Nov 5, 2020
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Pakistan
seen from United States
seen from India
seen from Peru
seen from New Zealand
seen from Poland
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Brazil
seen from Netherlands
seen from Jordan
seen from France
seen from Poland
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
Every professional historian and archaeologist that I have worked with and told my crack theory to about fertility statues actually being ancient forms of porn: No
Me, undeterred: Okay, but have you considered prehistoric masturbation?
Lore Ideas: Flight fertility statues dedicated to each deity
The Ice flight dragons have long since forgotten why they don’t make fertility statues dedicated to the Icewarden. Those that do know prefer to let the others continue not knowing.
Whispers float around about the Light flight’s fear of accidentally creating emperors. Fertility statues dedicated to the Lightweaver are notoriously absent from those made by the flights.
There are no such thing as Plague flight “fertility” statues. It’s not superstition, it’s just rather impractical given where they live and nest. The word “fertility” also has negative Nature connotations to some dragons.
Meanwhile, the Arcane flight finds it pointless to make fertility statues given the disaster-prone tendencies of their God. They use attempted enchantments, sometimes on the nesting area directly before use, which has mixed results.
Nature flight fertility statues are often seen as the most rich and beautiful, based on the fertility of soil and earth and greenery. Some are towering landscape sculptures, but most are bonsais of varying designs and species.
The Wind flight decorates statues with pretty trinkets and whatever strikes their flightful fancies. Statues run the gamut in overall design and shape, freeform as the flight’s spirits and the wind itself.
Earth flight fertility statues are constructed and carved out of massive geodes, of varying gemstone types. The most common gemstone colors are yellows and browns. The statues are then painted on the rocky outsides.
The dragons of the forges, the Fire flight, carefully craft theirs in elaborate metalwork. The more details and better the craftsmanship, the more "effective" they are. Mass produced ones are also considered less effective.
The Lightning flight’s are hastily assembled scrap metal and wire sculptures with poorly positioned lightning rods. The way to win the Stormcatcher’s favor is through other means.
The Shadow flight creates theirs from the old logs. Logs with plentiful glowing mushrooms are selected. Scattering “Shadowbinder’s Tears” minerals into the hollow is customary. Further decorations include varieties of mud-art on the log.
The fertility statues of the Water flight mysteriously dissolved recently, as things dedicated to the Tidelord are apt to do these days. They were generally constructed of sedimentary rock, shells, and coral.
fuck fuck fuckkckckk help me. i was reading a fic and this stupid app shut off on me!!!! pls help me. it was new i think. it included harry drunk at a bidding event with his friends. and he accidentally buys a some “fertility” tool. which is actually just a dildo. and he accidentally bonds to it and has to ask Draco who is his friend for help for some reason idk I didn’t get far and it shut off on me!!!! pls help it was so good!!!!
This isn’t usually the kind of thing I’m good at, but I’m next to positive you’re talking about @gracie137blogs fic Harry Potter and the Curse of the Malfoy Dildo. I can understand why you’d be mad to lose your place, because it’s hilarious.
If this isn’t the fic you’re thinking of, I’m going to add an excerpt to entice you anyway.
from Harry Potter and the Curse of the Malfoy Dildo
Harry sighed and dropped down onto his sofa, staring at the box in his hands. What had he fucking bought last night? He had memories of the words fertility statue but Harry had no idea what that entailed. Was it like a god or goddess? A Buddha statue? Grimmauld had loads of rooms he could just hide it in — or he could gift it to someone.
Perhaps he’d gift it to Ron and Hermione out of the kindness of his heart if they started having children — also as a fuck you to Ron for tricking Harry into buying it.
Harry cast another dubious look at the box before slowly unwrapping it and pulling out…
Harry’s mind went blank as he stared at the bottom of the box, because nestled there in the white tissue paper was… was a giant gold dildo. There was no way it was anything else. Fertility statue, Harry’s fucking arse, that was a dildo — that was a fucking dildo.
EDITED: It appears @goldentruth813 and I are in agreement about the fic.
A Promise Kept: Alternate End
You know it’s bad when you’ve got AUs of your AUs running around in your head. This one’s been stuck with me for a few days now, and it needs to leave. I have a graphic design senior exhibition to prepare for. >.>
Anyway, this is a kind of offshoot of my sex-on-a-fertility-statue/double impregnation fic, A Promise Kept, (which I recommend reading for this to make sense, but you can try reading it without the extra context if you like) in which Anders’ parents somehow come into the little town he and Fenris have settled in and suddenly find out that A) their mage son is alive and all grown up, B) is married to an elf, and C) is pregnant by and has also impregnated said elf.
I just… I like reunion/reconciliation tropes, ok? Lemme indulge. :P
In a little town without a name that was just outside of a few days’ journey to the city of Amaranthine, there was a midwife. Grizelda, as the townspeople knew her, was standing at her kitchen counter preparing some snacks for her visit to the town healer.
Their healer and his husband were a fine pair that never ceased to amuse the midwife, nor did their astoundingly fierce levels of mutual love and respect cease to cause the older woman to swoon in admiration.
The snacks she was preparing were small hand-held apple pies which she knew the couple loved, though the healer’s elf husband loved them even more.
She was just putting them into a basket and about to head off to their home when a knock came at her front door. Hmm. Must be an out-of-towner. It was, after all, an oddity for one of the locals to bother knocking at Grizelda’s door. Everyone knew that if you needed her help, or indeed–the healer’s, you just walked right on in as long it was light out.
“Coming!” She called, setting down the basket. Finally, she got to the door and opened it, and in front of her stood an older couple not quite yet as old as she, but obviously well into their adult years.
“So,” she began, planting her hands on her hips, “if you don’t mind an old thing like me saying so, I rather doubt you spring chickens are here for advice on conceiving babies. Whatcha here for?”
The woman nodded. She had soft, tawny colored hair with reddish hints and only some scant lightening at her temples along with a few scattered streaks of grey-white to suggest her age. Faded lines streaked her face and forehead from a lifetime born more from stress and worry than laughter.
“Our eldest daughter has been having some trouble conceiving for well over five years now, and our own midwife can’t seem to help her and her husband with the usual advice. We–we heard…”
“We heard that one of the old statues is here,” said the man. This one was tall, broad shouldered, with a strong jaw, sharp nose, and sun-kissed hair tied back in a long ponytail. His features reminded the midwife of someone, though she couldn’t quite place the memory.
“One of the…” he frowned, mumbling to his wife, “fruchtbarkeitsstatue?”
“Fertility statue,” said the woman, who looked back at Grizelda with pleading eyes. “Is this one genuine? I know the ones that are… can even enable two who are both or neither male or female to have children.”
So, they knew that such statues existed? Curious.
“Might I ask how you came to know about our… local oddity?” Grizelda asked them, folding her arms across her chest. The man’s lips briefly quirked up in a half smile before growing sad. “You, and it, came recommended by our local midwife. The one we used in our youth,” here the man gestured to himself and his wife, “is at a much greater distance away, and we are not as spry as we were then so that we might vouch for its authenticity personally.”
The man’s wife nodded to concur.
“Our daughter would never say as much, but I know that they would prefer knowing that this worked for someone else before they came to try it themselves. We do not live very close.”
Grizelda snorted, and unfolded her arms to replace one hand on her hips while letting the other hang loosely at her side.
“No one lives very close to here, dear girl, and most of the people here are glad for it. Our healer and his husband in particular seem to like to quiet and the seclusion, and they can actually vouch for the authenticity of the statue if you wish to hear their testimony.”
“Healer?” the husband asked curiously. “A rare treat for such a small town.”
Grizelda smiled. “He is a gem. A former Grey Warden, too. His commander actually paid us a visit not too long ago. A good woman, to not insist on dragging him back to the keep, with or without a babe on the way.” Grizelda chuckled and sighed contentedly before nodding.
