Part 3
The next few months were a series of long, comfortable days, filled with pleasant work done at a comfortable pace. But when they looked back on this period of their lives, it seemed that the time had gone by so quickly that it was most surprising.
Mark and Talia spent their time fishing, gathering, hunting, making warm clothes for the coming winter, and maintaining their household, gardens, and livestock. They spent time with Hilsith and Yzell, who gave Talia periodic examinations, and under whom they studied their role as parents, as well as doing what they could toward helping to solve what became known as ‘the fertility problem’. There were eleven mixed human and elven couples in the settlement, many of whom had been together for some years, and of them, only Mark and Talia had been able to achieve a pregnancy. The elven Healer and Midwife spent the majority of their time working on this problem.
Within two months, Yzell was able to determine the gender of Talia’s unborn twins with certainty. The smaller twin was female, and seemed to be developing at the normal elven pace. The larger was male, and seemed to be developing as quickly as human fetuses generally did. This caused Talia some concern as she feared a difficult birthing, but Hilsith and Yzell assured her that all would be well.
The three households who were their closest neighbors were also their most frequent visitors; those being Dalia, Bezedil, and Alilia; Yazadril, Nemia, and Hilsith; and Mark’s cousin Dren and his wife Mandri, whose wedding they had attended in Belinhome Finitra some four weeks before the plan for Hiliani was decided. Mark had grown close to many of his extended family, but More so with Dren and Mandri since they were almost the same age as Mark and Talia, and shared most of the same interests.
They shared in the community activities of military training, magical research, and building hidden emplacements on the tops of many of the mountains on the islands. The natural caves in the islands were prepared as bunkers to be used as shelters in case of attack. They were stocked with supplies, and their entrances were fortified and hidden. The majority of their training was combat exercises against simulated demons, that were cast and directed by Quewanak and Ria; the spirit of Talia’s sword, who was a copy of the personality of Visinniria in her youth, recorded long before she became a goddess.
Quewanak and Ria became the most unlikely of close friends. Quewanak, no longer the eldest mortal since he was now secretly the new Draconian God of Dreaming, was the only friend that the spirit of the sword chose for her own sake, as her affection for Talia and Mark was duty-bound and spelled. Of course it helped that Quewanak was the only being in the settlement besides Talia whose touch was able to invoke Ria from the sword. Having two people who could do so afforded Ria many more hours of consciousness than she would normally have enjoyed, since Talia could not hold her sword for every hour of the day, and Quewanak did not need to sleep.
Sometimes Mark commanded their little militia, sometimes Yazadril did, or Alilia, but they all learned from every experience, and their skills increased rapidly.
a day in their third month on Hiliani when Mark and Talia were visited late in the evening by Hilsith, Yzell, and
as she waved them in with
we’re not interrupting?” Yzell asked as they were seated in the living
and transcribed by Quewanak.” Mark explained, showing them the twenty-seventh volume of the one hundred and thirty
I know it’s late, so I’ll explain why we’ve come.” Yzell said as she accepted a cup of
desires something very much, yet she does not wish to desire it. She confided in Hilsith as her Healer, who counseled her, and recommended that they ask me about aspects of her problem,
Alilia loves you very much, in addition to the many other emotions she feels about you. And Mark, Alilia is desperately in love with you, along with all else she feels for you. Furthermore, since the time when she thought her son Bezedil was lost to her, she has strongly desired to have another child. Yet she has low fertility, and Bezedil is the only child
the possibility that her first pregnancy was a fluke. You are incredibly fertile, either with Talia alone, or with any female elf, or possibly with any female humanoid, including giants, dwarves, gnomes, and sylvan. As a researching midwife engaged in the study of inter-racial fertility and elven fertility in general, I am of course very interested in the possibility that I might be able to isolate the property of your sperm that allows an elven female to become pregnant so
researcher, and I’m asking this on Alilia’s behalf
you, Mark. They asked me if she could become pregnant by you, and I think she
was a long
staring down at her cup of tea with disciplined calm,