11There is story among the kelpfolk that once, a very long time ago, an egg layer was seduced by a human female. Eggs were laid, but human females are also egg layers, so nothing came from it until a human male also lay with the female, fertilizing the eggs within. Only one remained and grew, and she gave birth to the first human carrier, a hybrid child of her male and kelpfolk lovers. The child grew up and gave birth to kelpfolk and more hybrids like itself, eventually taking the place of our own carriers.
Not everyone embraced the change. The kelpfolk who preferred the human carriers were driven out of the Endless Sea, forced to travel far to find the Green Ocean, our home. Here, we live in peace, isolated from our old cousins and are glad for it.
The terms "male" and "female" were not something I understood until I was older, and even now, the concept is a little alien to me. I still don't truly grasp the idea, but it is a moot point for me. I am not human. I am of the kelpfolk, and we have no "males" and "females", only egg layers, carriers, and those that are neither.
Most of us are infertile, incapable of laying eggs. Fertile children, like myself, are rare and isolated at birth for trading amongst the pods. Egg layers needed to be sent to unrelated pods; laying with a carrier too close to one's family line usually caused inferior offspring to be born. Trading children helped to prevent this, with pod elders keeping a careful record of the bloodlines.
I don't remember my birthing pod. I had been traded at a very young age to my current pod, one that was full of many older kelpfolk. They had not had any new children born to them in at least a generation and were desperate now that a new carrier had finally been born to them. They were eager to receive me, and I might have been a little bit spoiled as a result.
They were traditionalists though. Custom did not allow me to meet my intended mate and they stuck fast to that, no matter how much I pleaded. The rituals intended to prepare him to receive me were done without my participation and mostly without my knowledge. I was instead schooled on what was expected from me through my part of our future mating relationship.
I knew that it was unheard of for mates to meet each other until our first season, but I was young and curious. There is always a nervous anticipation before doing something for the first time, and as much as I was educated by the pod elders, waiting for the first mating season is doubly so. I knew the mechanics of mating but one cannot know a thing really until it had been done. I had never mated before, not that I had a chance; human carriers were rare, born to only select few human bloodlines in very few parts of the Green Ocean.
My intent on seeing my future mate was only to prepare myself for the inevitable, but in the end the elders had their way.
Finally, they told me that his first season had started. I was brought a specific point on the beach of our island, roughly bordered by rocks a far distance apart from each other. In the middle sat a human dwelling, and somewhere inside, my new mate resided.
I had been to this beach many times, always escorted by my elders, but never during of the hottest moon cycles, which we were in. I knew it well, so my nervousness was only from anticipation rather than from being in unfamiliar surroundings. I paced for a while, practicing shifting from my normal body to my human one, as I had been taught by the elders for so many years.
I didn't know what to expect. I didn't even know what my mate looked like. I had a rough idea; all the elders had similar colorings and I could assume that they were inherited from one of forbearers they shared with my new mate, but I had never seen him with my own eyes. I paced for a long time, trying to ignore the fact that my skin was getting itchier from being exposed to the open air. It felt better in my human form, so I stopped shifting for a moment and let the warmth of the sun wash over me, trying to calm down.
I heard a noise, almost like shouting nearby. I turned and then I saw someone coming towards me from further inland.
He was human, a male about my own age and build. There were splotches of color all over him, things I learned were coverings to protect their more delicate skin against the cold and the harsher elements of the land. His hair was so light it almost looked white, windswept and slightly curly, echoing the texture of my own. As he got closer, I realized his eyes were a strong blue, almost the color of the sky.
As he got closer, I also got a good waft of his scent. This was my mate.
I knew his smell. The elders, in preparing him for me, had also brought back examples of his scent and pheromones so that I could familiarize myself with them. I had grown up with them. I knew them so well.
He was angry at but I didn't know why. He came closer and stopped, staring. I couldn't tell if he truly recognized me or if there was something else about me that made him pause. When I came closer, he didn't move away. When I touched him, he didn't protest. Then I pressed my lips to his, just like the elders had taught me.
It was so clumsy. Neither of us had ever mated before. From the elders, I knew that humans did sometimes engage in kissing at young ages, exploring their mating habits, but this one obviously had not. I was his first and only. Selfish pride and the fact that he was soon kissing me back kept me going, kept me from shying away in embarrassment.
