Now, with the obvious scar out of the way, that takes us to the 'mysterious illness', but I'm afraid we've a textual hike to prepare you for it. Much happened to bring it about, and it all started when Wanda came to me one day, at an unusual sunlit time, her furs listing to one side like she hadn't adjusted them in hours.

I was in the kitchen, making preparations for dinner, onion and leek soup in lamb broth, when she entered. Mergini was on the preparation table, examining my greens for dirt while I blackened some scraps of lamb to create a fond for the broth. We were busy and content, about to become more of both, but my poor Wanda was... uncomfortable to say the least.

"Wanda? What's the matter? If you're concerned about Mergini's flappers on the table I made sure he washed them." I pointed my greasy wooden spoon at a pot upon the floor half full of water.

"It's not the duck," she said sullenly. Again she looked at the most distant corner of the room, at a cobweb that wasn't there. I was growing a touch weary of our phantom spider. Later I would realize this behavior was as close as she could come to looking within herself: looking at something nearby rather than penetratingly into the very substance of the cosmos that both manifests and illuminates all things.

She was not a child of reflection, and so could never see where she was perched emotionally, no matter how precariously, but she wasn't searching for emotions just then; something else resided within.

"I was just enjoying a patrol," she said, leaning over to smell the gristle in the hot pan, "when a familiar approached and said they smelled something on me. A change in my natural state. Severin, I am with child."

A scalding drop of fat popped out of the pan and struck my forearm, drew no reaction. I wasn't even paying attention to the process of breathing; its grievances piled up quickly. How long I could stay such a statue would remain a mystery, as Wanda wasn't having it. I was to produce my reaction immediately, so she placed one hand over my heart and raked her fingers down the skin, pulling all of me. I would say something or I would fall over and break my nose.

"That's incredible Wanda! We- Whe- How? I had assumed we weren't compatible."

"We shouldn't have been, not yet anyhow," she sighed, rubbing her forehead like a rag too seasoned to ever be wrung clean again. "My powers aren't yet to the level that suggests interbreeding between our lineages. This is a freak occurrence."

"Nothing freakish about it," I insisted, pulling the food from the flame and setting it aside. Greater things were cooking. "We love each other, we've planted a home, and we water it with sweat at every opportunity. We shouldn't be shocked that it's growing."

"Move duck," Wanda muttered, waving Mergini away so she could sit at the table and prop her head up with her arms. He waddled away silently and settled on a corner, feet disappearing underneath his dark plumage. Then he looked at me, voicing his opinion that I should continue consoling her. I went to her and massaged her shoulders into less of a sulk.

"Why are you so burdened by this, my love? What could be more fantastic than a new person, born of our life together? They will be part goddess, and the other half will be only my most positive traits, as they will rise to the surface in a vain attempt to compete with your contributions."

"I've better things to do with this body right now Severin. The next time one of my siblings shows up they will find me fat, wobbly, weak, and preoccupied. And after it is born it will always be a weakness, a way to me, a chink in my armor."

"Don't tell me you're as fickle and fearful as the Greek gods," I challenged. "You know the tales of Cronus and Zeus, dashing their offspring across rocks, eating them, only to have them arise anyway out of blood-watered soil or head wounds. You cannot fight the passage of time, or the way life climbs its infinite trellis. Only a fool would try. I do not worship any such fool."

My hands moved down her seated body, one finger pressing into her navel like an ear to the ground, trying to feel the thundering vibrations of an approaching stampede of life. Sadly I was not so adept at reading her internally as she was me. All I felt was the dulling of her typical heat, her glow having retreated rather than swelled as is usually the case with expecting women. Stoking it once more would be my duty.

"I suppose it will have a few benefits," she said, hand emerging from furs and stroking the stubble of my cheek. She had not yet given me a shave that day, an activity I would get us to shortly, as it always improved her mood to sit me down and groom me. Setting her house in order, with a house that could thank her. "You'll need to step up your devotion, and your pampering."

