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Ayla’s side part uhhh four?

This is the biggest chunk, because part of the middle bits were the last thing I finished.

---

Ayla's life became defined by the needs of children. Nan's son Eka and Hari were born only a few months apart in the fall. Trying to make sure Nan got enough rest while the rest of the village juggled her son and the harvest was tricky, so it was nice that Hari was born after the harvest was mostly finished and it was starting to get cold. Winter was less hectic for all of them, now. It felt far less tenuous than Ayla's first village had; whether that was due to their location, planning, luck, or having a god living with them, Ayla couldn't guess.

Which was good, because it turned out two infants to eighteen adults was still a little overwhelming at times. Not in terms of disrupting their sleep or work time--they could have handled three or maybe four infants and all still got enough rest--but quiet was extremely difficult to come by. Unless you were one of the people explicitly off babysitting duty, and therefore granted privacy and the assumption you wanted quiet so you could rest, everything was always loud. The babies were loud, the people with the babies were loud, and the people working and having adult conversations while they had the chance were loud.

Ayla was almost always the one to take Hari when Nic and Mara needed time to themselves, because everyone else seemed to be under the impression that new parents would not be having sex. Nan wasn't, but Nan also hadn't been married to a partner of several years when she got pregnant. Ayla knew exactly how long it took Nic to get horny again after giving birth. It was not nearly as long as she'd expected, and apparently no one else even considered it a possibility yet.

Not that Ayla really minded. It was easy enough to take Hari for the night, and Hari was usually a delightful baby. She smiled and laughed easily, she quieted down as quickly for Ayla as she did for Nic (which was not quite as quickly as she quieted down for Mara, the jerk), and she understood fairly quickly that Ayla's boobs did not, unlike Nic or Nan's, produce milk.

(Sometimes when she fell asleep in Ayla's arms, Hari would wake up and try to get at Ayla's nipple while she was still half-asleep. Ayla didn't know how early babies started feeling "embarrassment" but she would swear the answer had to be before six months, because Hari looked so sheepish when she woke up a little more and realized it was Ayla she was sleeping on.)

Planting season might have been a little harder than usual, but Hari and Eka were both fairly happy to be strapped to someone's chest or back and watch them work the field. Ayla strongly suspected it would be harder next year, when they would both be wriggly and crawling, possibly even walking. Ayla thought Hari was going to either be a constant mover, or one of those kids who skipped right over walking to running. If Mara had ever been a child, he would have refused to crawl or walk much, Ayla thought, until he was able to run. That was how he was with things that weren't fighting in the beginning: he'd watch and watch, not doing it himself, until he could do it perfectly.

Actually, thinking of those first few months as Mara's infancy made some of his weird behavior make a lot more sense in hindsight.

"You're not as good at talking as your daddy was at your age," Ayla confided to Hari one day, "but you are way better at asking for and accepting help. Good job, nugget."

Hari burbled happily back at her.

With the fields mostly taking care of themselves, Ayla spent that summer doing a lot of watching the babies. She sat with Mara and Hari, watching Nic work and narrating what ze was doing to Hari. She bounced Eka on her lap while Nan spun yarn. She sat with both of the babies on a blanket under the awning outside Danny's house, watching them figure out each other were people, and occasionally pulling them apart when they forgot.

With Hari around, Ayla spent more time sleeping with Nic and Mara. Not always all of them at once, but often two of them would fall asleep trying to get Hari down, and whoever was still awake would come to find them, then end up crawling into bed next to them. Ayla's bed was not big enough for three adults, let alone three adults and a baby. After the first incredibly uncomfortable time Ayla woke up squashed in her own bed, she always laid down in Nic and Mara's bed to settle Hari down if there was any chance of them coming to find her.

In the fall, Nic built a little bed that was close to the ground for Eka, for Nan to have next to her bed. Ze built a second one for Hari, although Hari strongly preferred to cling to someone while she slept, now that she was sleeping through most nights.

"I suppose at least you've got one for the next villager to have kids," Ayla muttered one evening, with Hari curled up on her chest, very much not in her little bed. She cried when they tried to put her in it. She cried when she woke up in it. She simply did not want to sleep in her own bed. In fairness, Hari was a little younger than Eka, so she might not be ready yet.

"Please, that's for our next one," Mara said.

Ayla raised an eyebrow at him. "Nic hated pregnancy," she said.

The tips of Mara's pointy ears reddened. "I know," he said. "I'm working on it."

"You're working on talking zem into more pregnancies?"

"Of course not," Mara said, quietly indignant. "I'm working on a way to let me carry them."

Ayla stared at him a moment. Finally, she said, "Of course you are."

"I don't think it's practical to try and conjure a womb," Mara said, "but I've heard about some alternatives."

"Like what?" Ayla asked. "Growing a baby in a tumor?"

Mara pulled a face. "Ayla," he said, "gross. No."

Ayla tried not to laugh, because that would shake Hari. She did not entirely succeed. Mara reached over as soon as Hari stirred, and pulled her onto his chest instead. She buried her little face in his vest, clutching it with her tiny hand. Ayla could not stand how cute this baby was. "Well then," she said, "how are you going to carry a fetus?"

"Well," he said slowly, "I was thinking about the ritual Indiyit used to make a body for me. Obviously that's different, but pregnancy is already kind of like blood magic."

Living with Mara and Nic was rotting her brain, obviously, because that actually made sense to Ayla.

"I suppose mixing your blood together is kind of already what's happening," Ayla said. "But I still don't see how that helps you, who does not have a womb, carry a fetus."

"One step at a time," Mara said, as though step one being inventing a new kind of blood magic was reasonable. "I wouldn't want to start another one until Hari's a little older anyway."

"It would be pretty obnoxious to have two kids in your bed," Ayla said, and Mara had to bite his lip to hold in a laugh. After a moment, Ayla guessed, "You've been thinking about how they plant monsters. You just don't want to say that."

Mara sighed. "Yeah," he said. Ayla felt a wash of smug satisfaction that she knew him so well. Mara went on, "I mean, that's a terrible way to grow a baby, but I have been wondering if I could use the same idea. Plant the baby in some kind of seed."

"That is less disturbing," Ayla said. She rolled over to snuggle up to Mara's side, and gently rested her hand over Hari's, where Hari was clutching Mara's vest. "I'm sure you can figure something out."

"I hope so," Mara murmured. "I know ze hated being pregnant, but I want Hari to have siblings. I always thought it sounded nice."

"I was jealous of my cousins with siblings," Ayla said. "They always teamed up against me. In games and stuff," she said, which was true but incomplete. "It seemed like having a brother or sister would mean having someone on my side." She poked Mara's side. "Plus you just want more kids."