I was unprepared for the sensations that ran through me though. My body reacted to the full force of his smells and his pheromones, sending shivers of delight down my spine. In my lower torso, heat and pleasure spread, signals in my body to begin preparing an egg. We would not mate today, but soon, when the egg was fully mature and ready to be fertilized.
I was so overwhelmed in the new feelings in my body that I lost control of my appearance. I pulled him closer, deepening our kiss, needing more of him. The taste of his mouth- more hormones there, addictive, urging me body to further my preparations to mate. My body shifted back into my original form and the pleasure deepened, no longer hindered by my altered physiology. Now that I truly was myself again, the effect of his close proximity was even stronger, clouding my thoughts.
He gently pushed me away, his beautiful face flushed and happy for a moment, but in a flash he was yelling and struggling to get out of the water. As dazed as I was, all I could do was watch him go, confused by his reaction. My head cleared as he ran up the beach and I ducked out of sight, safe beneath the surface of the ocean.
My swim home was slow and hindered. My body warred between sad and painfully aroused. He had rejected me. Something about my appearance had frightened him away and now I was an utter mess. Hadn't that been what the preparations were for? What had they been for? I couldn't think.
The elders calmed my sadness when I got back, but they could do nothing to stop me from shaking. This type of rejection was common, they told me, but I was lost to them after that. Fluids and hormones passed between carriers and their egg laying mates helped to speed and stabilize the bodily preparations for true mating, but not enough time had passed between us to give either of us any benefits.
I spent the next few nights in a fevered state. I was not truly ill, but the egg forming in my egg sac caused my temperature to rise higher than normal. My body was rendered almost useless, taken hostage by the reproductive process, and there was nothing that the elders could do to directly help me. Instead, they left me alone to quietly wait until I reached the egg maturation stage and I returned to a more normal state of being.
The elders were not idle though. Instead they returned to what they only called "the Waters" and began a ritual similar to the one they had used to prepare my mate for our meeting. This time though, their goal more specific, to make my mate more receptive. I had never been to the Waters and didn't know what the ritual entailed, but I wasn't an elder. It wasn't my place to know.
I felt better once the egg maturation stage hit. My high body temperature dropped and my appetite came back. I was still not feeling normal but I knew that I wouldn't until I had laid and completed my side of the reproduction process. My only bitter consolation was that I knew that my mate would be feeling just as uncomfortable as myself, his own body preparing to receive the egg that I was cultivating for him.
Still, I couldn't be angry with him. Whatever the elders had done had obviously not been enough. He had come to me unaware of what was expected of him, and looking back on it after years of experience, might not have even known what I was. He had probably thought I was human like himself, only to find something strange and unfamiliar staring back at him when our bodies had parted. I couldn't fault him for that. Neither of us were full adults yet, needing the guidance of those older than us. I don't know that I would not have reacted the same way, if I had never even known what I had begun mating with.
He avoided the water and even the beach for almost three quarters of a moon cycle. It gave me time to fully mature the egg, but it was also excruciating near the end. This whole process should have taken less than a quarter of a cycle, and my body knew it, protesting the presence of the unlaid egg still in the maturing sac. My abdomen was beset by chronic waves of pain near the end, needing to lay, but without a carrier the egg would die and I did not want that to happen. I fought the instincts as long as I could. The pain was not bad, but feeling it over and over was wearing, furthering my depression at being rejected and causing me to be sluggish.
Finally, my mate appeared outside his human dwelling, staring out over the sea. He could not see me hidden as I was just on the surface of the waves, but I watched him for long time. I didn't dare approach him; the look on his face was fierce and dark, almost angry, and I knew that his body was feeling just as out of control as mine did.
In the end, he made his way into the sea on his own, peeling off what I mistakenly thought was colored patches of his skin, revealing his true human body underneath. I let myself be seen as he got closer, trying to let him know that I regretted how our first meeting went. His face softened as he spied me, letting go of some of his anger and replacing it with pure want. He reached out and I went to him, intent on letting him take as much time as he needed.
He adjusted more quickly than I thought he would. Maybe the elders had prepared him properly. Our first kiss was heated, fevered, making up for lost time. He pulled away and looked me over, exploring me with his true blue eyes. I tried to stay still under his gaze, trying to avoid scaring him way again, but the fog of mating was fully over me by then, clouding my brain. The pheromones in his scent and the hormones in his saliva and sweat were doing their work on me, soothing the pre-laying contractions in my belly by changing the pain into pure pleasure.