“Let me fetch a few things first and then I’ll take you by for a visit. He and his husband are due for a check-in anyway.”
Grizelda went back inside and picked up the basket with the apple pies, tossing in another jar of that spiced jam she knew they had been asking her for lately. She went back out to the couple, though not before leaving Brother Jerrell, her recalcitrant housemate, a note telling him where she’d gone.
On the way to the healer’s home, however, something still niggled at the back of her mind, something about the man’s striking features and the woman’s pleasantly refreshing witty attitude and gentle demeanor.
But even as she grasped the door handle and entered the healer’s home, she still could not place the thing that troubled her.
“Anders! Are you and that gorgeous elf of yours busy? You’ve got visitors from out of town!” The counter and the surrounding kitchen area of the front room was empty, but Grizelda could hear some shuffling about from around the storage room door that was ajar just ahead and to the right of the hallway that lead towards the back of the house.
“Fenris is having a rest in the clinic,” a voice called out idly from around the slightly open door. “And I’m almost done rearranging some of the elfroot that started springing up in the garden. I mean, I know this stuff can even grow in a desert with practically nothing, but give it some proper care in a nice temperate climate and it grows like nobody’s business. I’ll be with you in a moment!”
“Anders?” The man asked, frowning. “Is that truly the man’s name?”
Grizelda shrugged. “He said it has been his name for a long time, and he finds that the name he was born with no longer fits who he is now. I have never bothered to ask about the particulars of how he acquired it, though.”
Their heads turned when the joints of the storage room door creaked open, and out stepped a tall young man, quite obviously pregnant, with reddish blonde hair pulled back in a horsetail and only a hint of stubble showing on his cheeks. His sharp eyes were a bright, honey colored brown that softened when he caught sight of Grizelda, but then they widened as Anders visibly stiffened with fear when he glanced behind her at the couple she had brought with her.
“No,” he mumbled, likely not intending for anyone to hear, “No, this isn’t real…”
Grizelda frowned, and then when the woman beside her let out a small, half sob, half gasp, the midwife turned around and caught sight of the man again. Suddenly, the connection that had been troubling her since she had opened her door to the older couple, made itself known to her at last.
Anders and the woman’s husband shared the exact same nose.
The woman took a step towards the healer but he recoiled, his whole body shaking in his panic even as his hands reached down to his belly, likely trying to soothe the child within.
“No!” he shouted. “No, I… I…”
He shot a pleading, apologetic glance towards the midwife, and he quickly whispered, “I’m sorry Grizelda, I can’t do this!” before turning around and retreating back into the storage room, locking it from inside.
The woman lurched forward and called out a name that was most definitely not Anders, but the only response she got was a gentle thud and scrape against the door, followed by soft, muffled sobbing and the words, “No, no, this is a dream, I’m dreaming, I must be, you will not tempt me!”
The last words were a mixture of a growl and a sob, and at last, the man beside the two women seemed to come to the same conclusion that they had, though his gasp was more subdued than his wife’s had been, and his expression became closed; nearly unreadable. Shortly afterwards, a white haired elf came shuffling grumpily out of the nearby clinic, also obviously pregnant, though perhaps even more so than the healer had been.
“Grizelda,” he grumbled, “kaffas, what is–”
He was cut off by the wife, who approached him but immediately paused when the elf retreated behind the counter after hearing the quiet sobs from behind the storage room door.
“Anders is upset,” the elf growled, glancing at Grizelda as he clutched his belly protectively. “Why is he upset?”
He glanced at the woman, who was still in shock and now in tears, before he looked up and locked eyes with her husband, asking in that same guarded tone, “And who are these people?”
Voices. Anders could hear Fenris’ muffled voice from behind the door.
This might still be a dream, Anders thought as he tried to excuse the images still fresh in his mind. A sympathetic and simultaneously chastising wave of feeling flooded him, and Anders could almost hear what Justice was trying to say: Lying to oneself is unjust. This is not the Fade, and therefore what you have seen is no dream.
Yet Anders was not willing to believe otherwise.
The visitors that Grizelda had brought… were his mother and father.
They were older, more tired, more worn than he remembered, but Anders had never been able to forget his mother’s tear streaked face as she was restrained by one templar and the cast-iron skillet in her hands was removed by another as the boy Anders had once been was carted away in chains.
She had only just managed to escape their grasp to give him her meditation pillow before she was dragged away again and he lost sight of her for what he had long since thought was forever…
But his father was here too.
He would also never forget his father’s face the day the barn burnt down and he was locked in his room until the templars came. Fury and fear. That was all he had been able to see in his father’s face on that day and the day the templars had come. That was why Anders had run; so that he wouldn’t see it now.
Because while Anders had been furious with his father for many years, eventually he stopped as the emotion had grown too cumbersome to keep carrying with him. He thought that his fear had gone with it, but it appeared that it had merely gone dormant, and now it had him hiding in his storeroom, crying quietly every time he thought about his mother being just on the other side and just how badly he wanted to hug her again.
“Mutter,” he keened, and there was a muffled cry of his old name in response.
There was more muffled conversation, and eventually he heard a familiar soft grunt as someone –Fenris, he assumed– knelt down on the other side of the door and began to speak to him in a low voice.
“Anders,” Fenris addressed him. “Please let me in. I need to talk to you. And since you told me I should probably try not to use the brands while I’m with child, I would rather not have to break down the door to get to you.”
When Anders did not answer, there was a soft sigh and Fenris pleaded once more, “Fool mage, please. You don’t have to let anyone else in. Just me. I merely wish to see that you’re alright.” Anders sniffed wetly, blinking back tears until he finally managed a soft, “Okay,” that he knew only Fenris’ keen elf ears could pick up through the door.
He heard Fenris grunting and shuffling as he likely struggled to stand, and Anders huffed a little as his shifted center of gravity made his own move to stand rather difficult. After a while he managed it, and he unlocked the door but didn’t open it, though eventually Fenris slipped through and closed the door behind him.
Anders shook like a leaf as he stood before Fenris, rubbing his belly as he tried to soothe the child within.
“Th-They’re real, aren’t they?” Anders whispered, voice shaky. Fenris moved him to a couple crate stacks so that they could sit close and hold one another as best they were able.
“Yes, Anders,” Fenris answered in a low voice. “And while I do not… entirely trust your father, I see myself in him.” Anders sniffed and turned his head to Fenris. “How so?” he asked.
“Mostly I see a little of the fear I once had of you,” Fenris replied. “Fear and apprehension.”
“Not… anger? Fury?”
“No. Whatever anger or fury he might have once had is etched into the lines of his face and the weight that pulls on his shoulders. I do not believe that he harbors any ill will upon you. And your mother…”
“I want to see her too,” Anders admitted sadly. “I’ve wanted to see her again for twenty-five years.”
Then Anders gasped as the child within him shifted and his hands, having previously been in his rapidly diminishing lap, immediately went to his belly to feel the movements.
“I think her –Sweet Maker– her… grandchildren want to meet her too.”
Fenris nodded slowly. “Perhaps we should let them? But only if you wish it.” Anders scoffed, chuckling. “How can I deny my mother this? Surely she has wanted this as much as I.” He frowned, sighing. “It is Vater that concerns me.”
“Anders,” Fenris sighed. “Would you deny your father something that you would not deny your mother?”
“He gave me to the Templars, Fenris!”
“Likely out of fear,” Fenris insisted. Anders, unable to keep eye contact with Fenris, looked away and grumbled. “Fear of me, yeah.”
“Or for you,” Fenris shot back. “There was regret there too, I promise you.”
Anders turned to Fenris again, and he was a little taken aback that he hadn’t thought about that before. He sighed, glancing between his belly and Fenris’.
“Perhaps you’re right. It was silly of me to hide like this.”