"Plus I want more kids," Mara admitted. "Look at this!" He nodded at Hari, where she was hiding her face in his vest. "She's so cute! How could I not want more of this!"

*

One of the sailors who'd joined the trading flotilla fell in love with Nan and her son Eka, and convinced his sister to move to the village with him. A few weeks after moving in, said sister decided actually, like Nic, ze was not a woman. Which in turn made the way Danny had been mooning after zem make more sense. Only a few months later, ze moved from Nan's house over to Danny's.

A widowed fisherman from a few islands away asked if he could move into the village, offering to teach some younger folks how to fish so he could pass down his boat and nets.

Chiamaka had several different women from different groups of traders and fishers cycling through her bed when they stopped in the village.

A family passed through the village on the way to the mine. They were cousins or something of one of the miners who had stayed when the mine was shut down, and were going to join the skeleton mining settlement. The oldest son was about Bunny's age, but he latched on to Fumi while they were in town, and in the following months, made sure to always be on the group tasked with running supplies back and forth from the mine to the village.

Eli took the old widower fisherman up on his offer to take over the boat, and started spending days away from the village. Ayla didn't want to say it was a relief, but...well. Eli had some opinions about women, gender, and relationships that didn't exactly make him a good fit with the rest of their heretical village. More than half of them were either uninterested in or at least uninvested in traditional male/female relationships, and Ayla certainly wasn't about to defer to someone who knew less than her because of his gender.

Once, Eli had said something about how, now that they had traders coming by the village regularly, maybe Ayla would find a reason to move out of Nic and Mara's spare room. Nan and Danny both snapped at him to shut up. Ayla was mostly glad Mara didn't hear him, because he would almost certainly have punched Eli, and Ayla wasn't sure she could handle that.

Living with Nic and Mara was convenient for taking care of Hari. Living there was also, maybe, a terrible idea that was bad for her, but worrying about that at this point seemed silly. As long as Ayla didn't think about it, she was fine. Happy, even! But sometimes, thinking about the ways they both stretched the limits of friendship for her, or cared enough about her to punch Eli for being an insensitive shit, made Ayla think about how often she felt like that still wasn't enough, was both more than she deserved and less than she wanted, and then she spent days feeling like a bad friend.

*

For all that living with the mortal incarnation of the god worshiped by the freaks who had murdered Ayla's entire first village and spent years making the lives of everyone in her second village hell was weird, it was also in some ways extremely convenient.

For instance, if anyone in Arizedo Church robes or one of those ugly-ass amulets showed up, they could just fob them off on Mara. If they resisted, you had the pleasure of shouting, "Mara!" at the top of your lungs and watching the priest who could have made life hell a year ago flinch.

Did it probably suck for devout Arizedoans that it turned out their god hated most of what they'd spent their lives doing and immediately started tearing the church to pieces? Probably. On the other hand, Ayla did not give a shit about how devout Arizedoans felt.

So every other month or so, a couple of priests would show up officially, to check in with Mara. They were easy to deal with, since they wanted desperately to stay on Mara's good side, and knew that meant being polite to everyone in the village. If someone happened to be in the lookout tower when their ship got close enough to identify, someone would go tell Mara, and he would usually be there waiting at the dock by the time the priests landed.

But as time went on, and both monster attacks and church raids became less of a concern, the lookout tower was manned less frequently. Fumi still went up there a couple of times a week, but it seemed like he did that mostly to be alone. So the priests would sometimes tie up their ship and disembark, and then have to walk through the village to find someone to ask about Mara.

It would have been easy enough to tell them how to look for Mara themselves: all anyone in the village did was check the workshop, because that's where Nic usually was, and if Mara wasn't there with zem, ze would know where he was. If neither of them were there, you checked the dining room, the bath house, and then knocked on their front door in case they had adjourned to their bed in the middle of the day. If Mara wasn't any of those places, you basically just waited until the next meal time, because Mara would find Nic and drag zem to a meal no matter what he was in the middle of.

But no one really liked the idea of letting the official Arizedo delegation know how to find Mara, let alone giving them permission to wander around the village unaccompanied, so whoever they found first inevitably told them to wait there, or go back to the dock to wait, while they found Mara. Ayla was, in fact, a petty enough person to take satisfaction in watching a couple of high-ranking Arizedo priests mill about the dock or the village gate uncertainly.

The problem was the idiots who weren't there on official business.

It was only a few months after Mara killed Indiyit and gave the church's remaining leadership very specific instructions for how to avoid pissing him off that the first idiot showed up.

Said idiot clearly didn't realize how small the village was, or how infrequently they had visitors. Sure, he wasn't wearing liturgical robes or one of those ugly amulets, but he was a stranger and his "casual" inquiries about Mara were not subtle.

Danny ran to Ayla, where she was kneeling in the damp soil of the field, murmuring encouragement to the brassicas. "Hey," he said, leaning over with his hands on his knees, panting, "there's some Arizedoan here who thinks he's in disguise asking about Mara."

Ayla scrunched up her nose. "Eugh," she said. "Did you direct him to Mara? Or send someone to get him?"

Danny shook his head. "I wasn't sure I should."

Ayla snorted. "He killed the High Priest easily enough, I'm sure he can handle whoever this loser is," she said. "All the Church stuff is officially his business."

"I guess he is a god," Danny said, doubtfully. "He just...doesn't usually seem very divine."

"Lucky for us," Ayla said, because she had heard plenty of stories from Arizedoans where they basically used The Destroyer as a boogeyman to scare farmers and craftspeople out of doing their thing. The closest Mara had ever come to a vengeful rampage of destruction was when he broke a rake, got mad about it, and then kicked a nearby bucket and also broke that. Unless, of course, you counted his third day of existence, when he managed to topple over every single little lean-to Nic built them in one fell swoop, and burst into tears about it because he had legitimately been trying to help.

But Nic also reported Mara had crushed Indiyit's heart in his chest, from across the room, because Indiyit dared threaten the village and Nic zemself, so clearly Mara could do the terrifying god shtick if he wanted.

"Even if he wasn't," Ayla said, "I'd still say send this Arizedoan to Mara so he can beat them up."

Danny laughed. "Yeah, that's fair," he said. "I'll go get him." He took off back the way he'd come.

Ayla got up, brushed the soil off her hands and knees, and headed for the village center at a more sedate pace. When she arrived, Mara was laughing in a disgruntled stranger's face.

Ayla whispered to Danny, "What happened?"

Danny told her quietly, "He suggested he could make Mara remember his destiny."

Ayla snorted. The disgruntled stranger shot her a mean look.

