Beauties and Beasts

Chapter 86: brought to you by blurd

Ugh, I didn't check my bank account and ended up not having the money to pay a bill. Ugh, I spent too much on stupid stuff like curry take out. Ugh, since I'm getting a book published soon through a webnovel publisher I have to get my website up and running again, which means good-bye anti-social days. Got to have an internet presence now. Ugh, this acne on my face won't go away, I thought being an adult meant acne went away. UGGGGHHH!!!!This whiney author's note was brought to you by ear zits, the most painful zits of them all.

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Shay, who had forced her heavy body to Neara's side for the delivery, fought to keep her eyes open even as she scrambled for the right words to say to her friend.

She had to say something soon, though, as Aetius, who held the basket of squirming, naked pink babies, all the size of full-grown guinea pigs, looked shattered.

"It happens all the time... it'll be ok." Neara's eyes looked dead as she stared at the two still babies on her breasts, fingers lightly grazing their furless bodies.

"They fluff up," he said. "In just a few days. In ten they'll open their eyes. It's just at first."

"Neara... they need to eat. The ones who made it need your strength." Neara continued to look at her babies with a glazed look. Shay, a flash of irritation helping her, slapped Neara's hand, careful not to jostle the babies that gave her a sting of deep regret.

It was harsh, especially to a girl who had just given birth, but Shay didn't have the energy to plug up her blunt nature.

"Do you want the others to die?" she asked.

"Of course not!" her face crumpled, tears glistening in her eyes. "Of course not. I...I...I'm sorry, I just... can't let them go yet--"

"Then just rest them there," Shay sighed again. The exhaustion made her very joints hurt. "It's not like the bunnies are that big anyway, so you can rest them by your cheek and let the others nurse. It's not like they almost killed you like the sheep twins."

Aetius's ears twitched.

"Now, I'm going to clean you up--"

"I can do that," he cut in, carefully tucking the basket of babies next to Neara, who was carefully rearranging her dead children. "You're falling asleep. You need rest too."

Shay could have kissed him for that. But she was too tired for that too, so she just sort of nodded/rolled her head onto her shoulder.

"Yeah. Yeah, okay."

She struggled to get up but ended up having to be supported by Aetius anyways when black fuzzed her vision again. As usual, her hips and groin started up a fiery chorus of pain beneath the weight of her enormous belly. She made yet another promise to never get pregnant again as she waddled to the door and stepped outside into Vincent's waiting arms, an anxious baby dragon on his shoulders.

"You did good," he said softly, and before she could answer he had swept her up in his arms, enormous pregnancy be damned. Asher swerved down from the bunny's shoulders to Shay's chest where it crooned and purred it's mirroring concern, nuzzling her jaw.

She was asleep before he'd even taken her home, lulled by the sounds of crickets and dragon purrs in the nighttime breeze.

Neara's successful delivery of her eight kits gave her hope that her labor would be soon at hand, especially given her sheer size. But the days dragged on. The contractions never grew more intense, only hanging around to torture her and seize her up whenever she tried to stand. The distance she was able to walk before her legs began to shake apart beneath her shrunk. Three days after Neara gave birth, she had to give into the embarrassment of Vincent helping her to the bathroom, which given the fact that her bladder was pancaked beneath her young, meant a humiliating frequency. She seriously began to question God's design, or evolutions, whatever made bladders right beneath uteruses.