censorship for someone he doesn’t know? We are total strangers to these men. We are nothing to them. We had some sort of relationship with the Abbot, and even he refused us.”

Donal went quiet for many minutes, as if trying to come to terms with this. He spoke at last, saying, “Let us not argue about this any more. I understand what you are saying. I may not like this, but I do understand. I will stop trying to influence strangers into helping us.”

We silently cuddled for a while. I must have fallen asleep before he did, because when I awoke he was already up. He looked very tired and I wondered if he had gotten any sleep at all.

We arrived at Valdžia, the capitol and main port of Tuščia Žemė, mid-afternoon. We found a little inn to the north of the city and not far from the beach. When Donal found out that I had never seen the ocean nor had been sailing, he was amazed. I had to point out to him that although Freedonia was a coastal kingdom, Kansari, its capitol, where I had lived all my life, was 100 miles interior and I had never been allowed to travel much and certainly not to the coast.

Leaving Orlando in charge, Donal took me took the beach. He found a secluded area where no one could observe us and he persuaded me to disrobe and wade into the surf. I was very self-conscious and hesitant. Although I was only five months gone, because I was carrying twins, I looked more like I was seven months along. I was afraid that he would find me disgustingly large.

“Patra, my love and my life, I have told you so many times before that you are the most beautiful woman in the world and seeing standing there naked, with my babies inside of you, makes you all the more beautiful.”

He quickly shed his clothes and introduced me to the fun of frolicking naked in the surf. It was with regret, a few hours later, that we donned our clothes once more and returned to the inn.

As we walked back, I mentioned how much the children would have enjoyed playing at the beach. “Another time, Love. I wanted us to have this time to ourselves. I know of several places in Alfaria where we can take the children and show them the fun of a day at the beach.”

I was very tired when we arrived back at the inn and, after dinner, I went to bed early.

It was very late that night that I awoke to the sounds of the earth groaning and the inn shaking violently. I screamed as the walls fell in on top of me.