"That goes without saying." I kissed her cheek, and came away with a dozen thoughts. "Your mother had seven... should we expect so many? We'll be overrun."

"No," she said with a sharp amused breath from her nose. "That was a union of two heirs of Cain, and my mother was older. Unlike heirs of Abel, the women of Cain grow more fruitful as they age, assuming they've not been brought low by a competitor. We will have one, and should we have more than two it would mean I've come to understand nothing about this world." She played with a cut leek idly. "I still don't know how this happened."

"I do." She twisted her head to look into my eyes, admonishing me for the presumption, which I felt across my mind both like rolling wave and lightning storm. My skin prickled and breath came up short, which would make it all the harder to justify the claim. Her tut-tuts could bring a man to the edge of himself, and anything else from her could push him over.

"You've been paying attention, despite pretending not to," I elaborated, taking a few steps back, just behind a resting Mergini. She glanced at him, most of her amusement falling away in an instant. "You couldn't help but notice how nurturing I've been to our-"

"Do not say it."

"Firstborn son." I picked up Mergini and cradled him in my arms, his feathers ruffling up and eyes squinting in contentment. "As such you innately knew we were ready to have another, and your body responded. All of the confidence I have in you as a mother is applied to Mergini also in his role as the eldest brother. This duck shall show our newborn the ways of the world-"

"Do stop."

"Their first steps will be waddles of admiring mimicry."

"Enough out of you!" she huffed, rising from her sullen sit. I set Mergini down so he wouldn't be crushed between us in her approach. In his infinite wisdom he beat a hasty retreat, sensing that the two of us were about to play some of our games. "I told you not to say it, and you deliberately disobeyed me. Punishment is in order."

"What sort of punishment?" I was already suffering in trying to keep the fool's grin off my face.

"It's past time for your shave." She undid the top buttons of my shirt, with a single fingernail. "Strip down completely. I won't have even one secret on you while I'm putting everything back in its proper place. And you'll have to be taught a lesson for daring to plant a flag in a goddess."

"And it was done so brazenly," I criticized myself, halfway through removing my pants.

"Shh. One more word out of you and I'll shave your head too. Good luck explaining that to those ladies I have you buttering up."

The statement was made in jest, but I sensed a twinge of jealous truth, stuck in her like a splinter. Just as I grew weary of our phantom spider, she too tired of the things about me that were out of her control, including aspects of tasks performed at her order and on her behalf.

To serve as the bridge between her and her people was my purpose, which required extensive socializing, and to that end I would inevitably spend time with unmarried women. Wanda knew this, ordered it, but all the same it irked her. At that time in our relationship, no matter the attached numbers of date, there were only two positioned to bother so: Miss Giselle Ulterrine and Giggles Terroir. They were no threat to her, and I would not do her the disservice of claiming she didn't understand that, but all of us humans, regardless of lineage, are subject to smaller decisions within larger ones, made solely by emotion as infectious riders on our nobler deeds.

Mostly we can hide such things, but sometimes, when others look at us, they see through the deliberate structure and to the chaotic mound of emotion, defining us by our compounding animal errors. After that day I saw in my Venus one of those riders beyond her control. In her jealousy over Mergini, and in the time I spent with those women in place of her, grew a need to be with me at all times, and for that presence to be more aware than the breath and other puppet strings she kept on me always.

So there was to be a child. Perhaps so that they might serve as surveillance. She would not have done so consciously mind you. I try to see people both as what they've built and what they knocked over in the process. I was concerned for her is all. I sought in Wanda Blasphemer Pelts a happiness that seemed difficult for her to achieve, and felt some shame that I could find it for myself so easily in her. I was inadequate.

But I was determined to be less so as her husband all the time, and to start competent as a father. This new life would think my arms a crib, stable as they were. I would be their ground and world whenever they were in need of it.

As it should happen, and as we should get to the 'mysterious illness' mentioned earlier, we did run into some trouble with young Miss Terroir, though I would hardly ascribe complete blame to her. She made an emotional decision, but it was one we had fed her without sufficient concern for her well-being.