It made me want to touch him, taste him. And after trying my patience for so long, he finally reciprocated, exploring my body now with his hands and his mouth. I felt fevered again, but this fever was different and not unpleasant. His fingers found the opening to my sheath, and my belly stirred. I needed to lay. Now that he was here, there was nothing to stop me from doing so.
We ended up on the sand, halfway in the surf. I could feel myself growing now, my egg laying appendage swelling and slowly parting the entrance of my sheath. I ran my hands and tongue over his skin, knowing that the hormones in my own saliva were working their way through his body, arousing him even further. One of my hands found the opening to his womb, in the same place on his body as my sheath was on mine, and delved in, testing him. He desperately arched into my touch and I knew he was ready.
The tip of my appendage finally cleared my skin, growing slowly into the open air, and I pressed it now to the entrance of his womb, feeling him part and accept me. I watched as I grew slowly into him, penetrating deeper until I was fully erect and sheathed in his body. He contracted around me, growing tighter and hotter periodically, giving me quick spasms of pleasure.
The egg inside me began to make its way out, sliding up the canal that led through my appendage. I stretched as it traveled, pain mixing with the pleasure of mating in an intoxicating way, urging me to keep going. For a moment, the egg lay almost stuck in the tip of me, unable to breach the end, but the human beneath me narrowed his passage again, causing me to finally let go of the egg. I almost collapsed at the release of it, satisfaction and climax overwhelming me. I could feel myself injecting liquids into him, mostly lubricant leftover from the egg's journey, but also pre-amniotic fluids to help with fertilization.
We both took a moment to marvel at what I had done, feeling the egg nestled safely inside of him, but then I turned my attention back to his lower body. He needed to be stimulated more than I, to produce sperm for the egg. It took a lot to break through the harder shell and get to the yolk, and that meant he needed to orgasm, to fill his womb up with seminal fluids. I spent the rest of the night making sure that we would produce a viable child, making him come as often as I could. I might have gone a bit overboard but by the morning, his womb was swollen overall, the egg no longer distinctly visible but cushioned by reproductive fluids.
He left me as the sun came up, stumbling towards the dwelling and I sank back into the water, exhausted. I slept well that night, sure that despite our troubled beginning we had more than made up for it by the end.
I ended up being right. Over the next moon cycle, I watched my mate grow big and heavy, our mating successful. Inside of him, the egg had hatched and was now reforming, becoming what would soon be our first born. The bigger he got, the happier I felt, proud that I had been successful in my reproductive duties.
During that first pregnancy, I didn't visit my mate, too shy to share the experience with him. He seemed to know that I was watching him however, looking out over the ocean often as if he were waiting for me to appear. There was always a smile on his face and he stroked the evidence of our successful mating tenderly, obviously enjoying the fact that he was pregnant.
I did watch him though, as often as I could. I knew he wasn't alone, but it was our first child and I was fretful even if I was shy. I saw his human parents about every once and awhile, not often, but enough to make me secure in the fact that he would be cared for while I was not around. Once, I even saw his mother touch my mate's belly affectionately as he slept outside beneath the shade of their dwelling. He stirred and I almost chased her away, annoyed that she was going to interrupt his sleep, but she only covered him back up and went inside, disappearing from view.
When he gave birth, I couldn't stay away, approaching him cautiously. He lifted his face to mine, silently asking for a kiss, and then turned back to his laboring body, concentrating on the birth. There was nothing I could do to help except make sure that his womb was open wide enough. The elders had warned me that a fast labor before his body was ready would injure him and might even injure the baby too, so I gently helped him stretch wider and guided the baby out.
Finally, our first born broke free and swam off swiftly, making his way to the open sea. I caught up with him quickly, but it took me a few minutes to actually lay my hands on him; our newborns must be able to avoid predators right after birth, in case the carrier gives birth alone.
Our son was a playful sort, turning the chase into a game once he realized that I was not going to eat him. I was less than amused, but I couldn't help but give him a small smile once he was in my arms. My mate had grown us a strong, capable child. It was a good omen about our future children.
I brought him to the pod and the elders looked him over, obviously as pleased as I was. He was not fertile, but that was hardly surprising; carriers usually gave birth to only one or two fertile kelpfolk in their lifetimes. The rest would be like our first, destined to become an elder, keeping track of the bloodlines.
