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The Long Winter
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the_second_journal.doc
Keywords male 1281624, female 1167383, anthro 250841, feral 104761, squirrel 32920, pregnant 25755, pregnancy 16135, dragoness 13945, story progression 2199, story series 2162, gheval 68
The Second Journal


A Silvania Story  -  SY 4529, Late Spring


~ I ~

Jukrit found the second journal on a Tuesday, which he later thought was appropriate  -  significant things in this household had a habit of arriving on Tuesdays.

He had been working along the south fence with a trowel, carefully loosening the soil around the base of the deepwort to encourage the spring growth and check the root health, when the trowel caught on something that was not a root. He set the tool aside and used his hands and found oilcloth  -  the same dark, age-stained material as the first time, the same careful sealing, a package only slightly smaller than what Banari had retrieved in winter.

He sat back on his heels in the late spring afternoon and looked at it for a long moment.

Then he went inside and washed his hands and opened it at the kitchen table with the same care he had given the first, and found a second journal  -  Mowla?s hand, the same mixed script, the same careful illustrations. The paper was in slightly better condition than the first, protected by its deeper position in the soil and the deepwort roots that had held the space around it. The date on the first page was earlier than the first journal by several years.

He read for an hour before he found the ferret section.

Then he set the journal down, very carefully, and said something under his breath that Noraxia, coming through the doorway, chose not to acknowledge.

"What?" she said instead.

"She buried two of them," Jukrit said. "Mowla buried two journals along the south fence." He looked at Noraxia. "The second one  -  the one I just found  -  would have been considerably more useful to me six weeks ago."

Noraxia looked at the open journal. Then she sat down and read where his finger indicated, and after a moment she made a sound that was not quite a laugh and not quite anything else.

"How much more useful?" she said.

"Considerably," he said.

~ II ~

The section was titled, in Mowla?s mixed script, something that translated approximately as notes on the ferret pair  -  Goss and Miri. It ran to eleven pages, which was more than she had given any other subject in either journal, which told Jukrit something about how much the situation had occupied her.

The male, Goss, had been a working ferret of a breed Mowla described as northern hill stock  -  large-framed, dense-coated, acquired from a breeder two regions over. His weight on arrival had been 4.3 kilograms. The female, Miri, had been a native Pansilva lowland breed: finer-boned, smaller in every dimension, her weight recorded at 420 grams. The disparity was not, Mowla wrote, something she had anticipated when she acquired them separately, and by the time she understood what she was dealing with the courtship was already well underway.

Jukrit read this and thought about Darit and Chenara, and continued.

The mating had proceeded, Mowla wrote, because Goss had an instinctive gentleness with Miri that she found impossible to argue with  -  she had observed it for three seasons before allowing it, and had never once seen him be anything other than precisely careful. What followed in the journal was the record of a pregnancy that Mowla had managed with close attention and, evidently, a great deal of improvised technique.

The considerations she listed were specific. A female carrying offspring sired by a significantly larger male needed more frequent monitoring than standard practice suggested  -  not because pregnancy itself was more dangerous, but because the offspring could develop toward the larger parent?s dimensions in ways that a smaller body needed assistance managing. She recommended specific dietary adjustments by trimester, a regimen of gentle movement to maintain the mother?s conditioning, and a detailed protocol for the birth itself: positioning assistance, timing of intervention, and a list of the precise signs that indicated the need for active help versus watchful presence.

She had, Jukrit noted, arrived at most of these recommendations through direct observation and trial, without any guiding literature. She had simply watched carefully and written down what she learned.

He read the eleven pages twice. Then he wrote four pages of notes, cross-referencing Mowla?s observations against his own Guild training and the small amount of relevant literature he had found after the spring mating. The cross-references were extensive. The Guild literature, in comparison to Mowla?s eleven pages, was thin.

"I need to send a copy of this section to the Guild," he told Noraxia that evening.

"After you?ve used it for Chenara," she said.

"Obviously," he said.

~ III ~

He had been watching Chenara for signs since the spring mating with the focused attention of a healer who knew what he was looking for and was not certain he was looking in the right places. The standard indicators for gheval pregnancy were well documented. What was less documented was whether and how those indicators might be complicated by a significant size differential between the sire and the dam, and Jukrit had been making do with extrapolation and professional instinct.

Mowla?s notes on Miri?s early indicators were, he discovered, almost exactly what he had been observing in Chenara over the past three weeks and had not been certain how to interpret.

He went to the barn that afternoon with his kit and Mowla?s journal and confirmed what he had been cautiously suspecting: Chenara was pregnant.