“I would not say that. You have told me more than once that before Justice, you would dream of them, but it was always demons playing their roles.”
Anders nodded. “Tempting me with a thing I could never have. It wasn’t just my parents and their love that I desired, but to never have been–” He cut himself off, swallowing and shaking his head to clear his thoughts. “I desired to have never have been found to have magic at all, and that was a thing that the demons could never give me.”
“But they’re here now,” Fenris added. “And surely they came with a purpose, since they so obviously didn’t expect you here.”
Anders frowned. What use indeed would his parents have of a midwife?
“Alright. I–yes. Let us find out, and quickly. Before I lose my nerve.”
“You shall not,” Fenris insisted, grasping one of Anders’ hands with his own. “Take a little of my own, as you have often said I have an abundance of it. Come what may, we shall stand strong; together.”
Anders smiled and leaned over to press a kiss to Fenris’ cheek.
“Oh, the things you say, darling.”
Anders got up first and helped Fenris to stand before the two of them finally exited the storeroom. Fenris left first, and Anders followed close behind, still grasping Fenris’ hand, however they only found Grizelda at the kitchen counter preparing tea and refreshments.
“Ah,” she said when she’d noticed then leaving the storeroom at last. “I’ve settled your… parents in the downstairs room. Would you like me to draw the curtains back so that people can see you’re busy?”
Her expression was hesitant and apologetic, and Anders couldn’t help but give into the desire to fuss.
“Of course, of course. And please, don’t worry so much about… all this.” He waved a hand, gesturing to the air around them. “You couldn’t have known. It’s not your fault, really.”
Grizelda scoffed. “Nonsense. Now that I’m properly lookin’ at you, I see it, plain as day. Near spittin’ image of that man, you are.”
Anders sighed. “Thanks… for that.”
The midwife raised an eyebrow at him wearily. “So that’s where the bad blood lies, does it? Well. I could always send them–”
“No,” Anders said in a firm tone, grasping Grizelda’s shoulder tightly. “They came for a reason, did they not? I should see them, at least as a healer if not as their son.” Grizelda merely stared at him for a moment before her lips formed a slight smile. “I don’t know how much of the man you are today is the boy that they raised, but some of it had to have stuck. Your sense of duty to your calling seems to know no bounds, healer.”
As she said this, she gathered up the pot of tea and her hand basket, which she’d placed the teacups in along with its contents that smelled of fresh baked apples and sweetbread.
Ignoring the intense craving that swept over him, Anders scowled as he scampered after her.
“I just don’t like the thought of not helping someone that’s in need of healing if I’m specifically the only one who can, Grizelda,” he groused. “It’s not right, not just. I would be a terrible healer to refuse my services even to the worst of my enemies while still offering them to others.”
“See,” Grizelda said, setting down the food and drink before spinning around and drawing back the curtains, “incredible dedication. Though, that might be a Warden thing, hmm?”
“Certainly not,” Anders said, scowling. “I was just happy to be out of the cell that the Templars stuck me in for a year and grateful to never have to go back! I was… no. The person I was then most certainly cared less about absolutely anyone but himself.” Grizelda chuffed, glancing back.
“So what changed?”
Anders ran a hand through his hair as Fenris shuffled around behind him.
“I… left for Kirkwall and ran a free clinic in the sewers for the better part of a decade? I don’t know.” He sighed. “I made a lot of stupid mistakes, nearly got myself killed half a dozen times… made one really big mistake that I know I’d be hanged for if I didn’t have the protection of the bloody Hero of Ferelden…”
There was a soft gasp from behind that had Anders suddenly remembering where he was, and who was in the room. He turned around, and where he had been expecting Fenris, he found his mother, standing not more than a few inches from him.
Anders stood very still as Grizelda quietly left the room, and his mother gingerly reached up to try to push back a flyaway hair that had escaped its binding, only she appeared just able to reach it and fold it behind his ear.
His breath caught in his throat at the featherlight touch, and tears filled his eyes once more, trailing quickly down his cheeks as he struggled to breathe.
“Mutter,” he sobbed, unable to keep it together anymore as she embraced him tightly, pregnant belly and all. He clung to her at least as hard as she clung to him, and as he cried into her hair she chanted something unintelligible as she shared her years of sorrow with him.
“Mutter, you are too short,” he lamented when it grew too uncomfortable to crane his neck to shed his tears into her hair, and she laughed, brushing back tears of her own.
“Short? You, you are so tall!” She sniffed, pulling back and reaching up to stroke the stubble on his cheeks. “Not my little boy anymore, now.” She glanced down between them, and Anders huffed a quiet dismissal. “No, definitely not… as you can see.”
There was a beat of silence before a throat cleared behind them and Anders looked up as his mother turned her head.
“Son,” his father addressed gruffly. Anders straightened as he met and held his father’s gaze. Anders felt his face crumple a little as he winced, and he pulled away from his mother’s embrace to seek out Fenris for support.
Immediately the elf was by his side, grasping his hand.
“I would not be so quick to call me such, Vater,” Anders confessed, voice trembling. “A Grand Cleric is dead and the Kirkwall Chantry lies in ruins because of me. I… I do not believe I am worthy–”
“That is for me to decide,” his father replied in a low voice. Anders could see that ever present fear still lingering there, and the apprehension that came with it. Yet the thing that was the most present was indeed the regret Fenris had mentioned, and somehow at the sight of it, Anders found the courage to let go of the elf’s hand to approach his father, though he still trembled as he did so.
“Wilhelm,” Anders’ mother pleaded softly as they stood close, putting one hand on her son’s arm protectively even as the older man held up a hand.
“Franziska,” he addressed her sternly, looking away from Anders very briefly to chastise her, saying, “Please, stand back a moment.” He looked back and met Anders’ gaze once more.
“I wish to embrace my son properly,” he stated, cracking a slight smile as the tension in his shoulders, and indeed the rest of the room, seemed to lift as the man opened his arms. “Or, at least as much as I am able,” he added in a half whisper as Anders rushed to embrace his father as his mother had embraced him, though there were fewer tears when they were finished. Afterwards, Anders pulled away and turned to introduce his parents to Fenris.
Anders’ father, Wilhelm, or Wil as the man insisted Fenris call him, and his mother, Franziska were not what the elf had expected.
Upon finding them in the kitchen after his rude awakening, he hadn’t expected to like them… but Franziska’s tears were so obviously genuine that she made his own heart ache in sorrow for Anders, and Wil’s eyes had been full of a deep regret in spite of the mixture of fear and concern that lingered there.
Fenris’ heart hurt so much at the thought of what it might feel like to have his children taken from him, never expecting to see them again… and he’d had to excuse himself from the conversation to see if he couldn’t get Anders to let him in the storeroom to talk.
Eventually he was able to extricate the mage from his place of safety and out into the downstairs room where they’d sat down to speak with Rashia some weeks previously. Now they also sat there after Anders’ tearful reunion with his mother and tentative reconciliation with his father. That first smile that Wil had given Anders suddenly reminded Fenris of the way Anders smirked when mildly amused.
However, it was Franziska who reminded Fenris of Anders more. She fussed just like he did once he’d grown comfortable enough to let her close, and currently she had her hands on his belly as she cooed at the children within.
“You know, your husband was conceived from a roll in the grasses near a statue such as the one that blessed you with these little ones,” Franziska confided, and he glanced back at Anders, who was practically inhaling one of the little apple pies that Grizelda had brought.
“Anders? Is this true?” he asked. Anders, once finished, gently wiped the crumbs from his mouth into a small, white cloth. He shrugged sheepishly by way of an answer.
“How I am to know? It’s not as if there’s anyone I know who can corroborate, except Vater,” Anders answered, somehow managing to pout at Wil while scowling at the same time. Wil chuckled. “Oh, we are fairly certain that statue helped in some way. And your siblings, too, though we only visited the statue just the once.”
