-Month 1, Day 19-

Evening was rolling around, and seeing how it was going, we all expected her to give birth to their child today still. Jack was doing his best getting done with whatever needed to be done. Neither me or Saria really knew what to do. I had never been in this situation, and Saria is... well, what can you expect from her?

Saria was spending a lot of juice maintaining a soothing light for Erin with her magic to reduce the pain she was in. I told her to moderate the output to make sure she wouldn't end up spending it all in one go since this might take a while. So far, she did a good job with that. Saria was either talented at reducing the pain of others or she instinctively knew how to do it.

This also made it easier for Erin who had to resist pushing until the right moment, or at least Jack and Erin told us that. For some reason I wasn't phased by this a whole lot. I knew that the past me would be... well, kind of disgusted by this, you could say? I was okay with literally killing people on Earth. It wasn't something I wanted to do, sometimes push just comes to shove. But something like this would still have been tugging at my strings. It's hard to explain, but right now I wasn't too bothered.

Overall, my experience in this world should have been really boring, just hanging out in the shadow of Saria. My change from human to whatever I was now must have changed things about me and what I find enjoyable. Because I enjoyed just hanging around as her shadow. I shouldn't enjoy it. I barely do anything throughout most of the day, but it was still weirdly entertaining somehow.

Either way, not being disturbed by this display in front of us helped me to keep focus. The plan was that if something suddenly went wrong, I would try to use my Shadow Substitute skill to make sure the kid would be born healthy at least. I couldn't guarantee that the kid wouldn't end up with horns or scales like Saria. So it was the absolute plan Z, not something that was expected at all, but I was still ready to jump in just in case.

Judging from how things were going, that likely wouldn't be necessary after all. Erin had pains in regular intervals right now, but she could take it as long as Saria was here to help her with it.

(Erin) "Oh god, Jack, it's coming now. The baby is coming!"

That single statement was enough to bring Jack into high alert with his hands jumbling about, causing him to literally drop his cup of water and help Erin immediately. The demon kid glowing her light on the soon-to-be mother was just staring at him going into panic mode and even had a chuckle at it.

(Jack) "Right now? Dear, right now?!"

(Erin) "No, it's tomorrow- Yes! Did I stutter?! Now! For crying out loud!"

They agreed that it was time to get this over with. Both of them looked forward to when that would happen, Erin mostly looking forward to not sitting in bed with chronic pains anymore.

(Jack) "Okay, now might be a good time too. Doesn't it say somewhere in the notes when the best timing for this is somewhere-"

(Erin) "Put your god damn notes away you moron, this isn't the time to read!"

(Jack) "Now now, dear, we shouldn't have the first words our child hears be bad words like those."

(Erin) "I am having a human shoved out of me, Jack! A human! I have bigger things to worry about!"

Was every birth as heated like this? The always so calm Erin was really riled up right now. It painted a completely different side to her. And of course, Saria was grinning as if this was a hilarious sketch she was watching.

(Jack) "Okay, we're ready. Mister Shadow, you are ready to heal just in case, right?"

(Draven) «"Of course."»

Being able to freely talk with Saria's mouth through Take Over made communication so much easier. Jack took a deep breath before urging Erin to push.

...

The entire process was over in a flash, it seemed. The pair in their mid forties had received their first child, a boy.

When it was over I couldn't help but think that it's one ugly kid, but that's probably because it wasn't mine. Jack and Erin both found him beautiful. And while I kept my opinion in my thoughts, Saria obviously just had to tell them that she also found the baby ugly. Luckily they just laughed the comment aside due to Saria's limited knowledge on humans and their kids.

(Draven) «"Congrats on the boy, you two. Do you already have a name decided?"»

They both looked at each other and nodded in unison. It was Erin who took the honor of telling us.

(Erin) "We both agreed on Myles if he was a boy. Our little Myles."

Myles Claude. We have only been a part of the family for just a bit more than a month, and already it kind of feels like a little brother. To Saria, at least. Jack and Erin were both at my original human age so classifying them as adoptive parents would be too weird for me. I was happy for them, but that was about the extent of my relationship with them.

Both of the parents celebrated. Erin looked extremely tired though, so it was a short celebration. In the meantime, I couldn't help but notice that Saria had something on her mind.

(Draven) «Hey, what's going on? You're more quiet than usual.»

She was shuffling about, unsure whether or not to answer me or not. If it was anything important, I'd have to wrestle it out of her as usual.