His skin, hair, and tail were like mine, dark like rock, but his eyes were more blue, like my Sky's eyes. The frills on his tail were already surprisingly long, waving gently in the water. He had more on his arms and back, waiting to grow and catch up. They were the reason we called ourselves "kelpfolk"; the frills help us blend in with the kelp forests, a defense against predators and curious humans. They were the biggest indicator that he was not fertile because egg layers like me don't have any fringe and look more human, probably to appeal more readily to our mates.
He was the second most beautiful creature I had ever seen.
I was so caught up with settling him into our pod that I forgot about my mate until it was too late. By then, Sky had left, no longer anywhere near our stretch of beach. The elders assured me that he would be back once the hot moons returned and I could only hope that they were right. Humans are not like the kelpfolk, with complicated lives and needs, so I didn't want to assume anything.
Unlike humans, the job of raising my son didn't actually fall solely on my shoulders. We mature as slowly as our carrier mates and the amount of younger children swarming around can be overwhelming for one parent. Instead, the entire pod is expected to participate. Some children gravitate towards specific adults, but in general, they are raised as a group, with the adults taking turns watching them as needed.
My firstborn was the delight of all the elders, almost as spoilt as I was. I was never jealous when he gravitated away from me; soon I would have more children, and their purpose was not to fulfill my life, but strengthen the numbers of the pod. As long as he was with an adult, I felt no need to hover over him. In the end, he was not my child but the pod's.
Time passed and as I was sifting through rocks one day, I smelled Sky's scent drifting through the ocean current. In a flash, I had dropped what I was doing and was making my way to our beach, eager to see him. I found him on a sandbar, deep in thought, his blue eyes watching the horizon. I couldn't help but stare at him for a few minutes before approaching; I had forgotten how striking he was. He had grown since I had last seen him, growing broader and taller, but his almost white hair still curled like clouds on his head and his eyes were just as blue as I remembered. No green. Just like the sky above the water.
That was why I called him Sky. That was what he reminded me of.
I swam up to him and gently pressed my lips to his cheek. He jerked away quickly and I gave him space, but then he looked relieved. I had only startled him, it seemed, and he gestured me closer, embracing me almost immediately. Our first kiss was easy and familiar, with no fear, no awkwardness like our last mating. He sighed into my mouth and I knew that he must have doubted I would come back to him as much as I had doubted he would come back to me. I regretted not saying goodbye to him last time, but we were together now.
The taste of him sent tingles up my tongue and down my throat. His body was in season and kissing him triggered my own to prepare to mate with him. This time though, we spent the day together, playing like children in between more kissing. That was the extent of our pre-mating ritual for a few days but it was enough. My body produced and matured an egg far more quickly and easily than last time, and our mating went smoother too. He was more eager, knowing what to expect, and I knew his body better, leaving him blissful and content rather than worn out. When we were done, he ran his hands over his belly excitedly and I was grateful to have a mate so receptive to being pregnant.
Our third mating the year after was not as smooth as our second. It started out normally, heated and feverish, eager on both of our sides. We were growing better at making it last and I discovered that filling him with seminal fluids didn't have to be restricted to after I had lain. Seeing him already swollen as I sank into him aroused me almost as much as touching him did and would usually make my laying easier.
That third season the problem lay in my own body. The egg I had produced was abnormally large, certainly larger than my first two, and I found myself having trouble passing it onto him. I was stretched so wide that I actually could not fit inside of him, the girth of the egg pushing me back out of his body. I had to stop, staring down between us and trying to figure out what to do.
I felt Sky relaxing his muscles beneath me, struggling to open wider, and his legs unwrapped from around my waist, giving me more room to maneuver. His mouth found mine, and I gently spread his entrance even wider with my fingers, accepting his kisses. The slow movements of his mouth urged me to slacken the pace of our mating and it started to work. I began sinking back into him gradually, his body allowed to accommodate the egg at its own pace instead of mine, and soon the mouth of his womb was locked around the base of me, keeping the egg from slipping me back out. His whole lower belly was bulging out awkwardly, stretched tight around the egg, my appendage, and whatever amount of semen was already in him, but he didn't complain, only flexed, silently urging me to try laying again.
It was our longest mating for sure but it quickly proved to be worth it. My mate's belly doubled in size within a few days, looking fuller far earlier than I remembered him growing before. He would come visit me in the water and I would run my hands all over him, slightly concerned with his size and wondering just how big he was going to get. Halfway through, when his belly became too full to hide the movements of the offspring within, he placed my hands in different spots on the swollen expanse, looking at me with amused eyes. He felt lumpy because of the position of the baby, but the lumps I felt were strange themselves. I was getting better at telling the difference between our unborn children's movements (I'd practiced with the last pregnancy too) but this confused me. It felt like the baby had two heads.