Mara stopped laughing, although he still looked somewhat amused. "Okay, guy," he said, "are you stupid or do you think I'm stupid?"

"What?" the stranger asked, frowning. "Uh, that is--my lord, I would never--"

"Because it would be really stupid to think you're more powerful than Indiyit was," Mara said, interrupting him. He crossed his arms over his chest. "And it would be really insulting if you thought that didn't matter, because I had somehow just misunderstood him and what he thought I should want."

"Uh," the stranger said.

Mara shifted his weight and tilted his head to one side. Somehow, it made him look at least twice as threatening. "You should get out of here," Mara said. He lowered his voice to add, "And pray I don't see you again."

The stranger's face paled to the point he looked like he was about to pass out. "Uh, yes, sir," he said, then turned and fled toward the dock.

"Oh, my," Danny said, and when Ayla looked over at him, he was fanning himself with one of his hands. At her look, he said, "I know you don't care about this kind of thing, but that was extremely sexy."

Mara finally relaxed out of his threatening posture, back into the caring and slightly goofy man Ayla was familiar with. "Oh, come on," he said.

"Trust me," Danny said, "Nic's gonna be sad ze missed this."

That made Mara blush, which made Danny laugh. Ayla rolled her eyes. "Well, if that's all the excitement over," she said, "I'll see you both later."

The idiots weren't always so easy to get rid of. Very rarely did anyone do any more than threaten Mara--Ayla didn't know if everyone would be as hesitant to fight their own god as the Arizedoans were, or if fighting a god whose entire thing was destroying things seemed like an extra-bad idea--but Mara physically threw more than one Arizdeoan into the ocean. Once, one of them interrupted dinner, and the disgusted look Mara gave him would have made Ayla want to shrivel up into nothingness if it was directed at her.

Shortly after Mara and Nic got married, an Arizedoan woman showed up and pissed Mara off enough that he took away her access to magic, which Ayla had not realized he could do.

When Ayla asked him about it at dinner that night, Mara only shrugged. "I couldn't do it to any magic user," he said, "but since she was trying to use magic on me, I could feel it was the same as some of the priests', and they get their magic from me. It stood to reason I could cut her off."

"So you can just un-cleric someone," Nic said.

"Only if they're an Arizedoan cleric," Mara said.

Eli laughed. "That's brutal," he said. sounding admiring.

"It is kind of beautiful," Danny agreed.

"What kind of magic was she trying to use?" Chiamaka asked. "I could hear you shouting from the barn, it sounded like she really ticked you off."

Mara flushed and looked down at his plate.

"Okay," Nan said, "so either she was pretending to be Nic or trying to seduce you." She nodded. "Got it."

Mara put his head down on the table next to his plate, and covered it with his arms.

Nic started laughing. "Babe," ze said, "did she really?"

"I don't want to talk about it," Mara muttered. The pointy tips of his ears were bright red.

By the time Hari was two, they were all pretty used to ignoring suspicious strangers in the village, as long as they didn't try to make trouble for the rest of them. Mara didn't have trouble taking care of them on his own, and most of them were just kooks who thought they could somehow get Mara back on the path to ruling the world, or at least giving his blessing to their attempt to do so in his name. Word of Mara taking away that woman's magic seemed to have gotten around, so people did not try a more personal angle any more.

So Ayla was really only surprised when the suspiciously nondescript stranger she saw talking to Mara at the water pump early one morning stuck around for the rest of the day. First they helped Mara haul the water buckets to the kitchen, then followed Mara around as he went through the field, picking basket after basket of ripe crops. Ayla didn't have a lot of time to devote to thinking about it, though, because the more of this harvest they managed to actually get to before it rotted, the more they had to figure out how to store and preserve.

Toward the end of the day, when Ayla was sitting on an upturned barrel, gazing at sacks and baskets of produce she needed to store somehow, Mara walked over, stranger still in tow.

"Hey," he said, "this is Kay, she's going to stay with us for a while and help with the harvest."

Ayla blinked at the pronoun, because she was pretty sure she'd heard Danny call Kay "the new guy" earlier in the day, but she decided it was none of her business. After all, it wouldn't be the first time someone in the village changed which pronouns people used for them. She asked, "Taking in strays now, are you?"

"Be nice," Mara said. He turned to Kay, and said, "This is Ayla. She's basically in charge of the farm, so if you can't find me or Nic, you can ask her what you can help with."

Kay started to bow, frowned and stopped herself, then did a very clumsy curtsy instead. As tired and grumpy as Ayla was, it was still cute, in much the same way Hari's imperfect attempts at new words were cute. Kay said, "Nice to meet you."

Ayla was not especially surprised when, a few days later, Kay dropped whatever glamour she'd been using and turned out to be a monster. She was one of the human-shaped ones, so the biggest differences were her skin color and strange eyes, plus she only had four fingers on each hand. But she had better endurance than most humans and needed less sleep than even Mara, and she was eager to help, which would have been enough to get Ayla over her blue skin even if they hadn't been working from sun-up to sun-down on the harvest.

Kay reminded Ayla a lot of Mara right after the shipwreck. She was not surprised when Kay said she'd only been Awakened a few months before Mara killed Indiyit.

Having the extra hands during an extra-productive harvest season was nice, but Kay was obviously better-suited to other things. Most obviously, she was an adept magic user with much greater control than Mara had.

"Mara could do anything I do," Kay told Ayla, inscribing a stasis charm on one of their barrels, "but it would require practice. I think he prefers to do things by hand."

"Our first few attempts to teach him things didn't go very well," Ayla said. "I think most of the magic he does is Destroyer-specific stuff that would be hard for him to mess up."

Kay nodded. "It is hard to imagine him doing something like this," she said.

"The carving part, maybe," Ayla said.

"Maybe," Kay said. She finished inscribing the charm, then laid her hand over it. It glowed briefly, and when the glow faded, the lines of the charm were blue, as if they'd been dyed. "There," she said. "As long as the carving is blue, the stasis spell is working. When it begins to fade, someone should recharge it."

"That's great," Ayla said. "Are you up to doing more today?"

Kay thought for a few moments. "Yes," she said. "I can do at least two more."

"Don't push yourself," Ayla said. "It's not that urgent."

Kay nodded. "I could probably do three or four, but I am confident I can do two without exhausting myself."

"Good," Ayla said. "It's bad enough having one over-doer in the village."

Kay thought about that, as she moved along to another barrel. Finally, as she began drawing the outline of the charm with a piece of charcoal, she asked, "Is the over-doer Nic?"

Ayla smiled. "Oh, yeah," she said. "I guess ze's not as bad anymore, but that's mostly because Mara keeps an eye on zem."

