Raising a Hero

Chapter 12

A passel of kids splashed and waded about in the pool of the main square fountain, probably left there by their parents shopping nearby. They looked carefully dressed in well-kept clothes, if not rich, and their limbs had proper weight.

What arrested my gaze, however, was the smallest, a toddler, wearing nothing but a big shirt and a diaper, dimpled thighs dancing in an excited march in place of being unable to do what all the other kids were doing.

A familiar, bone-deep ache that I only ever half-understood overwhelmed me.

What am I doing here?

Hadn't I already done enough? Didn't I die? Where was my promised family? My promised home? Where were my lost babies?

Gus's snarling face cropped up in my mind's eye, furious that I had dared to mother him, baby him, have him. He didn't want me. There was no promised child to care for or make a family with there. Just someone who thought me irritating and probably stayed with me out of obligation and guilt.

Allowing myself to admit that cut a cold line through me, along with a stark, chilling loneliness. A loneliness that put the kind I felt back at my earth to shame, because at least back there I had had my mother, aunts, uncles, and a splattering of empathetic friends. If nothing else I had people of the same culture and language, who had seen the same movies and laughed at the same memes. Who knew what wi-fi and catilac converter was. Who groaned if you mentioned the DMV.

Here...no one was like me. Yes, they had a heart and feelings like mine, but the likeness ended there. I had to strain to reach across a great ravine of differences to even be able to relate to them, and even then they all had their own lives to be caught up in that I could hardly imagine, because their world was just so different. We might as well be different species.

And my baby I'd so anticipated...might as well hate me.

I didn't feel like buying a dress anymore, but I did anyways because I didn't want to bother Milly anymore for her dresses. The women in the shop perked at seeing me, probably seeing a wonderful doll to dress, only to wilt when I asked for something simple. They asked for details, colors and the such, but at my continuing apathetic replies they exchanged concerned glances. I barely paid attention to the swaths of fabric they put against my face or the tugs of their fingers as they eventually pulled me out of my Belle dress.

Despite my lack of feedback, the dress they picked out for me turned out to be very pretty. It was a rosy pink, the kind that reminded one of blushing maidens and bows, with a leather waist coat that supported the breasts in the loose fitting, white top. The open collar revealed a peek of my pale collarbones.

"Do you like it?" asked a cautious little lady clerk.

When I gave a weak smile and a, "Yeah. I actually like it a lot."

"Good. And it suits you perfectly." She hesitated, but seemed to change her mind. "Will that be all?"

After ordering two sets of undergarments in my size and a bustier on their recommendation, I left the shop wearing my new dress. They'd even tied back my hair with a matching pink complimentary ribbon. Because of that, I didn't bother with the shawl. It wasn't like it mattered how much attention I got anyways.

My mood only grew more and more isolated as I made my way back to the Red Swallow Inn. It began to sink in that, hey, I had actually died. To my mother, I was dead. I had avoided suicide in part because I knew she'd probably follow right after me, or something akin to it. She'd always told me that she could never live through the death of one of her babies. But things had been happening so fast, I'd never taken the time to sit and realize the monstrous mess I'd left behind...and the people I wouldn't be able to see for a very, very long time in the forseeable future.