She was in the stall nearest the door, which was her preferred position since the weather had warmed  -  she liked the light from the yard and the capacity to see who was coming. She received Jukrit?s examination with the easy trust of a gheval who had been examined by this particular healer many times and had long since decided he was acceptable. Bren watched from the adjacent stall with his characteristic expression of reserved interest.

When Jukrit was finished Chenara turned her head toward him and held still in the way she did when she wanted something  -  not restless, simply present, in his direction. He put his hand on her neck and stood there for a moment.

"You?re pregnant," he said to her. Knowing she didn?t have the word. Saying it for himself as much as anything. "Darit?s. One foal, I think, possibly two  -  it?s too early to be certain."

Her ear moved toward the sound of his voice.

He thought about Mowla?s eleven pages. About Goss and Miri and three seasons of observed gentleness and a weight disparity of over ten times. About a cheetah taur who had improvised a monitoring protocol that the Guild had not caught up with fifty years later.

"I?m going to take very good care of you," he said. "Better than last time. I know more now."

Chenara?s ear moved again. He was not certain she understood. He was fairly certain she understood enough.

~ IV ~

He told Raskon before he told anyone else, which seemed right given that Darit was Raskon?s and the news belonged to him as much as to the household.

Raskon received it in the way he received most significant things: quietly, with a quality of stillness that was not absence but the opposite of it. He was at the kitchen table when Jukrit told him, and he stayed at the table for a while afterward, not speaking.

"A foal," he said finally. "Darit?s foal."

"Possibly two. But probably one."

Raskon was quiet again. Then: "He?ll want to be near her."

"I expected that. We?ll manage the barn arrangements."

"He?s  -  careful," Raskon said. The word arrived with the weight of someone using it precisely, not casually. "He?s always been careful with her. That won?t change."

"I know," Jukrit said. "I?ve watched him."

Raskon nodded. He looked at his hands on the table. "I also have something to tell you," he said.

Jukrit waited.

"Nesori is pregnant." He said it with the directness of someone who has been holding something and is now setting it down. "Eight weeks, approximately. She  -  it was her decision to begin. She came to me in early spring and said she had decided it was time, and that she wanted to, and that the Long Winter was coming and she didn?t want to wait for conditions that might never be replicated here." He paused. "I agreed. Obviously I agreed."

Jukrit looked at him for a long moment. The kitchen was warm with late spring light and the sounds of the yard came through the open window and somewhere in the barn Chenara was carrying a foal she didn?t know about yet, and at the table across from him Raskon was the most visibly moved Jukrit had ever seen him  -  not distressed, not undone, but thoroughly present in the way of someone who has been handed something large and is still working out the dimensions of it.

"Congratulations," Jukrit said.

"Yes," Raskon said. "I think so."

~ V ~

Nesori told Noraxia herself, the following morning, on the catwalk. Jukrit was in the herb garden and could hear the conversation without intending to  -  the catwalk was not far from the garden fence, and Nesori?s voice carried.

She was precise about it, as she was precise about everything. The weeks, the current condition, the Iskret gestational considerations she had already researched, the things she would need from Jukrit as a healer. She had clearly been planning the conversation.

Noraxia listened to all of it and then said: "How do you feel?"

A pause  -  longer than Nesori?s pauses usually were.

"Different," she said. "From how I expected to feel."

"Better or worse?"

"Neither. Just different. I made the decision clearly. I understood what I was deciding. And still - " She stopped. "It is one thing to decide and another to find oneself in the decided state."

"Yes," Noraxia said. "It is."

"You knew this," Nesori said. Not accusatory. Observational.

"I knew it," Noraxia agreed. "I didn?t warn you because I don?t think it would have helped. Some things are only legible from inside them."

Another pause.

"Raskon," Nesori said, "has been very - " She appeared to be selecting a word. "Attentive."

"He would be," Noraxia said.

"He said something in Iskret last night that I think was from his childhood. I haven?t heard him use that register before." A pause. "I didn?t tell him I noticed."

"Why not?"

"Because," Nesori said, "some things are only legible from inside them."

In the herb garden, Jukrit kept his attention on the plants and did not smile, or not visibly.

~ VI ~

The household?s response to both pregnancies was characteristic of the household, which was to say practical, warm, and somewhat overwhelming if you were on the receiving end of it.

Kex brought fish for the next four days running without explanation. Khari appeared with dietary notes he had compiled from a combination of the medical texts he apparently kept at home for reasons he did not explain, and presented them to Jukrit with the manner of a colleague offering peer review. Veverka arrived with food and stayed for two hours and left without drama, which was her particular form of reassurance. The neighborhood understood, and the understanding expressed itself as a series of small gestures that accumulated into something significant without any single one of them requiring acknowledgment.