"Ze is ambitious," Kay said.

"Ze has more ideas than sense, but I suppose you could call that ambition," Ayla said. She watched Kay finish drawing the outline of the charm, set down her charcoal, and pick up her little knife. Nic made it for her, complete with a cutely tooled sheath. Kay cried when Nic gave it to her, which had been a hell of a way to find out her tears were very yellow. And that no one had seen fit to give her a gift the entire four years she'd been alive. Ayla said, "I don't think you need me here to watch."

"No," Kay agreed, "but I like the company."

Ayla smiled, and hopped up to sit on top of one of the sealed barrels. "Guess I'll stay, then."

*

With a little assistance in fine-tuning the ritual from Kay, Mara did figure out how to carry a pregnancy instead of Nic. Well, sort of. His solution involved growing the fetus in a gourd, which he kept strapped to his body with one of the baby slings Hari now insisted she was too big for even though she still sometimes demanded to be carried.

"It needs to be in physical contact with one of us," Mara explained, carefully transferring the squash to the sling.

"Technically, there's fabric in the way," Ayla pointed out.

"Most fabric is magically null," Nic said. "Except for stuff like cloud silk and cloth of mithril."

"Kay thinks leather could interfere too," Mara said, tightening the ties of the sling. The tiny squash was far too small for the sling at this stage, although Ayla was certain it was larger than a fetus would have been right now in a real womb. "I'm not sure she's right about that, but I don't really want to test it with a baby."

"Fair enough," Ayla said. Testing magical theories with a baby sounded like an especially terrible idea. She asked, "Is it still going to take forty weeks?"

"Probably a little longer," Nic said. "Forty-five or fifty." Ze sniffed, and crossed zeir arms over zeir chest. "Still easy mode, compared to carrying it in your body."

Ayla laughed. Mara shrugged. "Yeah," he said. "I don't expect carrying this one to mess up anyone's joints or feet."

Hari was adorable with it. She talked to the squash often, sometimes ignoring Mara and addressing her conversational contributions to "Baby". "We're gonna go see Auntie Kay now, Baby." "It's bed time, Baby! Time for bed!" On more than one occasion, she interrupted the adults' conversation by addressing a question to the squash in a sling on Mara's front. "I'm hungry, Baby, how about you?"

Nan's son Eka thought she was crazy. Every time Hari tried to talk to her developing sibling in front of him, Eka rolled his eyes and took his toys somewhere else.

"How are you going to know when it's ready?" Ayla asked one night, getting into bed with Nic and Mara after finally getting Hari settled in her own bed. With a second child on the way, Nic had finally built the nursery ze'd started planning after the wedding. Hari, despite not being thrilled with having to sleep in her own bed, had been delighted to have her own room. She realized that, as long as she was quiet, bedtime was no longer a rule her grown-ups could enforce without breaking their promises about giving her privacy. Ayla didn't believe for a second that Hari was asleep right now, but she no longer fought them about bedtime, and she didn't stay up late enough to be groggy in the morning, which they all agreed was good enough.

"His juice will break," Nic said, and then snorted at zeir own awful joke.

Mara rolled his eyes. "I'm pretty sure we'll be able to feel it," he said. He loosened the straps of the sling to pull it over his head, making it loose enough to reach in and pull out the gourd. "And I mean, it'll be moving for months before that."

"So it'll just hatch," Ayla said. "You've reinvented eggs."

"That's what I said!" Nic exclaimed, taking the gourd from Mara and setting it gently in zeir lap.

"They do make more sense than pregnancy," Ayla said. "Especially since you've managed to eliminate the need to lay it." She shook her head. "I know I don't use it for much, but the idea of rearranging my whole downstairs by having a baby? Yuck."

Nic shrugged. "That part wasn't so bad," ze said. Mara and Ayla snorted at the same time. Nic said, "I mean, it sucked, but I could do it again. It's the fact that it all takes so long I didn't like."

"Chiamaka told me once that some people who've had lots of babies can barely hold their pee in," Mara said. He set aside the sling, folding it carefully so it wouldn't get tangled when he picked it up again in the morning. "It's not not horrifying."

"Ah, now we see why you invented the gourd ritual," Ayla said, grinning.

"Pregnancy is a beautiful miracle," Mara said. "It is also horrifying. To be fair, that's what miracles are like."

"You're biased," Nic said, shimmying down into the bed so ze was laying down. "All the miracles you personally could perform are horrifying."

"There's nothing horrifying about..." Mara trailed off, thinking. Finally, he shook his head. "Whatever, it's still true."

"Sure," Ayla said. "You tell yourself that."

Mara threw a pillow at her.

*

Chiamaka was not especially enthusiastic about the gourd baby, although she acknowledged it was a neat solution to Nic's aversion to pregnancy. "But I know how to look after a normal pregnancy," she said. "How am I supposed to help with a pumpkin?"

Nic asked Kay if she could help, since she was by far the most magically gifted resident of their village. Kay, of course, protested that she knew nothing about pregnancy or fetal development.

"No," Nic said, "but you can monitor a spell and check on the fetus. I'm sure Chiamaka can tell you what to look for."

So Chiamaka and Kay both kept an eye on Mara and his squash baby. Kay used magic to monitor the developing fetus, while Chiamaka taught her what to expect.

Mara did not get as cranky as Nic had, or have as many weird food cravings, but he did get back pain and sore feet from carrying around the extra weight, and he did eat more. Since Nic and Mara slept with the squash on the bed between them both, Nic was often ravenous in the morning, and Ayla noticed when she slept with them, she woke up a little hungrier as well.

Most of the time they were incubating their weird gourd egg, though, Ayla slept in her own bed. This was not entirely so Hari had a bed to crawl into that wasn't her own, but that wasn't an unimportant factor. Hari liked the privacy of the nursery, but she missed sleeping with her parents.

The first night Nic and Mara told Hari she couldn't sleep with them, Hari woke Ayla up by crawling, sobbing, into her bed.

"What's wrong?" Ayla asked, simultaneously groggy from being awakened and nervous with adrenaline from Hari's crying.

Hari flung herself onto Ayla's midsection, burying her face in Ayla's chest. "Nonna and Daddy don't trust me with the baby," she sobbed.

Ayla's first instinct was to disagree, but she tried very hard to not do that with Hari and Eka, or even with the kids that visited the village with the traders. Instead, she kept quiet until she figured out to ask, "Why do you think that?"

"They won't let me in the bed," Hari said, her sobs making her words even harder to understand than usual. Ayla stroked her back. "They think I'll hurt the baby."

Ayla frowned. "Did they say that?" she asked. She didn't think they would, but best friends or not, she wouldn't hesitate to yell at them if they had.