(Saria) "It's just... Humans don't receive a blessing? It feels wrong not to give a newborn a blessing..."

(Draven) «A blessing? What are you talking about? Is this some magical yip-yap you demons do?»

(Saria) "It's not... Yip-yap. It's important to give the blessing of the gods so that you can assign a kid to a guardian that will raise them."

(Draven) «You know that humans don't have this juice in their bodies to use magic, right? Erin already told us. Humans don't have guardians either, they have parents.»

I didn't know whether she was trying to be persistent or not on this one. A blessing sounded more like a tradition that the demons have and probably wasn't as important to a human in this world.

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(Saria) "It's still important, mister shadow! Without my guardian, I never would have been here."

(Draven) «Alright, alright. I get that it's important to you. Then go ask Jack and Erin if you can give this blessing if you want to be Myles' guardian so badly.»

It took a bit of time to ask the question to the parents. Saria was unsure whether to ask but finally got the courage to. No way I would ask them for her, she wants it, so she has to ask for permission to do her demonic ritual. And of course she would have to ask, if they didn't want a literal demon blessing their kid then I'd completely understand that.

But the two had grown to like Saria as well, so when she asked, they didn't have any objections. Saria crawled up to Erin in her bed who was holding Myles and locked her eyes on the baby.

(Draven) «What are you even planning to do? I thought you didn't know much about demon babies.»

She completely ignored me and put two fingers on the forehead of Myles. Then, she started literally pouring in her light into the head of the boy while touching her own forehead with two fingers from her other hand. The boy who was crying before suddenly fell asleep, with a glimmer of light coming out of his eyes, until it was over and Saria gleefully backed off while clapping her own congratulations.

...I didn't know what kind of biblical non-sense she just pulled out of the blue as a "blessing", but both Jack and Erin didn't quite know how to receive it. Saria was happy and bore a smile after getting this out of the way, but the two parents looked more or less worried whether they just gave the go for the devil himself to possess their son.

Well, that's their problem. With this, Saria became the self-proclaimed guardian of Myles, or so I assumed. For demons, guardians was loosely a synonym for parents, but that still didn't stop her. The most she would be to him would probably be some sort of sister, depending on how long we were staying on this orchard.

With all of this over with, the atmosphere started to die down a bit. It had already gotten very late and all three of them were very hungry. Erin went to bed after eating one of her pies in one go, and no wonder about that, she must have suffered for a good five or six hours and be incredibly hungry. Jack and Saria were both starving too, so they went to the kitchen to grab something to eat, leaving Erin and Myles in their bedroom.

(Jack) "Ah, the timing today really was off. Erin even prepared to invite you for dinner and have a great feast with smoke lion meat we bought for once, now that you've helped us so much. But of course our little bandit had to grace us today..."

He looked very apologetic and exhausted. The entire premise of Saria's "employment" here was based on just protecting their crops from whatever creatures wanted to eat them. All the creatures so far that came around were those fae monsters, with the moa being the only exception of an actual real danger.

He must feel bad that he forced Saria to help not only with the harvest and safe-keeping of the farm, but also with the birth of his son. Whatever a smoke lion was, I bet it's meat was of higher class than the usual stuff you would find around here.

(Jack) "Man, what a day..."

He laid back in the chair he was sitting on with a big smile on his face, really giving out a long sigh of exhaustion. It sure must have been a long day, it was probably getting close to midnight at this point.

(Jack) "Ah yeah, do you want some bread or fruit? Sorry, you're probably really hungry..."

(Saria) "Mhm!"

I knew for a fact she was starving. When we got to the kitchen she drank like four cups of water. She hadn't really had anything to drink for a lot of hours either.

(Jack) "If you come around tomorrow, we can present you with all the smoke lion you can eat. I'm sure you must be tired of only eating fruit and greens. What do you say?"

(Saria) "Eheheh, it's... Uh, fine. You really don't have to do that..."

What's this I feel with my Soul Unity Skill? Embarrassment? Why would she feel embarrassed responding to an invitation? She was normally quick on her feet to get any kind of reward, be it tropicots or various foods they usually give her. She hasn't eaten any sort of meat so far because she claimed all of it was "disgusting", but if somebody else was cooking something I assumed was high quality, I was sure she would at least try it.

The Claudes typically only eat greens they can harvest from the miniature hobby-farm they have going behind the shed, so hearing them have some kind of special post-harvest dinner sounds like something Saria would have jumped at the opportunity to join.