Tassa understood that something had happened, without having the framework to understand what. She had been in the barn more than usual, sitting near Chenara with the close attentive presence she brought to creatures she was concerned about. Chenara tolerated this with the easy patience she had always shown Tassa  -  the small furfolk cub was, in Chenara?s apparent assessment, simply part of the barn?s texture, to be accommodated rather than managed.

Tassa brought her things. Not significant things  -  a handful of hay, a smooth stone from the yard, the carved wooden block she had been carrying everywhere for weeks. She set them near Chenara?s hooves and seemed satisfied with this. Jukrit watched it from the barn doorway and thought about Kyren bringing river stones to Varena in the early days of his courtship, and decided that Tassa had learned something from someone, or had simply arrived at it on her own, which was also possible.

~ VII ~

He sent the ferret section to the Regional Medical Guild at the end of the week, transcribed in his own script with his cross-referenced annotations and a covering letter that was more direct than his usual correspondence with them. He wrote that a cheetah taur farmer with no formal medical training had, fifty years ago, developed a monitoring protocol for size-differential pregnancies that exceeded anything currently in the Guild?s literature, and that he thought this might warrant their attention. He wrote that he had a living case in his care and intended to apply Mowla?s recommendations, and that he would document his findings and provide them in due course.

He received a reply within a week  -  faster than the Guild usually moved, which suggested the content had reached someone who recognized its significance. They wanted a full transcription of both journals, with his annotations. They wanted to know the source and whether there was more. They wanted to discuss a formal citation.

He wrote back to say there were two journals and possibly more along the south fence, that the source was a deceased farmer he hoped to credit properly, and that he would send the full transcriptions when time permitted.

He did not receive a reply to that letter for two weeks, which he interpreted as the Guild being briefly speechless, which was not a condition he had previously observed in them.

~ VIII ~

Late spring settled over Riverside Market with a particular warmth. The whisperwood was in full leaf, the south fence garden was coming back strongly  -  Jukrit had identified three more plants from Mowla?s descriptions since finding the second journal, including one he had previously thought was a weed and had nearly pulled  -  and the barn held a small pregnant gheval who was eating well and tolerating her increased monitoring schedule with equanimity, and next door was a pregnant Iskret female who was managing her own condition with the thorough, systematic approach she brought to everything and who had started, in the evenings, standing at the catwalk railing and looking down at the yard rather than up at the sky.

Jukrit noticed this and said nothing about it.

Raskon noticed too. He came to the kitchen one evening in the late spring dusk and sat across from Jukrit, who was working through Mowla?s second journal, and they were quiet together for a while, which was comfortable.

"Two pregnancies," Raskon said finally.

"Two," Jukrit agreed. "And possibly a third, depending on what Kalina - "

"Let?s not get ahead of ourselves," Raskon said.

"No," Jukrit agreed. "Let?s not."

Outside, the last light was leaving the yard. In the barn, Chenara was settling for the evening, and Darit was in his usual place in Raskon?s lodgings next door, and somewhere in the catwalk?s gentle architecture of planks and rope Nesori was standing in the warm air, looking at the place she had chosen, in the decided state she was learning to read from the inside.

Jukrit turned a page in Mowla?s journal and kept reading.

There was a great deal more to learn.

 -  End of Episode  -

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Turning soil along the south fence in late spring, Jukrit's trowel finds a second package of oilcloth — another of Mowla's journals, containing pages about a ferret pair she kept on this property: a huge male named Goss and a tiny female named Miri. The section is more directly useful to Chenara's situation than anything in the first journal, and Jukrit is briefly and sincerely annoyed to have found it six weeks after he needed it. It is not too late: Chenara is confirmed pregnant and Jukrit sends the ferret section to the Regional Medical Guild with a letter noting that a farmer with no formal training outpaced their literature by fifty years. The second piece of news comes from Raskon, delivered quietly at the kitchen table: Nesori is eight weeks pregnant. Somewhere along that same fence line, Jukrit suspects, there may be more oilcloth waiting to be found.
Keywords
male 1,281,624, female 1,167,383, anthro 250,841, feral 104,761, squirrel 32,920, pregnant 25,755, pregnancy 16,135, dragoness 13,945, story progression 2,199, story series 2,162, gheval 68
Details
Type: Writing - Document
Published: 3 days, 23 hrs ago
Rating: General
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