"No," Hari admitted. "But why else would they not let me sleep with them?"

"Oh, nugget," Ayla murmured, still rubbing her back. "Do you remember your friend from the boats, the one whose mama was pregnant?"

Hari sniffled. "Yeah," she said.

"Do you remember how she was always hungry, and how Aunt Chiamaka had Nonna make extra potions for her to take, to keep her strong while the baby was growing?"

"Yeah," Hari said again. Her crying was settling down a little, although now she was making that awful snarfing noise every time she took a breath.

"Let's sit up," Ayla said. "That'll help you breathe a little better." She held Hari to her as she sat up, leaning against the headboard. Hari adjusted herself so she was sitting in Ayla's lap, with her arms around Ayla's neck. "That's better," Ayla murmured. Hari pressed her wet face into Ayla's neck. Gods, kids were gross and she loved them. Ayla resumed stroking Hari's back and said, "Your friend's mama was growing the baby inside her body, so she was the only one who got extra hungry and needed more food and sleep. But your parents are using magic to grow the baby outside a body. So whoever is touching it gets extra hungry and needs more food and sleep."

"Nonna too?" Hari asked.

"Yep, Nonna too. And me, when I sleep in their bed right now," Ayla said. "But you're still growing, and you need all your food and energy and sleep making you big and strong."

"But Daddy lets me touch the baby all the time," Hari said.

"That's true," Ayla said. "But that's only for a few minutes. Sleeping with it would give it hours and hours to suck up energy from you."

"Oh," Hari said. After a second, she said, "I can't sleep in the bed 'cause the baby would hurt me?"

Ayla smiled. "You could say that," she said. "It doesn't mean to. It's just trying to grow."

"Like the plants," Hari said.

Ayla smiled. "Very much like the plants," she said. "We have to keep you in separate pots for a little bit."

Hari sniffled. After a minute, she muttered, "Thanks, Auntie Ayla."

"Of course, nugget," Ayla said. She kissed the top of Hari's head. Her hair was so much like Mara's, but unfortunately, whatever divine magic kept Mara's hair from trapping and accumulating debris had not been passed down to Hari. Not a day went by that one of them didn't pull a twig or bug or something out of Hari's hair. She said, "I'm sure your daddy and nonna didn't mean to worry you. We can talk to them about it in the morning, if you want."

"Kay," Hari said, but Ayla wasn't sure she was really awake anymore.

Ayla wriggled down the headboard until she was laying down again. Hari squirmed down to press her face into the side of Ayla's boob, with her head tucked into Ayla's armpit. Ayla was nearly asleep when Hari murmured, "Can I come sleep with you while the baby's growing?"

"Of course, nugget," Ayla said again. Might as well, she thought. Sleeping with Nic and Mara while they had their gourd egg was not especially restful, and that way Hari would have somewhere to go.

*

Hari was extremely disappointed that her baby sister was still boring and immobile once she was out of her squash shell.

"I wanna play with her," Hari complained. "But she only cries and eats."

"That's what babies are like, nugget," Nic said.

"She'll be more fun in a few weeks," Ayla said. "Remember, she doesn't know anything right now. The first time you teach her how to play Peek-A-Boo will blow her mind."

Hari flopped onto the floor. She sighed gustily. "I wanna play now," she said. "It'll be forever before a few weeks."

"Yep, that's how time works," Ayla said.

Hari rolled over to give her the hairy eyeball. "Nonna," she said, still glaring at Ayla, "Auntie Ayla's being mean to me."

"Yep," Nic said.

"Nonna!"

"Well, what do you expect me to do about it?" Nic asked. "I'm not the boss of her."

"Ze can't even stop me from being mean to zem," Ayla said. She poked Hari's tummy, making her shriek.

"Augh, girls," Nic said, leaning over to check on the baby in her basket. "You're going to wake up Bernie."

*

Ayla never really stopped sleeping in Nic and Mara's bed after Hari was born. While Bernie was gestating, sure, she'd spent most nights in her own bed just so she wouldn't be exhausted, but it was the easiest habit to pick back up, and slip back into their bed after they got Bernie and Hari down for the night. Thankfully, Nic had originally made the bed to fit three adults who weren't necessarily cuddling, so there was plenty of room for one of them to curl protectively around the baby and still have room on the edge for Hari to climb in if she had trouble sleeping.

For the first six months or so of Bernie's life, of course, they were rarely all in the bed at once. They slept in shifts, trading off who was awake and who needed a solid eight hours. But when Bernie was sleeping through most nights, Ayla did not go back to sleeping in her own bed any more than she had when Hari finally started sleeping through nights. Often, she'd take Bernie to lay down and fall asleep in their bed, with Bernie lying on her chest, since she got tired earliest. Ayla woke in the mornings with Nic on one side of her and Mara on the other, wrapped around her, ready to take Bernie if they needed to.

Hari loved her little sister, and tried her best to help take care of her. Still, she was getting old enough to get bored of watching a baby cry and suck on its own fingers and toes. Ayla took her out to the fields and the barn more and more often. She was too little to be especially helpful, but having her underfoot asking questions was much less liable to bore her.

It felt like no time at all before Bernie was walking and talking, toddling after Hari and Ayla every chance she got.

"'Snot fair," Nic muttered one night, snug against Ayla's side, with one arm keeping Bernie from sliding off Ayla's chest. Bernie was kind of too big for it to be comfortable for Ayla to have her fall asleep laying on her, but she was just as much of a sucker for Nic and Mara's children as she was for Nic and Mara themselves.

"What isn't?" Ayla murmured back.

"Mara's Hari's favorite," Nic said softly, "and Bernie clearly likes you better than me."

"Don't be silly," Ayla said, although she did see where Nic was coming from. Practically as soon as Bernie was weaned, she seemed ready to abandon Nic whenever possible. Hari had clung to Mara, and still did to an extent, but if Bernie wasn't trailing after her sister, she was asking for Ayla.

"I'm not mad," Nic reassured her. "I'm glad we have you. It's just..." Ze yawned. "One of my kids should like me best, shouldn't they?"

"Nic, the whole village likes you best," Ayla said.

"They're not my kids," Nic said. Ze nuzzled zeir face into the side of Ayla's chest. "Bet if I said that to Mara, he'd just tell me he's ready to have another one whenever I am."

Ayla managed to muffle her snort of laughter. Bernie shifted, making a grumpy noise, but didn't wake up. She pressed her face into Ayla's other boob. "Third time's the charm?" she murmured, after she was certain Bernie wasn't going to wake up.