Finally, Sky laughed and held up two fingers. He pointed to one lump and then the other right before his belly contorted and shifted from within, settling back into a more spherical shape. All of a sudden, I understood what he meant. It had felt like the baby had two heads because there were two heads; two babies. The egg I had so much trouble laying must have been so big because it had contained two yolks. Sky was pregnant with twins!
Twins were rare enough but once Sky gave birth, I realized that I was extremely lucky to have him as a mate. Our twins were both very pale, like him, identical in every way, right down to the fact that they were both fertile. To have produced a fertile child while so young was almost unheard of already; producing two at once…
Our entire pod was ecstatic. We had two healthy egg layers for trading. All we needed now was to make sure that Sky produced a carrier as well. That wouldn't be for a long time; our bodies were not mature enough, and the special season which produced humanlike offspring only came once in a carrier's lifetime, many years away. Until then, we would make and take all the kelpfolk babies we could.
The amount of affection I had for my mate grew the more time we spent together, surprising me. I felt genuinely sad when he left for the cold moons, wishing he would stay. We couldn't mate during them, but I found myself enjoying his company, even if we never conversed. He couldn't produce the kelpfolk language with his human throat and his own language was too chittery and fast for me to learn. Simply being together, though, was still satisfying.
I didn't realize how much I had grown to care about him until the fourth pregnancy. It was our fifth child and we were both so happy when it started.
Then one day, Sky came to me, obviously upset. He was crying and trying not to, constantly wiping the tears from his face. I didn't understand and I couldn't calm him down, not matter how many times we kissed or I held him to me. Eventually he pushed me away and went back to the dwelling, leaving me alone and confused.
He didn't come back.
It took me days to realize that he was gone completely. I had thought that he was avoiding me at first, but the dwelling was dark and still. He had left at some point with his human parents and hadn't returned.
I panicked, frustrated and confused. Why was he gone? Where had he gone? Was he coming back? What about our child? He had been pregnant the last time I saw him! Did he understand that he needed the ocean for a successful pregnancy? For birth?
My frustration turned into anger quickly, my confusion turning into a disorienting mix of self doubt and doubt in him. Had I somehow chased him away? What had I done? Had I done anything or was he just too human? Too… fickle.
I was inconsolable for most of the moon cycle, isolating myself from the pod. The elders were not only concerned with my behavior but also with my mate's, not understanding why he had left any more than I did. One or two of them pointed out that human lives were complicated and there could be any number of reasons, but no one knew anything for sure.
I spent most of the time on our beach. I hardly ate or slept, sitting there, waiting for him. I only left when one of the elders came to fetch me, to force me to eat. When I stopped responding to them, they sent my older children to find me, knowing that I would not refuse them. They were right but I always came back when I was done, to keep on waiting.
My mood stayed black and depressed. I didn't know how I would react if and when I saw Sky again. I didn't know if I was angry with him or just worried. And I wasn't sure if it was him I was worried about or the child he had taken with him.
I was swimming back from the pod when I smelled it. My oldest child followed me at a distance, fussing over me. It should have been heartwarming; he was so young but already showing the signs of a great leader. I should have been more proud of him than I was feeling but all I could think about was escaping so that I could get back to the beach.
Halfway there, the smell of blood wafted over me, stopping my journey. My son also stopped, swimming close and clinging to me in fear. Blood in the water meant predators were nearby and he knew that instinctually, becoming afraid.
But this blood, it was mixed with a smell I knew well. Frantically, I swam toward it, seeking out the source. My son and I found the baby not far from the shore, hiding among rocks on the sea floor. He was so small and pale, with no frills to hide him from the creatures that would see him as prey. The blood smell was all over him, tainting the water.
I gathered him up easily- he was too tired to run from me- and the three of us made our way back to the pod. The elders were concerned as they looked him over; although he had no frills, he was infertile, meaning that he had been born early, before the frills were able to grow long on his body. He was not injured, so the blood had to have come from the carrier who birthed him.
I left again almost immediately, thinking only about Sky. The smell I had recognized was the amniotic fluids that he gave off every time he gave birth, unique to him, so this was not the child of a random carrier from far away. But Sky had never bled during birth before, not enough to follow our child that deep in the water. The birth had not gone well.