Wil frowned, and thumbed his teacup idly.
“By the way, why do you call yourself… Anders?”
Anders sighed.
“Because the templars couldn’t be bothered to remember my name, and I refused to give it to them when they asked. Besides, even when they merely called me “the Ander boy” after remembering where you were from, I still ended up being called Anders eventually.” He shook his head and sighed again before continuing with, “So even if I had given it to them again, my name still wouldn’t have been my own.
“It took a long time for me to stop caring what I was called and start caring about the person that name belonged to.” Franziska huffed softly through her nose and looked up at her son with sad eyes. “So my little boy…”
“Will always be a part of me, Mutter,” Anders reassured her. “But the name that belonged to that boy? It isn’t mine anymore. I have been “Anders” for too long.”
Fenris caught Anders’ gaze and was suddenly filled with a light pang of sadness for the boy he had once been, Leto, that his sister had lamented the loss of when she had left Kirkwall. The brief talk Anders had begged him to have with her had certainly been productive, and Fenris had even encouraged Varania to find work elsewhere instead of Tevinter… though things were still strained between them when he watched her board a ship bound for Highever from the edge of the Kirkwall docks.
“It is not always our choice to keep the names we were born with,” Fenris added quietly as he rubbed at a spot where the twins were being particularly active. “However, we can to a certain extent choose the people that we become even unto death. Names are important, true, but I find it is often the character of a person that makes one more memorable than another.”
“So well spoken,” Wil mused, even as Anders chuckled.
“That, and his willingness to call me out on my bullshit have always been two of my favorite things about him,” Anders said smoothly.
“Hnnn. Now that is bullshit,” Fenris said dryly, which only caused Anders to laugh while Franziska giggled. “Husbands indeed. You’ve been together a long time, haven’t you?”
Anders nodded. “We were only… um, married shortly after we arrived here, but we were together for several years in Kirkwall.”
“What was it like? How did you meet?” she gushed, and Anders sighed, shaking his head. “It was nothing like the stories, Mutter. We actually rather disliked each other near to the point of hatred when we first met. It took many years before we could even carry a conversation without insulting each other.”
“And then I got bit by a spider and apparently confessed my attraction to you,” Fenris muttered as he swallowed down one of his own snacks, the taste of the apples so rich and sweet on his tongue.
“Must have been some spider,” Wil scoffed, to which Anders nodded.
“Mutant. I think it was because there were so many entrances to the Deep Roads around. Something about the Blight and the Fade just makes them absolutely huge in some places. But yeah. I had no idea you even thought about me that way until then.”
“You were attracted to me too.”
“Yes, but I wasn’t about to say so! It took us forever just to be decent people to one another. I wasn’t about to ruin that by confessing.”
“Why not?” asked Franziska curiously, and strangely it was Wil that answered her. “Because you were a former slave, weren’t you?” Wil jerked his chin in Fenris’ direction. “From Tevinter? I heard you use a Tevene curse earlier.”
Fenris nodded solemnly as Franziska fretted, though he caught her hands and gently held them fast.
“Yes, I was. And my experiences colored my view of your son for many years. Or, at least they did until we eventually found that our pasts were so eerily similar to one another.” He seemed about to go into it, but thought the better of it. Franziska smiled at the pair of them sadly, her eyes lingering on Anders.
“I… we heard you talking at the midwife about spending a year in a cell. Did that really happen?”
Anders nodded in a similarly solemn manner.
“After I was… in the Circle, I made escape attempts… often. The first few times I was trying to get back to you, but then Greagoir threatened me with Tranquility and I stayed put for a while. It helped that I had grown attached to another mage, Karl.” Anders grew quiet and looked down as he idly rubbed circles into his belly. “Karl didn’t like the Circles either, but he thought that they could be changed from the inside if only we could work hard enough.
“So I stayed. For him. I was a better mage, a better person with him around. But then not long after I passed my Harrowing he was transferred to Kirkwall and I started making escapes again. To try and get to him. My sixth one I spent nearly a year in Denerim trying to earn enough coin for a ship from Highever.”
“As… a healer?” his father asked. Anders’ face flushed deeply.
“Um. Sort of. I… might have worked for the Pearl in Denerim as their healer. And not just as their healer.” Franziska merely leaned over to catch his expression and descended into giggles. “So you had a little fun on the job…”
Anders snorted.
“It’s also what got me caught. And that was how I ended up in solitary confinement for a year. I was all sorts of messed up afterwards, and made my final escape while the Blight was going on. Templars didn’t catch up to me until I made it to Amaranthine, but then darkspawn horde remnants swarmed the fortress and the Hero of Ferelden –who also happened to be a mage I was in the Circle with– just up and conscripts me right in front of the queen!”
Anders laughed shakily and ran a hand through his hair.
“Sounds like quite a force, this Hero,” Wil mused as he poured himself another cup of tea. Fenris nodded.
“She is. She came by recently because Vigil’s Keep has been need of a healer for some time, but she decided to let us live our lives here instead and merely offered us a place at the keep should we ever need it.”
“Were you not the healer at the keep before, darling?” Franziska asked, frowning, and Anders sighed.
“Yes, I was. But then Rashia had to leave the keep on Warden business, and her replacement let in a bunch of Templars who wanted to get back at her for killing Ser Rylock in defense of me. Ser Rylock was the templar who tried to drag me back to the Circle when Queen Anora came riding down the highway after the fortress was clear of the most immediate darkspawn threats. There were several who were upset with the commander for it.”
Anders sighed bitterly and grumbled, “These recruits made it past the Joining Ceremony and tried to kill me, but I escaped and ran to Kirkwall where I had hoped to find Karl, but… things didn’t work out that way. When I met Astrid Hawke, I thought I’d found a group of people who might be able to help me get him out of the Gallows safely, but… he had been made Tranquil in spite of Chantry law saying that all Harrowed mages are safe from such a fate, barring actual, physical demonic possession.”
He grit his teeth and angry tears filled his eyes.
“I… couldn’t leave him like that. We made a promise, once… to end the other’s life if we ever…” He rubbed his eyes furiously, trying to clear them. Fenris had turned away to gently grab at Anders’ arm and press close against the mage.
“I had to… had to kill him and watch the person I had loved and yet never confessed it to just bleed out on the floor of a Chantry…”
“Astrid helped you burn him, didn’t he?”
Anders sniffed wetly, nodding. “They even asked Sebastian to preside over the burial of the ashes.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“This was before he left Kirkwall for a few years to travel around the Free Marches looking for people to support his claim to the throne. He wasn’t traveling with us then.”
“A prince?” Franziska tittered, moving so that she could sit across from the couple and next to her husband. “My, what a colorful life you have led.”
Anders smiled sheepishly. “I still… I messed up a lot, Mutter. After Karl died, I was angry and bitter and I spent years trying to find a way to free the mages of the Gallows from serving a similar sentence. Mostly I tried to be peaceful, but as the years wore on, it grew harder and harder to manage that. In the end, I was unable to do so peacefully and I did a really stupid thing that… I fear may come back to haunt me.” He glanced down and hugged his middle tightly.
“I don’t want these babies to end up parentless because of my stupidity.”
“Anders,” Fenris hushed him. “You know Rashia would not stand for it. The Grand Cleric turned a blind eye not only to the mages, but the Blight refugees and the elves and anyone who wasn’t someone with means who could pay good coin to keep the Chantry beds warm and soft, tables filled with rich food, and closets full of finely crafted robes. You did. You healed them for free for years, in what amounted to the city sewers, no less.
“And the Grand Cleric also let the Knight Commander make Harrowed mages Tranquil in droves and her subordinates physically abuse those who were meant to be their charges. That city was already about to explode anyway; you just gave it a push. Your Commander is a good woman with no tolerance for bullshit, and even though you weren’t there on her orders, you might as well have been from what she said to you.”