"Be stupid and selfish to have another kid just 'cause my daughters like you and Mara best," Nic said, sounding a little more slurred and indistinct. Ze'd worked through Bernie's naptime to finish a table for Danny and Amora's new dining room. Ze said after a minute, "Guess I shouldn't blame them. I like you and Mara best, too."

Nic didn't have any particular self-worth problems, minor crisis after finding out Mara was a god notwithstanding. Still, as always, Ayla's heart did something funny hearing Nic put her in the same category as Mara. "Don't be silly," Ayla said, but Nic only made an indistinct noise in reply.

*

When Ayla was a child, she found the way grown-ups always seemed surprised by the passage of time irritating. Of course she was bigger. She was a child; that was what children did, get bigger. Time was passing at the same rate for her as it was for everyone else, after all.

Now that she was an adult, she found that wasn't true. Sure time literally passed at the same rate for her as it did for Hari, Bernie, Eka, and the trading flotilla kids, but a year was a huge chunk of Hari's life, compared to a much smaller chunk of Ayla's life. Time felt slipperier than it had when she was younger. It felt like no time at all before Mara was carrying around another squash in a sling, and Hari would confidently go off unsupervised to walk to Kay's cottage on the outskirts of the woods. Mara's second pregnancy seemed to take less time than his first. Ayla wondered how Nic's pregnancy had seemed so interminable when this one was over in the blink of an eye.

One day, Ayla was planning out the planting schedule for the spring, and she barely had time to turn around before it was harvest time and Hari was carefully showing Bernie how to preserve seeds for the winter.

*

Nic and Mara's third child was a boy they named Lind. Hari insisted she could help take care of baby Lind, and begged to change his diapers. She didn't change her mind the first time he peed on her, surprisingly, but she did burst into tears when he pooped on her while she had him on her lap. To be fair, she was wearing her favorite dress at the time. But she didn't yell at him, which Ayla thought showed remarkable maturity for a six-year-old. Lind started crying anyway, upset by Hari's tears.

Within that first year of Lind's life, Ayla suspected Nic would get zeir wish of being one of the kids' favorites. Lind only tolerated being held by Mara or Ayla if Nic wasn't in view. He didn't want any of the other villagers to hold him at all. Ayla was a little shocked he didn't mind being held in his sister's lap. The only other person who could watch Lind without giving him back at the end of the day with the pinched look of someone who had endured non-stop crying was Kay.

Kay said as much one day, when she met Mara and Ayla out front of the dining hall to hand him over. "I don't know what everyone else is talking about," she said. "Lind was a perfect sweetie all day."

"Ah, he's clever like his nonna," Mara said, poking Lind's chubby cheeks to make him smile. "He knows you're family."

Kay looked at Mara with her huge blue eyes even bigger than usual. "Family?" she asked.

"I know you don't live with us," Mara said, "but you're basically my sister." He wasn't looking at her, so it was up to Ayla to scoop Lind out of Mara's arms, mere fractions of a second before Kay threw her arms around Mara's shoulders and burst into unsettlingly yellow tears.

Lind squirmed and tugged on Ayla's hair, then pointed at Kay. Ayla told him, "She's fine, she's not hurt or sad. Auntie Kay's just having a lot of feelings she needs to let out." Ayla didn't know how much of that Lind really understood yet, but he looked less worried anyway.

Mara had reflexively pulled Kay into his arms. Over time, it had become common knowledge in the village that Mara gave excellent hugs, so he had a lot of practice. "I mean, we were Awakened at about the same time," Mara said. "Have I really never called you that before?"

Kay shook her head, burying her face in the shoulder of Mara's vest.

"Oh," Mara said. "Sorry, I thought I had." He tilted his neck to bump his cheek against the side of Kay's head. "I take it you don't mind."

"Of course not!" Kay wailed into his shoulder.

Mara smiled at Ayla and Lind over Kay's head. "Sisters," he said. "Give it a few years, Lindy, this'll be you."

*

Bernie and Lind were in the nursery, napping. Ayla, Mara, and Hari were sitting together quietly. Ayla was on one end of the old sofa, working on a blanket and kind of buried under it, so when she started to run out of yarn, she asked Hari to fetch the yarn basket from her side of the house. Hari was nearly eleven and starting to exhibit the attitude of a pubescent human. She stood up, rolling her eyes as she did so. "Okay, Mom," she said, and then froze in her tracks. She looked over at Ayla, who had looked up at Mara, who was looking at the door, because Nic had gone out to the toilet.

Hari said, "That's kind of true, isn't it?"

"Yarn," Ayla repeated, looking back at her. Hari grinned at her, and went to the side door to Ayla's side of the house.

"I don't mind if Nic doesn't," Mara said, when Hari was gone. "You do as much as either of us."

"I do as much as everyone in the village," Ayla said, avoiding Mara's gaze. She was afraid of what might be showing on her face. Her heart was pounding. Thankfully, yarn did not rattle and betray the shaking of Ayla's hands, although she couldn't swear Mara wouldn't notice anyway.

"You literally sat up with Bernie two nights last week," Mara said. Bernie had picked up some kind of stomach bug, presumably from something she ate, since her sister and brother didn't get sick. She was still exhausted enough that she hadn't tried to argue about taking a nap with her baby brother. Mara went on, "No one else does as much for our kids as you do."

That was when Nic came back from the outhouse. "Why did I build the toilets so far away?" ze asked, scraping the mud off zeir boots next to the door.

"You were trying to be fair," Mara said.

"Hari just added me to your marriage, by the way," Ayla blurted out.

"What?" Nic asked.

Mara said, "That's not fair, her calling you Mom doesn't add you to our marriage."

Nic grinned. "I think you preemptively did that when you refused to move out," ze said, hanging zeir rain cape on one of the pegs by the door. "She called you Mom?"

Thank the gods Mara redirected the conversation, maybe Ayla wouldn't have to hide from them tonight after all. She said, "And then instead of apologizing, she doubled down."

"She just said it was kind of true," Mara said. "And she's right."

Nic bent down to pull off zeir boots, one foot at a time, and set the somewhat-less-muddy boots on the mat next to the boot scraper. "I bet 'Mama' would be easier for Lind to manage than 'Aunt Ayla'," ze said.

"That's not how it works," Ayla protested. Her face was warm, but her hands had stopped shaking. She started working her yarn again.

"Why not?" Mara asked. "Here, I'll help. I'll destroy traditional parenting," he said. He held up one of his hands, then clenched it into a fist. "Bam, it's gone! You're our kids' third parent now."

"I hate you," Ayla said.

Nic crossed over to the couch where Mara was sitting and draped zemself over his lap. Ze said, "What a thing to say to the father of your children."