I found the beach empty when I got there, but I could still smell the blood in the air. Shifting to my human form, I walked onto the sand and found small drops of red leading to the dwelling. I waited for a few moments, looking for any signs of movement inside, but there was nothing.
I went back to the elders.
Although my newest son was small and weak, he was still relatively healthy. The elder in charge of him promised me that his frills would grow in a few weeks once they got him on a routine and normal diet. In the long run, he would grow up normal and healthy, even if he was not as big as his siblings. Another elder pulled me away and bought me to the Waters.
It was deep in a cave, deeper than I have even explored before. The Waters was a bubble of thicker water nestled in a basin of slimy sand-like mud where salt refused to sink. It was a powerful place, a place of magic. I was not supposed to be here.
The elder reached into the Waters, dipping a conch shell into the mud. I suddenly recognized it as he brought it back out; this was the Clay, a substance we used for all manner of mystical things. I knew it well because it had been used to prepare me for Sky, mixed in with his scent and pheromones. They had used it on him, mixing it with mine.
I also knew it could be used for healing.
The elder gave me the shell and told me to bring it to my mate. A birth with so much blood meant that the entrance to his womb was injured, if not the womb itself, and we could not trust humans to know how to heal him. I needed to apply it to him, maybe even inside of him, to ensure that he wouldn't die or be rendered incapable of carrying offspring.
I brought it back to our beach, trying to be brave. I didn't know what I would see when I found Sky. I only knew that I didn't want him to die. Even if we never had children again, I wanted him to live. I needed him to live.
It was dark by the time I got back. Night. He was nowhere in sight, but if he was hurt, then he was probably in the dwelling. I shifted and made my way back up the beach, looking for the way inside. There was an entrance here, but sea glass barred my way, clearer than most of the sea glass I was used to, and preventing me from going inside. I stayed in front of it; this was where I saw Sky the most, usually watching the sea or looking for me. I had seen him so many times on the other side of the glass, rubbing his belly or lost in thought. This was where he would come.
I slapped my hand on the glass but it made a dull thud. Instead, I began scratching at it, knowing that the harsh sound would echo further in. After a few moments, I would stop and press my ear to the glass, listening intently. Then I went back to scratching.
The sun came up. My skin went from itchy to tight, drying out more than I had ever allowed before. I needed the water soon, but I kept scratching. The conch shell lay by my feet full of the Clay, waiting to be used.
Finally I heard something. Someone was inside, moving about. I scratched louder and my mate appeared, swaying towards me. His face was pale and wet and his eyes were clouded. I wasn't even sure if he actually recognized me.
He removed the glass and then fell forward.
I managed to catch him, but only just; I'm not very good on my human legs, so anything that tests my balance usually makes me fall. I dragged him clumsily to the water, ducking in briefly to wet my skin. When I turned back, I gently removed his coverings and winced at the sight of him, his entire torso bloody and angry. There was bruising everywhere. The elder had been right; he had torn during the birth.
I left him only to grab the conch shell, then came back and carefully tried to do as the elder had instructed. I wiped the blood from his body using the cloth, going as gently as I could. Then I dipped my hands in the Clay and began to put it on every inch of his abdomen, spreading it in generous amounts. Not wanting to take any chances, I patted some into his entrance, not fully into his womb but just inside. If he was injured in there, then just the little bit would be enough. The rest was being absorbed through his skin.
He woke up at some point, trying to watch me work. I brushed his hair out of his eyes, kissing his forehead and then his neck, silently glad that he was alive. I saw his breathing grow labored and then he began to weep, his body wracked with uncontrollable sobs.
I didn't know what to do for a moment. He lay before me, sick and hurting, upset, as inconsolable as I had been for the past moon cycle. Finally, I carefully gathered him to me, offering him my shoulder to cry on. He stopped almost immediately, growing limp. For a moment, my panicked mind thought that he had died, but he sighed a few seconds later, pressing closer, his nose buried in the spot where my neck met my shoulder. Another moment and he was asleep.
If there was still a part of me that thought that he had left me on purpose, there was none now. No, it had not been Sky's choice to leave. He would have stayed if he could have, spared himself the pain of us being apart. I don't know how he had endured it and I realized that we had been lucky that the baby had come out as healthy as it did.
Sky slept for a long time, mostly peaceful. Once and awhile, he would jerk or wince only to go slack and still once more. I wrapped myself around him as much as I could, shielding him from everyone and everything but me. For the first time, I felt a fierce protectiveness directed towards him, jealous of the thought of him receiving any attention from someone other than me.