Most of it took place at our open air market, which sold mostly produce, soaps, tools, and such, but before we get there I wish to talk about my Venus in furs once more. Some may tire of hearing of her, but only because they have not met her. After her announcement I felt like I was meeting her anew everyday, each sunrise Wanda slightly changed by her pregnancy, in stance, in demeanor, in power.

Seeing her in flux was like seeing her in athletic competition. With every turn of the rapids she adjusted her hold on the paddle, applied herself to the natural course, made her way with an, admittedly agitated, radiance that blinded me on several occasions. And when that bright dawn finally gave way and let me see again she had already become herself anew once more. I couldn't keep up, and this race I was all too happy to lose.

The distance between us fluctuated, all but proving to me that I experienced my days out of order, or that my memory arranged them incorrectly after they were experienced. Some days her stomach would look smaller than before, others much larger. The same went for her breasts, but the overall trend was upward.

Ebb and flow of body did combine with wax and wane of moon to make for whirlwind months that I couldn't grasp firmly enough to savor. Still milestones occurred. My Wanda, in her godly fortitude, suffered very little in the way of nausea, but was doubly subject to temperamental cravings.

Whereas she used to allow me to select the menu on an average night, now there was always a specific request, sometimes accompanied by one of the relevant ingredients slapped onto the table, having hunted it down on her own, with it still coated in dirt or blood as the case might be.

Then she would hover over me while I cooked, pace back and forth behind me, getting in the way every time I had to transfer something from one vessel to another, and it was a problem for her if I was not transferring it to the plate.

Distracting her with conversation was not effective, as her mind was on the food. I could tell it would've made her feel better to criticize my technique, to guide the hand that guided the ladle, but she had no knowledge of the culinary arts whatsoever, being perfectly willing to dress a hare with her teeth until I'd so cursed her with a finicky parasite.

And the cravings shifted at the drop of a hat. Several times she ordered me to stop cooking in the middle of the process and pivot to an entirely different meal, keeping me up until the early hours and making me smell like simmering soup, blackening bacon, and crusty bread all at once. If the craving should change as I was serving her, well, there was nothing to be done.

I was to take the food to someone nearby as a gift, return, and prepare another meal. The worst example was the evening where I had slaved for hours on a trout amandine with asparagus green and white, in a butter so brown it almost looked like cinnamon, only for her to turn up her nose at it the moment it was plated (the steam didn't so much as caress her skin).

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Without complaint I wrapped it up and delivered it to Mlle. Legraff at her monitoring desk inside the train station where she awaited any and all messages by telegraph. Upon my return I was met in the doorway by Wanda, stance wide, hands on her lower back, demanding to know why I had not received the mental telegram she'd very clearly sent me while I was away.

Strong as our bond was, I'd never been capable of directly hearing her thoughts, regardless of distance, yet she had expected me to when an entire fish was at stake. Apparently her stomach had changed its mind, and now she would starve to death if denied a trout coated in shaved almonds.

I know not the strains of the process on the body, but I do know the strains of such ridiculous requests on an already harried mind. All the same I apologized, displayed my willingness to cruelly go back and rob a delighted old woman of a hot meal, but Wanda saw my frustration and decided to go and do it herself. With her influence she would be able to reclaim it without leaving any hard feeling.

I found the plate the next morning, outdoors in the grass, overturned and chipped.

Another difficulty for her came when she had to take her new shape to bed and found she'd grown too large to comfortably wrap her arms around me from behind, hold me, and bite on my pruned ear, as was her most clung-to creature comfort. Our compromise was for me to hold her that way, cradling both her and our child with equal love and admiration.

But she was not comfortable with it, and would frequently rouse, waking me as well. There was little to do in the dark but make love, which she engaged in with the most aggressive and frustrated air, as if trying to speed the whole process along by creating a queue of babes in wait.