Anders looked over at Fenris and he could see fond weariness in their depths.
“I know. Rashia is just like that. Apparently she did a lot of stupid things too, when she was trying to raise an army to fight the Darkspawn.”
Suddenly the two of them remembered that they weren’t the only two people in the room and they looked up to meet the eyes of Anders’ parents sheepishly.
“Apologies,” Fenris offered them, ears flattening against his hair. “I get… rather emotional these days. Especially whenever Anders tries to think I’m going to let us leave these three without parents.”
“Three?” Wil gasped, eyeing his son critically. “Three?”
“Warden stamina and a fertility statue work wonders, apparently,” Anders said dryly by way of an answer, at which point Grizelda finally came back with something that suddenly had Fenris’ mouth watering at the smell of it. The midwife had apparently caught the tail end of that conversation and was chortling to herself as she placed a hot lunch in front of the two couples.
“What these boys aren’t telling you,” she said, sitting down on a stool which she’d dragged in from the clinic, “is that they didn’t know the statue was magic and had to find it out the hard way about a month later.” She served everyone some of the thick, meaty soup with rice and spices and vigorously shook a spoon at the pregnant couple with a twinkle in her eyes.
“Gave them about a week to think things over in case they didn’t want kids.”
“You made a bet,” Anders drawled, slightly annoyed, and Grizelda snorted. “I live with a retired Chantry brother who was almost declared an apostate by heresy about seven different times. I have to get my giggles from somewhere. Besides, I figured you’d want to keep it right away, since you dote so much on the village children.” She fixed Fenris with an assessing stare. “You were harder to guess, but… there was always something about you that I pegged as protective. Didn’t expect the twins, though.”
Franziska laughed. “I remember the mood swings. They were more intense with… you, Anders.” The name seemed reluctant, like she was weighing it on her tongue and trying to decide if she liked it. Then she added, “That… reminds me. About what we came here for…”
Anders gave a start next to Fenris, and he looked over to Anders to see his expression knit in confusion.
“I had wondered about that. Please forgive me for saying so, but I doubt you came to ask for Grizelda’s consult for yourselves…” His lips twitched into a half grin and he chuckled lightly. “I am rather well into my thirties, after all.”
Franziska smiled and echoed his soft chuckle, but afterwards her shoulders fell and she sighed deeply.
“We came for your sister, actually. Britta.”
Anders gasped and his brows knit with worry, his hands curling slightly against the fabric of his trousers. “Britta? Is… is she okay?” He frowned, leaning back against the settee that he and Fenris were settled on, muttering to himself.
“She was married about… seven years ago? But she and Isaac didn’t start trying for children until about two years later and nothing has worked since.”
Anders folded his arms across his chest, resting them on his belly as he huffed slowly through his nose. “There’s no increased pain when she bleeds? Or cramps in between bleedings? Painful sex? I–argh. There are a lot of things it might be.” Anders shrugged. “And it might not be entirely her fault or indeed her fault at all. A few couples I treated in Kirkwall were various cases of the reverse. Sometimes it’s the father that’s the trouble. Nothing a few potions and better nutrition can’t fix… unless it can’t. Then sometimes…”
“Sometimes magic is necessary?” came his mother’s quiet question.
Anders nodded. “But, in the event that… I couldn’t help, I’m certain the statue could. Grizelda’s been sending people to it for years when they’ve had trouble. Still, if she’s in pain and isn’t telling anyone… ah, that would be just like Britta, wouldn’t it? She was always like that, wasn’t she?”
“Stubborn, kept to herself,” agreed Wil. “She got worse after… after I had you sent away. She hated me for a long time, I think. Karin was younger. I don’t know how much she remembers you, and… Garth…”
“Did you ever tell him he had an older brother, Vater? He was barely speaking when the barn burnt down.” Anders’ voice was soft and sorrowful, yet Wil winced as though Anders had slapped him with his words. “We did. Britta never let us forget about you, and eventually he started asking questions. I’m sure… he’d love to meet you. Especially when he finds out you became a Warden.”
“Not sure about Karin,” Franziska sighed. “She’s got two little ones to look after. Made Britta all the more bitter when she couldn’t…”
“I would love to see her again, Mutter. You’d have to explain to them about, well… this,” he said gesturing to his and Fenris’ bellies, and added, “at least if you intend to bring them back within the next three months.”
“She would come no matter what we told her,” Wil admitted, “but I suppose we should try to explain it as best we can. She won’t wait long after we tell her about you, especially when she finds out she has more nieces and nephews on the way.” Anders laughed, and Fenris found that he couldn’t recall a time when Anders had laughed quite as much as he’d done today.
“How long was your trip out here?”
“About a week, by horse and cart,” answered Franziska. “Two weeks, plus a few days… if we left now…”
“You don’t have to, Mutti,” Anders insisted. “Please, at least stay the day. I… you might have to use some of the clinic beds, but that’s where our spare space is…” He shrugged. “Maker only knows what we’re going to do when these little ones start needing more than the nursery our neighbors helped us put together.”
“Landry said he and Daniel would help us,” Fenris told him automatically as he finished slurping down the rest of his lunch. “And, um. The carpenter. Fasta vass, why can I never remember that man’s name?”
Anders chuckled and pat his back gently, leaning over to nuzzle at an ear, immediately relaxing them both.
“You’ll get it eventually, Fen. It’s okay.”
“Alright, alright,” Grizelda groused, “I’m going to leave before you kill me with your entirely too adorable displays of affection.” She sighed, grumbling as she stood. “I meant to give you an examination today, but you seem to be fine, yes?” Anders nodded. “I don’t think the little one was happy about all of the stress from this morning, but I should be good for the afternoon.”
“Just take it easy!” she shouted after them, but came back to point a finger at Wil and Franziska. “And you come see me tomorrow morning before you leave. I want to know exactly who told you what in case I need to do damage control.”
Franziska nodded. “Of course, yes. These statues should be protected at all costs. We’ll come by, absolutely.”
Grizelda nodded and shuffled out, leaving the couples together.
After a few heartbeats of silence, Franziska finally stood up and clasped her hands together. “Please, you must show me this nursery! Is it upstairs?”
Anders smiled and nodded, and took a few deep breaths before moving to stand. “Whew! That… gets harder every day to do without help.” He looked back at Fenris. “Do you want to come up with us?”
Fenris shook his head. “My nap was interrupted and lunch has made me sleepy again. I might just… not move from here for a while.” Anders chuckled and leaned over to press a kiss against his hair, grasping the arm of the settee for support. “Okay. Vater, do you mind fetching a pillow and blankets from the clinic? They’re not hard to miss.”
“Of course, of course.”
Anders and his mother went upstairs and his father came back with some pillows and blankets and helped Fenris settle comfortably on his side.
Wil knelt on the floor next to Fenris, and he found that his earlier mistrust of the man had dissipated over the course of the morning. “I was afraid,” he confessed, very quietly. “The way Anders told the story of the day his magic manifested…” Wil huffed dejectedly, albeit quietly.
“He must have thought me quite the monster,” Wil whispered, and Fenris hummed in agreement. “Not as much of the monster he once believed himself to be. He is a spirit healer, and from what he tells me, that is how they are able to work their miracles.”
Wil fixed him with an intense stare. “Is there something he didn’t tell us? That you aren’t telling me?”
“I am telling you now, because I know him enough to know that he won’t do it on his own if he believes that telling you will cause him to lose you again. But… you see,” Fenris said as he offered the underside of an arm to Wil, “these brands were a gift from my former master.” He spat the word just enough to give emphasis as he reached down to rub at his belly through the blankets.