That was when I knew that my affection for him ran deeper than it did for anything else, even our children. If I never saw them again, I would survive. If Sky disappeared, I think I something inside me would break forever.
Eventually he woke and moved back towards the dwelling, disappearing inside. I didn't realize that I was holding my breath until he reappeared again, this time with a new cloth. He settled himself in the shade, on one of the human metal contraptions he often sat on, and fell asleep again, his eyes never leaving mine until they were closed.
He stayed for a quarter of a moon cycle, usually sleeping where I could easily see him during the day. At night, he slept inside and that was the only time I left him or slept myself. The elders gave me more Clay and I gave it to Sky as often as I could, thankfully watching his belly improve. By the end, he still looked pale, unwell, but better than he had before. Infinitely better.
When he came to me on the day he left and I realized that he was leaving again, I tried so hard to tell him that I didn't want him to go. He let me kiss him, gently wiping my own tears away, and held me close, breathing in my scent. I knew he didn't want to leave any more than I wanted him to, but his face was resigned as much as it was sad. After one more long lingering kiss, he left me and the beach. Whatever had torn him away from me before was keeping him away from me still. I was helpless to stop it.
It didn't matter that he always left me at the end of our mating season. This time was different.
But my Sky is always full of surprises. He came back to our beach during one of the early cold moons, happily embracing me in the water. And every day I visited, he was there waiting, eager to spend time with me. Even during our off-mating season being close felt natural and satisfying, and we often spent the evenings in each other's arms. As it got colder, Sky would pull me into a pool of heated water that sat near the dwelling, allowing us to enjoy each other's company even when it was too cold for him in the ocean. It was too small for me in my normal form, but in my human form, we could spend hours there together, alone and content.
The weather inevitably got warmer and our affectionate kissing echoed it, becoming more heated and less innocent. One moon would find us sleeping quietly together, only to be mindlessly groping each other the next. I learned more about my human form from Sky than I ever had from the elders, feeling what it was like for him to climax even if we did not penetrate each other.
The urges got even stronger over time and he would meet me in the ocean, too impatient to allow me to make my way to the dwelling. I stopped shifting to human form and our sexual play became even more urgent. My body wanted him so badly that I would feel myself unsheathing even without an egg to lay, hardening between us. We became so desperate once that he took my appendage in his mouth, just like I often did to him, his mouth spread wide, sucking desperately. When I orgasmed, all it that came from me was wasted lubricant, but he didn't seem to care, moaning around me if that was all he had wanted.
Moons later, I was feeding on his mouth when I realized he tasted different. I deepened our kisses greedily, pressing our bodies together. He must have sensed something too, pushing me onto my back and rubbing as much of himself on me as he could. His mouth left mine, his tongue licking down my body, his hands frantically touching me as if he were trying to knead his sweat and saliva into my skin.
I sat up, catching his mouth again with mine, moaning as he straddled me eagerly. I reached between us and gently touched the mouth of his womb, moaning again as he opened. He was in season and my body was responding as it always did, preparing to lay.
It was too soon, sooner than we had ever mated and too soon after the last pregnancy. My mate's body seemed healed on the outside but I had no idea if his womb was ready to accept another child, no matter what his season and hormones suggested. But in the end, nature and Sky had their way a few moons later, pushing me down onto the sand and accepting my egg as if nothing had happened. My mate made a heady, contented noise as he lowered himself down onto me, groaning as my body betrayed my better judgement and started to lay the egg in him.
He was so eager and happy that when he left again, I was devastated. I came to our beach to find myself alone, the dwelling empty just as it had been during our last mating season. He was gone only a quarter of a moon cycle, but it was long enough that I couldn't hide my anger from him when he got back. It wasn't just that it seemed he hadn't learned his lesson; he hadn't come to me to tell me that he was going away!
My anger dissipated quickly though. My mate was not himself during this pregnancy, sad and worn instead. I was sure it had little to do with me—he came to me every night and leaned on me for comfort, letting me take on some of his hidden burden. Our baby grew strong and healthy in his belly; only my mate seemed to suffer this time. I wanted to do more, but he would only smile a sad smile when he noticed that I looked worried, planting an apologetic kiss somewhere on my face as if to say that all I could give him was what I was already giving him.
The birth was normal and successful, letting our sixth child into the world. Later in the hot moons, we went into season again and had a seventh. My mate slowly became the happy carrier I loved so much, and we began a long and blissful life together.