On a heavier night of a heavier month, with the moon full and taut out the window, its trenches like stretch marks of its own, Wanda straddled my naked body, held me down by the shoulders, as we finished finding each other in the dark. Her intense bodily heat was always magnified in shadow; drops of her sweat struck my chest like sauna rocks.

Climax cleared from both our expressions, from my vision, but strong moonlight couldn't penetrate a haze around us, a gray smoke Wanda left in my eyes because she didn't want me to see what I already sensed.

The goddess had been brought to tears.

Never before had I seen her weep, or eyes water with anything but the wind as she ran in the forest and cleared streams in single bounds. My world of a wife was not a creature of sorrow, quick as she was to action, anger, and an inventive cruelty that sought the highest ground when the water rose, but no human was free of it, nor could any of us be complete without it washing over us and clearing some of what mucks us up.

Through her body on mine, the rhythmic circling of her spine, I knew she had her head tilted back and was rolling it around to keep the tears from spilling. There was no reason for me to see it, for there was nothing to solve about their presence. Wanda cried because she too had a world, above and beyond her, stronger than her, and her control over my time and space was not practice for her next more challenging victim. It was just our love, and it would change us much, and change the bigger things very little.

She cried because time was passing, and life was passing through her, and she wasn't sure if she had enough to show for it. Perhaps when our child emerged there would be judgment in their eyes, and we would have to tell them we weren't ready yet.

On one of the following days (perhaps directly following) she'd sent me to the market with very specific instructions for dinner: fiddleheads and mushrooms braised in butter. The ferns she would source herself, but plenty in Quarantown foraged for and grew mushrooms, and had set them out on display for me that sunny afternoon.

Accompanying me was Mergini, strolling alongside as I carried my basket, for he had an excellent nose for ingredient quality. The market was quite busy, all the carried greens yet untrimmed giving the impression that some gigantic vegetables had uprooted themselves and started mingling into the crowd.

Bees in our town and surrounding fields made honey for Wanda, and their queens, fully understanding the strain of impending motherhood on her body, had no doubt instructed their underlings to triple the output in case she craved sweet honeycomb for dessert. The stands that sold it were literally overflowing in places, some of the colors dark as syrup, red as blood.

Mergini liked the honeycomb too, so I paid for a small morsel and gave it to him, unwittingly providing an opportunity for the assailant that had tailed me since entering the market. She very much wanted what I had, and like Mergini and his sweet treat, had tasted it before.

My head was practically buried in mushrooms as I examined the woodiness of their stalks, further distracted by the smell of the soil they'd been plucked from, which carried notes of Wanda's watchful patrolling. Then I remembered Mergini was on duty, and hadn't picked out any for me yet.

I emerged to find he was not by my side. Under the table, enjoying some shade? No. Buried in the wares? No. It wasn't like him to wander off, and there were no other ducks about of the sort he might fraternize with. For some reason the possibility of kidnap came to mind, but surely he would've quacked his smart little beak off to alert me the moment he was snatched.

Unless it was occupied by a sticky honeycomb that made speech difficult. A kidnapper would be fleeing, so I looked all around, for anyone that seemed to specifically move away from my position. Through several others I spied one that was only retreating. Extensive knowledge of the people who were to be Wanda's allowed me to identify the woman solely by her yellow hair and the bundled sections of it often nervously handled. That was Giggles, and peeking out from her arm, the olivine bill of Mergini.

Only one motive came to mind, wrapped up haphazardly in all the praise she'd lavished on the too-intelligent duck I'd served her some months ago. None of our guests had been as insistent on getting the recipe as her, to the point that my excuse about the spice blend had drawn genuine anger: the one and only time I'd seen the emotion. 'That's damn inconvenient', she'd said. I'm sure she'd eaten nothing but duck in the following month, just to make sure I wasn't lying. Perhaps it was then, after how many frustratingly ordinary meals, she'd set her eyes on the duck I now kept as pet.