“During my years of service and even in the years after I escaped, they caused me so much pain. In fact, the earliest thing I can clearly remember is pain. Receiving the brands. I hated the man who had put them into my skin, and indeed, all magic and those who wielded it.”
“My son mentioned that you disliked each other when you first met.”
Fenris chuffed. “He was being kind. While I do not believe he hated me at first, I certainly hated him. He was grieving for a lover and involving himself in a campaign to give freedom to the mages of the Gallows, yet I only knew that Karl had been a friend who was made Tranquil, and that I feared he wished to bring about another Tevinter.”
Wil nodded solemnly and shifted so that his position on the floor was more comfortable. “My son was always a bull-headed, foolhardy child… but even now I cannot see that he would want such a thing.”
“He did not. However, I was too blinded by my fear. I goaded him. I baited him. He wasn’t innocent either. He gave as good as he got. And we fancied the same man: Astrid Hawke. It was through Hawke that I learned the thing about your son that made me fear him more than his mageblood: he was possessed.”
Wil sat very still.
“What? No. He can’t–”
Fenris held up a hand. “I am not done. I have told you where I come from, and that even though I call a mage my partner and husband, I still hold a healthy fear for it. If I believed he were a true abomination, I would have killed him a long time ago. Will you let me finish?”
After a silence that felt like an eternity, Wil nodded.
“I have seen abominations. They were commonplace in Tevinter, they were like party tricks; the magisters so often had them appear at the displays of power they called their “social events.” I killed many of them alongside Astrid and your son, and not once did he become one of them. In fact, he harbors as much of a dislike of blood magic as I do. One of the scant few things we agreed on in those early years.”
Fenris took a moment to breathe, wincing and rubbing soothing circles into his belly as the babies shifted.
“I do not believe there was any one thing that made me see past my hatred. Hate is an exhausting emotion. I couldn’t keep it with me forever… or, my hatred of him, anyway. I watched him heal people for free, heal the rest of the party before himself, and even when I refused magic from him, he offered potions and bandages and salves. He hated me as much as I hated him, and still he never failed to offer healing to me.
“Then came that night with the spider bite, and I think a part of me knew I would die without magical intervention. Anders is as good with antivenins as he is with potions, but those take time to diagnose and brew. So, magic it was. And… it wasn’t like anything I’d ever felt. All magic had ever done was hurt me, but Anders’ magic… didn’t. Even the after effects of his battle magic only made the brands tingle a little. It was only after that I began to ask him questions and really listen to his answers.”
“…but, the possession,” Wil pressed, very quietly.
“He told me why a few months after we… we had started sharing a bed,” Fenris admitted with a slight yawn. He told the story Anders had told him about the Blackmarsh, getting trapped in the Fade, meeting Justice. “And after all was said and done, they were left with a Spirit of Justice in a decomposing corpse with no idea what would happen next.”
Fenris huffed, annoyed. “And Anders, with his bleeding heart, thought he could help return this spirit to the Fade if only he had more time than Kristoff’s corpse could offer. He thought that, as a Spirit Healer, he should be able to handle having a Fade Spirit in his head for a while. Perhaps his deeper connection to the Fade would enable the spirit to return home that way.”
“It didn’t work out, I assume?” Wil asked tiredly.
Fenris nodded. “The templars who were recruited to the Wardens didn’t approve of him working so closely with the spirit possessed corpse, whether or not they were told he was working on a way to return Justice to the Fade or not. They joined to get back at Commander Amell for what happened to Ser Rylock, so they likely didn’t care what his purpose there was.”
“They forced his hand? Cornered my son and this… spirit?”
“That is what Anders said, yes. And from the conversation that I was present for between Anders and Rashia, I got the impression he barely escaped with his life. Without the spirit’s intervention, I…” Fenris looked down and sighed softly as he rubbed his belly once more.
“I would not have met Anders. I would not have seen that while he is not perfect and has most certainly done the most stupid or stupid things in the name of mage freedom… I saw a man who gave all he had and then some to the poor of a city that could and did care less for those in poverty. I saw a mage who refused to resort to blood magic in the face of his fears, and a mage who offered magical and non-magical healing to any and all who needed it. There were a few Templars who knew who and what he was, and even though he still wishes the Order didn’t exist, he didn’t refuse them healing either.”
Fenris sighed and blinked a few more times, feeling sleep creeping up on him as the fullness of the food and exhaustion of his interrupted nap began to weigh on him.
“I would not have learned to love him. These… these babies would not exist without him. I–confront him about his spirit if you wish, but I ask that you do not promise that he can see his family again and then take it away. Please.”
He could feel his eyes brimming his tears, but he couldn’t handle the weight of Wil’s gaze and the thought of what the loss of his family might do to Anders so soon after connecting with them after all this time. He turned his face into the pillows and sniffed wetly, unable to hold back a sob.
“I… I need him. I can’t do this without him. I can’t.”
“Hush, mein kind,” Wil soothed, a hand gingerly patting Fenris’ hair and threading fingers through it to massage his scalp as he quietly cried into his pillows. “It’s alright. It’s going to be alright.”
And then Wil started to sing something that Fenris recognized, and he looked up from the pillows when Wil was finished, blinking at him with bleary eyes.
“I’ve heard Anders singing that some mornings to the babies when he thinks I’m still asleep. I don’t know if he remembers the entire thing, but he tries.” Wil chuckled softly. “Hmm. I shall have to see which verses time has stolen from him so that I might give them back. It was a song my father sang to me as a child and that his father sang to him. It should not be forgotten.”
Wil slowly removed his hand from Fenris’ hair and patted the cushion of the settee with it lightly.
“Sleep now, and do not worry for your Anders. Spirit or no spirit, I… I too have let hate and fear eat away at me for too long. You know the man that my boy has become far better than I; therefore I trust your judgement. That… and I cannot tear my wife from her son again. She might kill me first.”
He offered Fenris a tired smile, and Fenris was almost certain he smiled back.
“Thank you,” Fenris whispered, yawning again, but louder this time.
Wil chuckled quietly. “Go to sleep. We shall wake you for dinner if you are not up by then.” Fenris grunted. “It is merely a nap…”
The other man might’ve said something more, but by then, Fenris was asleep.
Anders had been just about finished showing his mother the nursery when his father had come up and confronted him about Justice. He thought his mother might be horrified when his father started talking about it, but all she had done was sigh and shake her head as she turned to him to ask, “This was one of those stupid things you mentioned?”
“Yes, Mutter,” he admitted, “but since leaving Kirkwall, Justice has been far kinder to me than I ever was to him. I still want to return Justice to the Fade, but… I don’t know if anything short of death will do that anymore.”
He frowned, then added in a more somber tone, “And, speaking of death… he, Justice… has apparently been keeping the taint in my system at bay since… since we joined.” His father had frowned and his mother’s grip tightened on one arm. “What… what do you mean, tainted?” she fretted. “As in… the Blight?”
Anders nodded. “It is how one becomes a Warden, Mutter. I cannot tell you the particulars of how the ceremony goes, but not everyone survives it because it involves darkspawn blood.”
He glanced up at his father, whose expression had kitted into one of serious contemplation. “You… seem to know that, somehow. Don’t you, Vater?”
His father nodded. “I know about the Calling, too. I’m not supposed to, but…”
He fixed Anders with an almost hopeful gaze. “Does this mean that it will never spread enough to send you into the Deep Roads to die?” His mother’s grip on his arm loosened and tightened again.
“That is what my Commander believes, yes,” Anders answered, and his mother sighed against him in relief. His father nodded solemnly. “Well, if we have this… spirit to thank for that, perhaps… perhaps we should be thankful.” Anders sniffed, smiling slightly even as tears gathered in his eyes.
“I still feel terrible, that I can’t return him home. But since leaving Kirkwall, he… things have been easier. We’re not as angry at the world as we used to be.”
He glanced down and tightened his arms around his middle protectively.