Hari came back into the room, carrying Ayla's yarn basket. "Oh hey Nonna! Can I call Ayla 'Mom', does that bother you? It didn't seem like it bothered Dad."

"Why would it bother me?" Nic asked. "She's done a third of the work."

"I have not," Ayla said, but she didn't tell Hari not to call her Mom. She couldn't bring herself to. She took the yarn basket. "Thanks, brat."

When Bernie and Lind woke up, Hari told them Aunt Ayla was now Mama. Bernie tackled Ayla, yelling, "Mama!"

Lind said quite seriously, "Tank goodness," which made everyone else start giggling.

*

After dinner when the kids went to bed for the night, Ayla set aside her half-finished blanket and climbed onto the other couch, wedging herself between Nic and Mara. Mara immediately put his arm around her waist, while Nic leaned zeir head on her shoulder and took one of her hands.

"We can still get them to stop," Mara murmured immediately. "If you really don't like it."

"Nic," Ayla said, squeezing zeir hand. "Did you mean it?"

"Which part?" ze asked.

"Being married to us," Mara said. "Right?" he asked Ayla, more quietly. Ayla nodded.

"Oh," Nic said. "Well, yeah, but if you'd rather I didn't say it that way, that's fine. You can be the kids' mom without being married to us."

Mara sighed. "Babe," he said. Of course he had realized Ayla wouldn't ask, instead of just yelling at them to stop, if she didn't like the idea.

"You are so stupid," Ayla said, jiggling her shoulder to jostle Nic. She had to blink furiously to keep the tears gathering in her eyes from falling. "If the kids get to call me 'Mom' then I insist on having wife rights."

"Oh," Nic said, relaxing against her side. "Okay. Good, then." Ze squeezed Ayla's hand in zeirs.

Mara leaned over to kiss Ayla's cheek. "What wife rights do you not already have?" he asked when he was done. "According to Eli, you're already the most wifely person in the village."

Nic groaned, because Eli's idea of what a wife should be was about as enlightened as his idea of who should be attracted to whom. Face positively flaming, Ayla said, "Considering the kids decided I'm their mom, I think the only thing left was the word. The only thing left that I want, anyway."

"Then can I kiss you outside the house?" Mara asked.

Nic made an indignant noise, sitting up to look at Ayla. "He gets kisses?" ze asked. "How come I don't get kisses?"

"You're too horny," Mara said, and Nic made another indignant noise, this one almost a squawk. Ayla smiled, and one of the tears slid down her cheek.

"You can kiss me in front of people," Ayla said to Mara. She turned to Nic. "You too, if you want."

"Good," Nic said, but ze still looked troubled. Mara reached around Ayla to poke zem. Nic half-assedly slapped his hand away, then said, "Ayla, I know you don't want to have sex. I wouldn't do anything you didn't want to, or told me not to."

"Aw, babe," Mara said. "I didn't mean it like that."

"I know that, of course I know that," Ayla said. She hadn't thought about the possibility of hurting Nic's feelings. She struggled for a minute to come up with an explanation that would make sense to zem. Finally, she said, "At your wedding, you said that Mara always makes you feel safe. It's the same for me. Things feel safer with him."

"Oh," Nic said, the tension immediately draining out of zem. "Yeah, of course," ze said. Ze looked up at her, blushing faintly. "Can I kiss you now?"

Ayla rolled her eyes. "I already said you could," she said.

Nic put one hand on Ayla's cheek, tilting her face up a bit. Ze smiled, leaned in, and lightly pressed zeir lips to her mouth.

Ze pulled away after only a moment, still smiling. Ze looked quite smug, actually, which Ayla wished she had known would happen. "I love you," Nic said. "However you want to take that, and however you want to give it back, I love you."

"We both do," Mara said, from Ayla's other side. "I'm pretty sure we always have. I know I have."

"Absolutely," Nic said. Ze chuckled. "Ayla, I was so disappointed when you told us both to keep our hands to ourselves that first week."

Ayla flushed even deeper. It might even have been visible, at this point. She said, "No you weren't."

Nic chuckled again. This time, Ayla thought ze sounded a little nervous. "Of course I was," Nic said. "You didn't panic, immediately took charge and organized everyone, and picked me out to help. Then you didn't argue when I built that first little hut for the three of us. I thought--" Ze cut zemself off, looking embarrassed. "This is very silly," ze said. "But Mara needed so much watching those first few days, and we were kind of in charge of him and everyone else, so I thought, like. We were kind of like his parents, and maybe that would extend to being a couple."

Mara snorted. Ayla laughed too. "Nic," she said.

"I said it was silly!" Nic protested, flushing.

"You did," Mara said, reaching over to pat zeir shoulder.

Nic went on, still pink, "And then you told us to keep our hands to ourselves, and the next day you made sure to tell everyone in the village--I mean, we weren't a village yet, but still--that you weren't interested in sex and we'd only embarrass ourselves if we tried to hit on you, and I thought, well, at least it isn't personal. And then I just had to ignore the fact that I was sharing a bed with two attractive people every night."

"Poor baby," Mara murmured.

"It probably would have been harder if we weren't working until we dropped every day," Nic admitted. "But it wasn't something I never thought about."

Ayla swallowed, trying to clear the lump from her throat. "I know it's selfish," she said, "because I don't actually want to have sex with you, but I like knowing that."

"It's not selfish," Mara said.

"Why would it be selfish to feel good?" Nic asked. "I'm not going to die from you not fucking me. If knowing I would be into it makes you happy, I'm glad." Ze tucked a stray hair behind Ayla's ear. "I just never wanted to make you uncomfortable."

"You haven't," Ayla said, tearing up again. "Neither of you did. You've been so good, I--sometimes I felt like I was taking advantage of you."

Mara laughed. "How could you be taking advantage of us?" he asked.

Ayla turned to bury her face in Nic's shoulder. "The...cuddles, and the kissing, and the sharing a bed," she said. "I was getting things you're not supposed to give your friends."

"Why should that matter?" Nic asked, sounding bewildered. "I mean, I know why it might matter to, I don't know, Eli or your parents or someone like that, but why would it matter to us? I don't care about what we're 'supposed' to do. You know I don't see any reason to only do things the 'right' way."

"That's different," Ayla said. "Opting out of gender or man and woman stuff isn't the same. Anyway, you already had each other. Why would you need me?"

Mara snorted. "Because we'd fall apart without you?" he said. "You know there's no village without you," he said. "I don't think there would be an us without you, either."

"It's not about needing, anyway," Nic said. "I don't need Mara. I don't need sex. I don't need most of the things I enjoy. I could live just fine on my own, without you, or Mara, or the kids. But I don't have to, and I don't want to. So I don't."