In her desperation she'd reasoned that it was the duck bearing the special gourmet taste, not the spices, for it had to be, as spices would be too easy to conceal and too hard to steal. To her Mergini was no pet, just a Christmas feast kept alive until the perfect Christmas for it. That day at the market, with him silenced by honeycomb, was probably the best chance she would ever get to take him, and so she did.

If she succeeded and then learned I was irate she could simply offer to get me another duck, as there was nothing special about him after all, yes? Clever, but she was not practiced in any clandestine work, or any sort of conflict at all, as I now was as Mr. Pelts. Spotting her was as elementary as recognizing the only anxiety present at the market.

I was about to take off running after her, I would have my duck back before she even reached the potatoes at the end of the row, when I was suddenly struck by my mysterious illness. Eagle talons gripped my stomach and upper guts, rent them into shreds. The pain created a wave of muscle spasms, like an alarm raised throughout the body.

My fingertips tingled and my tongue went dry, both usually a prelude to passing out; I managed a stomp that kept me upright and locked into consciousness. But I couldn't move. Nor could I move my left hand from where it had gripped my stomach, as it seemed to be the only thing keeping organs from spilling out.

I could only look down for a moment if I wanted to keep my head from spinning into the flashing black, but when I did I saw no blood, no injury. This was all internal, and it was moving more than I was; the sensation traveled into my lower guts, then stabbed back and forth, like a jousting tournament in my intestine.

Its repositioning freed some of my core muscles from their shock, and with them I found the strength to stumble, but I couldn't yell. Nor could I ask anyone for help, nowhere near the state of mind that would allow me to explain both my pet duck and the seriousness of the theft of him. Giggles couldn't just walk away however. The market was a series of aisles, and boxed in with an outer wall of other stands, with only one entrance, which meant she had but one escape route if she wasn't going to vault over someone's asparagus like a crazy person.

She had to make her way back up to me, but could select any of the aisles to do so, giving me chance to head her off even with my abysmally slow shuffle. Sweat broke out all over me as I began the effort, one foot audibly dragging through the grass. Every smell I passed made me sicker, felt like a concentrated essence of it was being poured into my internal puncture wounds: mushroom, honey, dirt-coated potato...

Nausea and pain were secondary to my fear of Mergini coming to harm, so on I went, on a journey that took seconds but during which my body paid a toll of many miles marched. I caught a glimpse of her from all the way across the next row, two from the exit, and she me, but she quickly averted her eyes and kept walking, pretending not to recognize me.

The whole way I suffered. Row after row after row that wasn't there but was felt regardless, until finally I took up most of the exit and she had no choice but to come toward me. Or stand still and pretend to browse. Which she did, taking enough time to sap the rest of my strength. I collapsed onto my back, became nothing more than a bump in her escape.

At my fall I was quickly surrounded by concerned shoppers, all asking if I was alright, returning the kindness I'd extended to all of them, but in reality only obstructing my vision at crucial moments where Giggles was certainly closing the distance, hoping to escape before I regained my senses.

The pain had not abated, my whole abdomen was hollowed out by it, and my throat endured a desert sandstorm of its own making. I let my head flop to the side, called it a deliberate turn. And a successful one. I saw Giggles's feet. She always shopped barefoot. Her dress fluttered chaotically, like water kicked by an inexperienced swimmer. All the energy that remained within me could be used to call out once.

"Giggles! Please, help me. Take me to Wanda." She heard, froze. The feet around me backed up, as they were not the ones asked. I had put her on the spot, drawn all the attention, and there was no doubt in my mind it would work. You see, Giggles may have been a duck thief, but she was far from evil.

We had fed her something deceptive, something she was not prepared to have swaying her internally, and that was our responsibility. I do not blame her for the momentary lapse in judgment. I could not have presented a better target for her undeserved addiction. All the same, the true gentle heart of Giggles Terroir would once again seize control after I forced perspective.