“We’ve got other things to worry about now.”
Anders glanced up and noticed his father hovering. “Do you… want to touch? She’s not active right now, but maybe if you talked to her…”
“A she, is it?” His father chuckled as Anders grasped his hand and pressed it to his belly gingerly. Anders huffed. “Grizelda thinks it’s a boy, but I’m adamant about it being otherwise.”
“Could you tell… with magic?” his mother asked, to which Anders nodded.
“I could, but Fenris and I wanted to be surprised. Still think it’s a girl, though,” he grumbled, and suddenly he and his father gasped at the same time as a strong movement within surprised them both. Anders saw that his father had to wipe his eyes a bit as he pulled away, expression dumbstruck.
“It still feels like a dream,” his father breathed. Anders hummed noncommittally.
“It feels like that to me every day, and I’m the one carrying the child.” He shook his head in disbelief. “It still baffles me that such a thing is possible, even with magic…” He sighed contentedly as his mother clucked at him, shaking her head. “I still keep thinking about you and that elf of yours, finding out…”
“It was quite the shock, yes,” Anders laughed. “But… I’ve seen and done stranger things than this, and when Grizelda told it that even like this… it was still possible to… to terminate the pregnancy…”
Anders sighed, shaking his head. “I couldn’t do it. I had to help too many young women in Kirkwall get rid of a few… accidents, and… I suddenly realized how much I wanted it. In Kirkwall, I helped with more births than I could count, but it was almost like the Circle all over again.”
“How do you mean?” His father asked, head cocked to one side.
“Female mages who get pregnant in the Circle don’t get to keep their children, Mutter. It is why I know as much about how to prevent a pregnancy as how to encourage one. Every child that ever made it to term was always taken away at birth. Mothers didn’t get to even name them or kiss them goodbye. I…” Anders sniffed wetly, frowning. “I’m sorry. I don’t like thinking about it much.”
He shrugged and ran a hand through his hair with a soft sigh.
“Anyway… Kirkwall was different in that the mothers actually got to keep the babies I delivered, but there was always a part of me that… that wished one of them were mine. And now…” he looked down again and rubbed a slow circle over his belly with one hand.
“Now this one is. And the two Fenris carries. He still worries a little about whether keeping his was a good decision, but I think it will work out in the end.”
“And that’s why I won’t bother getting up in arms about this… spirit issue,” his father told him seriously, moving to bring Franziska into a one-armed hug. “That elf of yours worried that telling me the truth might hurt you deeply, even though he didn’t anyway.” Anders winced, head low. “Sorry, Vater. I didn’t know how…”
“I know. It’s probably best it came from him anyway. Former slave with a healthy fear of magic still marrying and having children with my mage son? I trust his judgement.”
Anders and his father shared a look for a moment before nodding.
“Thank you, Vater. I don’t know what else to say…”
His father chuckled. “You could start by telling me how much of those lullabies you remember. I sang a couple bars for your Fenris to help him sleep, and he told me you don’t remember all of them?”
Anders smiled. “I would love to relearn them. We have a small study up here we could use, come, let me show you…”
The entire day felt like a dream, especially after two weeks had come and gone, and once again, the door opened as Anders was in the storeroom, rearranging things while Fenris was scooping potions into flasks at the kitchen counter.
“Franziska! Wil!” Anders heard Fenris exclaim from within the room, and immediately he set down what he was working with and went to greet them as well. “Mutter!” he exclaimed, his heart lighter than it had ever been. “Vater…” He hugged his mother and pressed a quick kiss to her hair before hugging his father and receiving a hearty pat on the back that made him tear up again at the memories the gesture brought up.
“You’re back,” he breathed, still unable to believe it. “So then… you brought…?”
“Bruder… is, is it truly you?” A small voice called from the door, and Anders froze as he met the eyes of the woman who stood there.
Her hair was the same tawny color with reddish hints as Franziska’s, though her eyes were a darker, richer brown, more akin to the color of Wil’s eyes. Her face was all Franziska, though there was a definite sharpness to her nose that harkened to Wil’s features. She was staring at Anders, mouth agape, eyes wide. There was no sound but for the conversation of two men outside, unaware of what was currently taking place.
“Britta?” was Anders’ equally quiet question, and that caused the woman to blink rapidly as she immediately glanced down at the swell of his belly. She shuffled forward, a hand gingerly outstretched, and Anders shuffled with her to meet her in the middle, take her hand in his; pressing it gently against him. The baby kicked and she gasped, looking up at Anders, still wide-eyed though now those eyes were shining with unshed tears.
She reached up with her other hand to cup his cheek, and Anders closed his eyes. “Britta…” he whispered again. “I missed you… schwester.”
He opened his eyes again when she laughed and found the woman shaking her head in disbelief. “No, no! You…” She snorted, gently pressing a finger square in the center of his chest. “What was the name of our neighbor’s cat?”
Anders snorted. “Which one? The scrawny black one that almost got kicked by Vati’s plow-horse about three different times, or the orange and white one that looked like someone smushed its face in with a shovel that had kittens in our barn? I’m not sure either of those had names… other than, well. The things that Vati called them when they got in the way,” he laughed.
At this, the woman squealed with delight and threw her arms around him.
“Oh how I’ve missed you too!” she cried, and Anders nodded as he held her even though she couldn’t see him. “I heard you gave Vati what for all these years,” he told her as two men he didn’t recognize walked in and closed the door behind them.
“Of course I did,” she replied, moving away and glancing down at his pregnant belly with wonder. “I had to. No one else would.”
“I appreciate it,” he whispered. “I really do.”
Then Anders looked up at the two men and Britta turned when he looked up. “Oh!” she exclaimed, gesturing to the taller of the two who was dark or hair with bright blue eyes and a soft features defined only by high cheekbones and a slightly crooked nose. Almost like he’d gotten in a fight as a child and it had never healed right. Anders wondered if he’d left it that way on purpose.
“This is my husband, Isaac.”
Isaac, who didn’t appear to be much phased by Anders’ unusual state, shook his hand firmly, followed by Fenris, who introduced himself as Anders’ husband. (And didn’t that make his heart flutter wildly like a blighted butterfly?) However Isaac moved further in to reveal a young man in his mid-twenties and Anders was suddenly filled with a rather strange sense of having seen this man before.
Only… in a mirror. About… eleven years ago.
“Hello,” the young man greeted him, a shy smile breaking out onto his face. The smile was familiar too. Anders could hardly believe it.
“You… must be Garth,” Anders said in reply. Garth nodded. “Yes. Karin wanted to come too, but her husband was away on business and wouldn’t be back before we left. She’s probably on her way here, though, with her two boys.”
Garth studied him for a moment. “You… really do look just like Vater, but… younger.” Wil snorted. “Thanks, son.”
“No problem, Vater,” Garth chirped, and Anders suddenly couldn’t resist the urge to reach out to him. The young man brought him into a unexpected hug, even cooing at the child in his belly when a bit of movement brushed from within that was forceful enough for them both to feel it.
“My, that is strange,” Garth breathed. “The statue’s doing, I assume?”
“I helped,” Fenris deadpanned, which caused the young man to descend into giggles as Anders heard Britta groan. “I… yes,” Anders chuckled sheepishly. “To both of those things. Strange, yes. But worth it.”
Garth met his eyes and nodded, glancing at Britta.
“Britta will be happy. I’m glad I came. I wasn’t certain at first…”
“You were still in nappies when my magic manifested.”
Garth nodded. “So I hear. But it’s thanks to Britta that I know about you, and now it’s thanks to her we got to meet, even thought the circumstances were… less ideal, I suppose.”
Anders nodded, then suddenly he rounded on Britta and gently grasped her by the shoulders. “I… need to talk to you. About… personal things. Fenris?” Fenris nodded, straightening. “I can settle them in the front room if you want to talk to her in the clinic.”