Ze grabbed Ayla by the shoulders and pushed her back enough that Nic could look her in the eye. Ze said, "When we first woke up on the beach, yeah, sure, I needed you, you needed me, we all needed each other, to work together and survive in a strange place, and then to make sure we could keep surviving." Ze squeezed Ayla's shoulders, smiled a little, and went on, "But you know who I've never shared a bed with, or taken a bath with, or even let watch the kids for longer than a few minutes at a time? Eli. He's been here from the start, and he was instrumental in all our survival at first, but I can't imagine ever letting him live with me for longer than he absolutely had to."

"You deserve to be happy, too," Mara said, taking Ayla's free hand in both of his.

"Shut up," Ayla said reflexively, having to blink back the tears again. She wasn't going to be able to hold them back much longer.

"Oh, no," Nic said. Ayla looked back over at zem. Ze asked, "Gods, is that--I meant it as a joke, you adding yourself to our relationship by refusing to move out, but is that why you were so upset when we asked you to move out?"

"When you asked her to move out," Mara corrected.

Ayla flushed. "No," she said, but then, "Maybe. I don't know, I just, it was so sudden, and I felt left out. Which I thought was stupid, because it's not like I wanted to have sex with either of you, but I still felt it."

"Oh, honey," Nic said, and hugged her. Ze murmured into Ayla's ear, "Why didn't you say something?"

"Everyone would have just said I was jealous," Ayla said. "Or that I needed to grow up and accept that I wasn't the most important person in my friends' lives. Or that I should just be happy for you."

"Who said that?" Mara asked quietly. Ayla knew without looking that he would have that serious look on his face, the one she thought of as his angry god face, since it usually only came out when Arizedoans were being stubborn.

"No one, it was just an example," Ayla said, waving a hand in the air. Nic still had zeir arms around her, so her wave was a little cramped.

"Pretty specific examples," Nic said.

They weren't even, but Ayla knew what ze meant. She sighed, and said, "No one here. It was in my old village, before the church came. My parents used to say it was a sign of immaturity, that I couldn't be happy for my friends when they started dating and stopped having time for me."

"That's bullshit," Mara said immediately. "You know that's bullshit, right?"

"I guess," Ayla said. She felt Mara take a deep breath, presumably to get angry about it some more, and cut him off to say, "Shut up, I'm not done." He made a noise, then slumped over to lean on her side. Ayla said, "I mean, I didn't grow out of it, and about half the village here just believed me and didn't think anything about it when I told them, and that helped. But we were all still so young. And when you added on to the house for me, and let me keep sleeping with you sometimes, I thought maybe I shouldn't press my luck. I thought, maybe this is good enough."

"Ayla," Nic murmured, and squeezed her in zeir arms again.

"I mean, it was," Ayla said, even though it was more complicated than that. "It is. This is what I wanted."

"Except for knowing you're as important to us as we are to you," Mara said.

Ayla flushed again, and turned to bury her face in Nic's hair again to hide it. "Yeah, well," she mumbled.

"You are," Nic said. Ze leaned back, but kept one hand on Ayla's back. "Ayla, I love you." Ze sighed. "And if you want to make it official, we could have another wedding."

Ayla laughed. "I wouldn't make you go through that again," she said.

"Hey!" Mara said.

"Besides," Ayla said, pulling Nic back onto her shoulder, and squeezing Mara's hands on her other side, "I don't really care if everyone else knows. The kids know, and the two of you know."

"But it's okay if we call you our wife?" Mara asked quietly.

"If you want," Ayla said, as if the idea hadn't burned itself into her mind and heart as soon as Nic suggested it. "But you know people are going to think it's strange."

"We gestated two of our children in squash," Nic murmured. "You know neither of us care about strange."

"You're family," Mara said. "Even if you didn't want to be our wife, or the kids' mom, you'd still be our family."

"Mara," Ayla said, and could hold back her tears no longer.

"You wanna go to bed and not have sex about it?" Nic asked, rubbing Ayla's back. Ayla nodded.

Nic and Mara helped Ayla get ready for bed, pressing soft kisses to her cheeks and shoulders as they divested her of her clothes, then crawled into bed on either side of her. Nic wrapped one arm around her shoulders, while Mara put his arm around Ayla's waist. They took turns wiping her eyes with the softest blanket. By the time Ayla's feelings stopped leaking out of her eyes, she was tired enough to fall asleep anyway, so she didn't fight it, and let herself fall asleep in both of their arms.

*

Two days later, Nic was on zeir knees in their little courtyard, laying down stones for a garden path that would be aesthetically pleasing as well as hopefully keep the kids from getting so muddy when they played in the courtyard, while Ayla and Mara watched zem from the porch. Ayla sat between Mara's legs, her back resting against his chest, working some more on her blanket. She was trying not to feel self-conscious about cuddling one of them in public. It was easier with Mara, since he was so comfortable with physical affection, but it was also an unfortunate fact that Nic didn't spend nearly as much time sitting still as ze ought to. This kind of cuddling on the porch would only happen while they worked on something together, most likely.

Nic stopped what ze was doing and looked up at the porch. "Ayla," ze said, "I told you before we even had Hari that you were always welcome in our bed. What did you think I meant by that?"

Ayla tensed up at the question. Mara leaned forward, squeezing her around the middle, and kissing the back of her head. It helped enough that Ayla could bring herself to say, "I didn't think both of you had the same idea."

Nic frowned. "I'm pretty sure I said that because Mara said something."

"Mm," Mara agreed. "I told you that months before Nic did."

"You didn't know what you were saying," Ayla said.

"We had an entire conversation about how I would be perfectly willing to have sex with you if you wanted," Mara said, sounding bemused. He was still holding her, though, and he didn't feel tense at all. "How could I not know what I was saying?"

"You had that conversation over ten years ago and still thought you were taking advantage of us?" Nic asked.

"I thought you wouldn't--I don't know," Ayla said, blushing down at the blanket and yarn in her lap. "We never talked about it, all three of us, and I didn't think either of you would want me when you already had each other."

"So I should have told Nic about it," Mara said, "and forced us all to have an awkward conversation about it then."

"Apparently so!" Nic said, hands on zeir hips.

"Okay, well, I didn't even know what I wanted then," Ayla said, "so I probably would've just lied about it and moved out again."

Nic laughed. "That sounds about right," ze said.

"It worked out," Mara said, and pressed another kiss to Ayla's hair.

"Don't you dare make me cry where other people can see it," Ayla said, making Mara chuckle. He kissed her hair again. Ayla leaned back against him, and took her blanket back up. Nic smiled at them, gaze impossibly tender, before turning back to the garden and the problem of mud.

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