(Draven) «Spit it out, what are you hiding? You felt embarrassment just earlier.»

(Saria) "Emb- What? I'm not embarrassed you stupid shadow! Stop feeling my feelings!"

(Draven) «You were totally embarrassed. Why don't you want to get your reward?»

(Saria) "Why- Why do you care?!"

Somehow I managed to hit some kind of nail right on the head. Jack was starting to get used to Saria's monologues with her inner spirit, so he just kind of stared at us.

(Draven) «Come on. Tell uncle Draven what's bothering you. You know that I can figure it out easily with Soul Unity.»

(Saria) "Hnn... Promise not to laugh?"

(Draven) «Maybe.»

(Saria) "You have to promise, else I won't tell you!"

(Jack) "I don't really know what you are talking about, but I for one promise you, miss Saria."

(Draven) «Fine, fine, I do too. Not like I can tell anyone without you knowing. Then what is it?»

I was lying completely, I was ready for some stupid response I could laugh at.

(Saria) "I just... I hate meat! It's disgusting and it smells bad and I don't like it!"

Jack was sitting staring at her waiting for some sort of punchline. I did too. Was that it? She is a vegetarian?

(Draven) «...Yes? And?»

(Saria) "What do you mean 'and'?"

(Draven) «Is that it?»

(Saria) "...Huh? What do you mean that's it?"

(Draven) «That's your embarrassing story? You don't like eating meat?»

(Saria) "Y- Yeah..."

(Draven) «So you're a vegetarian because you don't like the taste of it, how is that supposed to be embarrassing?»

(Saria) "Vege- Vegetarian? What is that?"

(Draven) «Pfahahah, seriously, you were embarrassed at not liking a certain food?»

(Saria) "I told you not to laugh!"

I had to get Jack to explain it to her since she didn't get my explanation with Earth terms.

Apparently, meat is an important part of demon diet. They are predators. They don't settle unless prey is plenty. Saria in this case, is for some reason different. Probably different because she didn't bother trying anything new and instead just stuck to hating on a good steak when the only thing she tried so far was some soggy liver in a ditch. I promised not to laugh, but I couldn't hold back at how basic a reason that was.

Vegetarianism wasn't uncommon on Earth. It probably isn't uncommon in this world either. But it is in the demon tribes it seems. And she happens to be one who genuinely dislikes eating it for whatever reason. While a human would use the explanation of "I don't like killing to eat", her explanation is simply "I don't like it". Prying further into the subject now that we made her say it wouldn't be good form.

Instead, Jack managed to find leftovers of some fruit salad which Saria thoroughly enjoyed. It mostly contained her precious tropicots, so of course she would enjoy it.

(Jack) "Saria, sorry for asking, but what was that... Thing, you did to our son?"

Ah, I was wondering too.

(Saria) "Uhm... It was supposed to be a signer ritual I think, as a blessing by the dark god of the Tritagram. I couldn't remember what the words to say were but I did do the baptism right I think. Did you see how happy Myles got when I did it?"

(Jack) "The... Dark god?"

(Saria) "Yep. You humans pray to the gods, right? So it's perfect for me to do it."

Jack had a bit of a morbid expression when he uttered those three words. I would be too if I was blessed by some dark god. But it just looked like a regular day for Saria who apparently worshipped some dark god? What was that about? She just munched away on her food after explaining it.

(Jack) "W- Well, there are some that do... But you really shouldn't... Uh, bless people in the name of a dark god. Or bless people at all."

(Saria) "Huh? Why?"

(Jack) "Ah, it's okay now, it's just, we thought you would give a symbolic blessing, you know? Like a 'I hope you do well in life' sort of thing, right?"

(Saria) "That's not a blessing, you stupid."

Saria was confused as she thought blessings to be natural. Jack was calmly trying to explain her that a blessing of some dark god wasn't really a blessing to humans, but anyone could see that her upbringing made her believe the polar opposite.

Her stories about her late guardian were always positive. It was the only being she really spoke about from her past, so the ritual that must have assigned this guardian to her must be something she holds dear. She probably had the same happen to her when she was small.

(Jack) "Well, you see, the dark god is seen as an evil god, right? So for humans who strive to do good to each other it's not the best thing, right?"

(Saria) "Hnn... I get it. Humans are weird not wanting a blessing... It's not like Myles will ever be able to make use of it anyways, humans can't use magic, so nothing bad will happen."

Knowing fully well what a bad omen is, I couldn't help but raise an imaginary brow at her final statement.