“Would you, love? I would appreciate it. Oh, and Isaac? Would you come too? Yes, thank you.”
Britta frowned as Fenris herded the others into the front room with the chairs and few settees and Anders led her into the small but serviceable room he used as his clinic space, with Isaac following close behind.
“Personal things?” She asked him worriedly.
“Yes,” Anders sighed. “Mutter told me what she and Vater came here for. You’ve been trying to have children for five years, without success?” Britta’s face pinched a little as she nodded. Beside her, Isaac cleared his throat.
“You wanted to examine us, healer? To see if there’s something wrong?”
Anders nodded, huffing a little.
“It might not be pleasant, and I’ll need your consent before I start poking and prodding and, yes, putting fingers in places that a brother’s fingers shouldn’t go,” he chuffed softly, catching Britta’s wide eyes and deep flush, “but… I couldn’t stand not knowing if… if you were in pain and not telling anyone.”
He paused, then added with a little more force, “Are you in pain, Britta? During sex? Between cycles? Sometimes such things are signs…”
Britta sniffed, and Anders helped her to sit on one of the beds with Isaac next to her for support. “I… I don’t know,” she said quietly. “Not… that I’ve noticed. Should I? And what if nothing’s wrong with either of us? What then?”
“Then I can tell you that the statue will most certainly help,” he reassured her. “Just… bring lots of blankets. And maybe some cheese and wine. They really help set the mood.”
Isaac snorted and Britta giggled.
“I don’t remember that wicked sense of humor,” she told him with a tender smile as she leaned against Isaac. Anders shrugged. “It was a cultivated talent. Now, which of you would rather go first?”
After two very thorough examinations with both magical and mundane means as well as an array of personal questions, eventually Anders was able to notice (with a little help from Justice) that there was something off about the pattern of Britta’s cycles. Something in her body was causing them to be too short, and therefore the window in which a child could be conceived was very, very small.
“So we could conceive naturally, if we wanted to?” Britta asked, and Anders nodded. “Theoretically, yes. But you’ve been trying for five years, Britta. If you really want a child before your next cycle, I’d go to the statue. Mutti used one for me, apparently.”
Britta sighed, and looked back at Isaac.
“Five years is an awfully long time to wait, dear,” Isaac told her as he stroked her hair. “I would go with you today if that’s what you wanted.”
“Perhaps you’ll want some time to think it over?” Anders asked, but Britta shook her head and clasped her husband’s hand tightly. “No,” she insisted. “I want to go today. I… I’ve waited long enough.” Isaac merely nodded as Britta fixed Anders with a hesitant stare.
“Do we… is there something particular that we have to do?”
Anders couldn’t help but crack a wry smile. “Other than the obvious? No.”
Britta scowled at him. “I’m being serious!”
“So am I. As far as I know there’s not much else to it. Some of the other couples in the village might have a prayer or two you can offer if you like. Fenris and I never said one, but uh…” Anders felt his face flush and he reached back to rub at his neck in embarrassment. “There was, um… a certain amount of reverence involved, certainly.”
“Reverence, hmm?” Isaac hummed as he leaned over to purr sensually into Britta’s ear. Anders stood up immediately, deliberately turning around.
“Alright, I’m out!”
“Wait!”
Anders paused, and looked back at the sound of Britta’s voice.
“What… what do I call you now?” Britta asked quietly, suddenly somber. “Mutter told me you… have a different name now?”
“Anders,” he told her. “It… It is what it is. I’m still–still your brother, I just… the boy I used to be… that isn’t really me anymore. Hasn’t been me for a long time.”
Britta nodded. “That’s alright. I’m just… glad to see you again. Anders.”
The sound of his name coming from his sister’s lips brought a lightness to Anders’ heart, and he left the two hopefully soon-to-be parents in the clinic to go out and spend time with his husband and the rest of his family.
Two months passed, and only a few days after his parents had arrived with Garth, Britta, and her husband, Isaac, Karin came knocking at Anders and Fenris’ doorstep with her husband and their two children.
Anders hadn’t been able to stop himself from cooing over the babbling toddler who was his niece, nor his swaddled infant of a nephew. The months old babe brought about such a strong maternal instinct in him when he held the child, he almost hadn’t been able to let go.
Karin had just laughed and gently patted his shoulder, saying, “Soon, you will have your own to hold, yes?”
“Very soon,” Anders agreed. “We’ve only a little less than two months now, if we manage to carry to term.”
“You’re enjoying the sex, I hope?”
Anders had flushed, but Fenris had snickered and nodded enthusiastically. “Oh yes. It is sometimes difficult, given the state of things, but… we manage.”
Despite his embarrassment, Anders couldn’t agree more.
There was also good news from Britta when Anders and Fenris were exactly three weeks shy of their due dates. Karin had come and gone, promising to come back for a visit again when his nephew was older, but his parents, Isaac, and other siblings had temporarily settled in the village (with help from Grizelda and several of their neighbors) in anticipation of the births of the new additions to their family.
Britta came to Anders one morning with a worried Isaac trotting at her heels, complaining of several symptoms that were very familiar to Anders. He still took them aside to the clinic, gave her a quick examination, and took Britta’s hands in his as he smiled at her excitedly.
“You’re pregnant, Britta,” he whispered, and she burst into happy sobs, clinging to her brother and her husband both.
Anders and (miraculously) Fenris’ due dates came and went, however, much to the amusement and sympathy of all who knew them, until about a week later when Fenris finally went into labor.
The clinic was small, so there were not many people present helping the elf as his labor progressed, though Anders’ own labor pains started just as Fenris was nearing his time to push, and (of course, as was Anders’ luck) rapid labor set in not long after his waters broke as he was changing into the robes Grizelda had provided them.
More visitors came, but only Sora, Grizelda’s elven midwife-in-training, was let in to assist with the births, which went smoothly. Anders and Fenris brought a son and two daughters into the world, which they named Karl, Sage…
“…and Franziska,” Anders finished, looking up at his mother with a tired smile.
Franziska, so touched by Anders’ gesture, could hold back the happy tears that rolled down her cheeks as Anders handed their youngest daughter for his mother and father to hold.
Eventually though, they gave their granddaughter back to their son, who would fall asleep next to his husband with their children nestled in their arms.
A long, hard road lay ahead of them, but when Anders woke the next morning to find the fruits of his and Fenris’ labors still sleeping soundly, he was not afraid. He had his mother, his father, and his siblings back, and even more besides: a niece and nephew from his youngest sister, and another one growing in Britta that would arrive sometime next spring.
To be a mage that was able to rejoin with his family, create one of his own, and have a partner who would do his best to assure him that he would not lose those things for as long as they lived?
Anders had never dared to dream for so much, but in this little village without a name, sometimes even the most impossible of dreams could come true.
do you think that banescales would be obsessed with fertility statues? because thanks to that one huge nest of eggs they were able to be reborn. so eggs really mean a lot to them and their nests are littered with fertility statues, to make sure the babies are strong.
Please Don't Touch - Unless You Want a Baby! More than 2,000 women have reported that they became pregnant shortly after touching the wooden fertility statues. Many of them had been told by doctors they would never be able to conceive. Some are very serious about touching the statues, believing in their powers to help them conceive. Others want to avoid touching the fertlity statues - for the very same reason! The five-foot tall wooden statues were acquired from the Ivory Coast of West Africa in 1993 and were placed in the lobby of Ripley Entertainment's corporate headquarters in Orlando. Within months, 13 women, including staffers and office visitors were pregnant. A Little History The five foot tall wooden statues were acquired from the Baule people of the Ivory Coast of West Africa and within a year of going on display at Ripley Entertainment’s head office in Orlando, Florida, 13 office staff and visitors became pregnant.
The Legend of the African Fertility Statues