Our pod swelled with my children, becoming overrun with little kelpfolk. The elders loved it as much as I did, chasing after them and teaching them the skills they would need later in life. My eldest son grew easily into his role as the leader of the children, already caring so much about his siblings and our elders. The twins were sent away rather quickly, as I knew they would be, to far away places so that they could help other pods of our people grow.
Life was good and happy for a while, until the day the oldest elder died. He was very, very old, from a generation previous to all of the other elders, the last of the children of his carrier. When he passed on, everyone was sad, knowing that his wisdom would be missed. We wrapped his body in heavy rocks and seaweed, taking him out to where the ocean floor fell into the deepest, blackest depths, and sent him to where he could rest.
As I contemplated my sadness and the idea of never seeing him again, I couldn't help but think of my mate. My grief reminded me of Sky during that long ago fifth pregnancy and I wondered again what had made him so sad.
I thought about it further during our time together that night and I slowly realized that it had been a long time since I had seen either of my mate's parents. I knew that humans did leave their parents as they got older, but my mate's mother used to visit him, or at least I thought that was what I remembered. She had stopped at some point, but it had been so long ago that I couldn't remember if it was around the same time.
The thought made me even more sad. I knew what grief felt like now. If I was right and he had lost his parents, then I knew exactly how he felt.
He sensed something wrong with me, embracing me as I had him so many years ago, giving me the comfort I needed. I took it and snuggled close, letting his presence heal me. It didn't matter that he didn't really know what was wrong; somewhere deep down he understood, and that was more comforting than anything else.
Time passed and we grew older. His scent began changing and I knew that this was the time. The one season in my mate's life that he could carry human children. It didn't matter if the resulting baby was male or female—a male would be a carrier like himself and a female could give birth to a carrier in the next generation, just like Sky's mother had. Either way, it was essential to the survival of our pod and this was the only chance my mate and I would have, so I wasted no time.
We were blessed again with twins, this time my body deciding to split them into their own separate eggs. We were both thrilled at first, knowing that we were adding two more to our growing list of children.
However, I could tell that Sky had no clue what was going on. Human pregnancies were a lot more time consuming, taking many more moon cycles than our kelpfolk children, so when he stayed thin for so long, I could tell he was worried. Sky had surprised me so many times during our life together that for once, I enjoyed the idea of surprising him for a change.
I didn't know that he had given birth until it was already over. He brought our second set of twins into the world inside the dwelling instead of on the beach and when I them for the first time, I realized why. They were smaller and more frail than any child I had ever seen, completely helpless, with eyes that were barely open. Sky had them bundled up tightly, shielding them from the air as if they would catch a chill.
One of them was male and the other was female. My pod's legacy was doubly secure.
Our human twins changed our lives drastically but not necessarily for the worse. Seeing them grow up was a profound joy, but my mate became more conservative, our days of being completely alone together officially over. It made the time we did get to spend together alone more precious however. I have no regrets.
One day, I came to our beach to find my mate waiting there with our son. I almost didn't appear; tradition dictated that egg layers not show themselves to our human children. But over the years, Sky had gotten very good at knowing when and where I was hiding in the water and he sent me a look that I knew meant I would be in trouble if I refused.
So I rose out of the water in front of the boy, wary. He stared at me apprehensively until Sky knelt down and began whispering in his ear.
I knew then what he was trying to do. By introducing me to our son, he was trying to prevent the rejection that had happened during our first mating. It was clear to me now that my mate had known nothing about the kelpfolk when we had met and he was not going to allow that to happen to our son. After that, I was less strict about letting our children see me. I didn't come very often but they grew used to my presence anyway, even asking me to play with them.
There was something about my little daughter that stole my heart. She was completely alien to me, the most unique of my children, but also the sweetest, accepting me more easily than her twin had. I spent hours watching her dig in the sand on the beach, utterly smitten.
But eventually, my human son became a priority. I decided to help my mate with his plan, and once a new egg layer was sent to our pod, intended for the carrier of our next generation, I brought him with me to the beach. Seeing them play together was satisfying.
It would work. It was against tradition, but tradition had not worked well for Sky and me.
Our daughter ignored her brother and his new playmate, swimming like she had a tail of her own to cuddle with me in the water. I folded her in my arms and planted a kiss on her forehead, my heart melting. Sky joined us in the water, wrapping an arm over our daughter's body and around my own shoulder, mockingly jealous of the attention. He sent me a smile over her head and I smiled back.
Life is good.