"Oh Severin, are you alright?" she asked, rushing over. "Please, everyone, help him up. Yes, I've got him. Lean on me Severin. One step at a time now." She had to set Mergini down to take most of my weight. He followed alongside, quacking nervously, already more concerned for me than himself.

With my arm over her shoulder we trekked back to the house while the illness continued to course, but we met Wanda halfway. She felt my condition the moment it began, made her way to me. She must have dismissed Giggles, which I missed as I finally started to slip beneath the choppy surface of awareness.

A few breaths later, only some of them remembered, I came to on the floor of our home, resting on a rug made of my Venus's furs, folded and fluffed to increase their comfort beyond that of our mattress. Loose sable tails moved on their own, feeling across my sides, gathering more information for Wanda.

She was crouched over me, despite the difficulty a normal woman would have holding such a position so advanced in pregnancy. Her free hand replaced mine over the most afflicted area, palm pushing in pulses, washing away the pain's intensity in layers. It took time for all of it to dissipate, and for all of it I was silent.

"You're alright now, my Severin," she said to soothe, helping me into a seat and wrapping me in her furs as if I had a cold. It drank the sweat off my body, kept itself dry in the process. "I've figured it out." I knew she would. She knew me inside and out after all, invested in both my realms equally.

"What happened to me?"

"You obeyed my orders a little too well," she teased, nuzzling up, stroking my stomach in a very specific way, as if I were the one carrying our child. "When I instructed you to be one with me, to anticipate my desires, I didn't mean for you to take on the burdens of my body as part of the process."

"I'm too worn out to understand, I think." My throat was still parched.

"My poor Severin. These are sympathy pains, concocted entirely in that overly imaginative heart of yours. What I feel you feel, only I am far more fortified against the actions of other heirs of Cain. And here that other heir is our child."

"But... they've been on their way for a while now... Why would this come on so suddenly? It was an attack!"

"Yes darling, it was. This will upset you to learn, but remember that you wanted all of this to happen. Much of it is more harrowing than fiddleheads and mushrooms. Do you recall your mention of the Greek gods... of all the strange ways in which they could be born? With us the laws of nature are not so strict either.

In light of what I've just learned from your pain, a few things make sense to me now. I was already pregnant the night I bit your ear. An early craving I think. That piece I took of you was treated the same as the piece you gave me. It too became our progeny, grew alongside the first."

"Twins?"

"Only superficially... and no longer." She clasped my hand, bent herself in such a way that her stomach was obscured by her furs, making the conversation just us two. Her longing for that simpler time was clear, and if she'd had the power to wad our child up and stick it in her furs like an unpleasant mouthful into a napkin she would have.

"What do you mean?"

"Heirs of Cain cannot kill each other after we are born, but we can before. It is a loophole we know even before we are conscious of ourselves. There can be internal conflict, battles for dominance. I think it was even more likely with us, for the two of them came to be at different times, from different sources."

"You mean... one of our children attacked and killed the other?" Cold exploded in my chest. I thought I could bring an untarnishable joy to my heir of Cain. How foolish. My naive soul was to be stretched out on the rack for the offensive assumption, wrapped about the world serpent and paraded overhead of the heirs the world over.

"Yes. I didn't even feel it. Such a process is natural with us. Even some animals have competition like that going on inside them, sharks for one. Only one child remains, the stronger. I was their battlefield, but you were the one hurt."

"Madness... There is madness in your kind." She allowed the shocked statement to pass without objection. "Which child are we to have? The one of love or the bitten one?"

"I don't know, and we likely never will." She kissed me, put breath in me. Despite her attempt to hide it, my hands found her waist, her swell, and what remained of our future. Mergini was saved, but I'd still lost a child. I was losing things before I even had them. The cold exploded again, interior icicles turning thick as old growth logs. This was the course of an arctic river, and I would have to become accustomed. When my days were out of order I would inevitably feel losses not yet suffered.

Perhaps joys not yet attained as well, but only if hope remained. Wanda had only ambition. She could not provide our already vicious battle-hardened babe any hope at all. I would have to, if they were to live fully.