I am embracing motherhood or a special kind of stepfatherhood, depending on how you look at it. Using your left pinkie finger as a teat has to be pretty unique in the history of mankind. At least per universe. Though I am not in the mood to seriously think through the implications of a multiverse. Getting a baby back to normal body temperatures turned out to be quite easy. The child seems to have no concept of the loss she has suffered. Something I cannot quite remember makes the concept of abandoning a child unthinkable. Am I nice? I don’t think so. I am ready to kill for cheese. Though I would like to know. If the choice I made was between magical powers and a fully functional memory I must assume that I chose well, though by the presumption I can only assume that. What am I actually feeding this child? I suck my right pinkie. It tastes surprisingly good. Though in this case I cannot blame my lack of a recollection on external factors.
I need to explore this more. Well, I am deeply fascinated with this ability. I try to make honey. Nothing. Honey is not a plant product. Not directly at least. I switch to extrafloral nectar. Sweet. I am sugar bombed. A stench enters my nostrils. She is a baby. The inevitable has happened.
Thoughtlessly I make fresh air. It turns out that if you add gas to a fixed volume, you raise pressure. In hindsight I have to be happy that this does not generate heat. The door is designed so that if you put pressure on it, it will be sealed tighter. Hence the carefully designed exhaust stack blows out and the room is full of hay sucked into the air as the pressure equalizes. I yelp with the pain in my ears. At least I don’t drop the baby, who, feeling the same effect in her ears, starts screaming.
It turns out that healing her injuries is not a way to stifle her complaints. The room is smelling very nicely of hay now, though. The hay I make isn’t dusty, so the usual issue with playing in a hay stack does not arise.
I slide down the wall while healing my own ears, already starting to get cold. We are in deep shit and I caused it. I need to do something. First I close the ventilation hole leaving only a small opening with a wooden grate, lest we suffocate.
I have covered the area with hay, which does not naturally occur in this environment. As far as avoiding attention goes I have made matters worse. Should I return to base at first light? Or even now and risk a flight at night, disregarding the cold wind? I have a child that needs to be cleaned and even though I have some water, which I could certainly heat, I have no fabric to dry her. In fact we wrapped her in cloth before I took flight and I could reapply that, but it wasn’t intended to be good enough for an arctic mountain night with high winds.
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I sigh. Yes, for now I am keeping the air warm. I can keep this up for a few hours. While I am awake. I could just put in a new exhaust stack and defer the cleanup to the morning, to just burn the hay I could at least see. The stuff blown away by the wind is already irrecoverable. I drift off for a moment.
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Her eyes are sad and lonely, not angry. I hug her. For a small moment she stays stiff. I know it is not my fault. I still know I have been the cause. I am a burden and a barrier to happiness.
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Jerking awake while your head is rested against a wooden wall is not a pleasant experience. Healing injuries like that is becoming disturbingly common.
I need to do something about the fecal affair. I unwrap her. Only the innermost layer is soiled and that only partially. That is good news. Sacrificing my water I can get her clean with the unsoiled part of the inner layer. The outer layer lets me dry her. I crank the heat up a bit as I now have a nacked baby in the hay in front of me. It will dry the wet cloth. But what about the shitty wrapper? I enclose it in a wooden box. Will that explode when the bacteria inside generate gases during decomposition? I could vanish it with its content, but how much cloth do I have? Do I have another choice? I decide to try something. My healing of bone works on a slightly altered principle compared to normal healing. I partially restore an earlier state. I try that on the offensive objects. It works with ease. I can just return it to an earlier state without regard for the body it is embedded in. I giggle. I make milk and am a walking laundromat. Now if I could only remember what a cartoon and a feminist are.
It does not matter. I repair the exhaust stack.
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He slaps me in the face while pressing me to a wall. „Defend yourself, weakling!“ he yells. „What from? Nothing you said is wrong. I am taking those pills and I forged the prescription for them. I am bad for your cousin. If I hit you because you said that, I will be a liar and lose the one thing I have left.“ I reply. The look on his face is changing from hatred to disgust. He mumbles in their native language.
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Again I jerk awake from a nightmare and promptly startle the baby beside me to a sympathetic fit of crying. This is not my night.