Finding Contentus

Chapter 135: The Inheritance of Parenthood

"That's my boy!" Neosa shouted, hoping to catch the smallest glimpse of her son before his destined birth.

Genesia couldn't help but grin, his carnivorous teeth shined like moonlight. He had never felt so pleased before, not just for being with his sister again, but at the prospect of catching a tiny peek at his daughter before her fated birth.

He had become a firm believer of Ramela's Perfect Patience that she learned from Nephthery. However, when it came to his child, he believed in Imperfect Impatience, for he had become plagued with stress like a father who was haunted by the inconceivable notion of his daughter escaping him forever.

He had to be sure, he had to have a glimpse, he had to have knowledge of his child and what she could potentially look like, what she could be.

He got the shock of his life when, instead of seeing his unborn child, he saw a beauteous cheetah that morphed into his mother, draped in yellow cloth sewn from sunlight with black spots, wearing her cheetah charm necklace and tiara that emitted rays.

She considered her son with those amber eyes of hers, as bright as stars born within the clouds of dust sprinkled all over the galaxy. Her bright smile made both planets lighten up as if bleakness was a shallow concept.

Genesia stopped into a wall of childish hesitation at the mere sight of her. He felt blindsided. Neosa zoomed right past the wall of childishness, right into her mother's awaiting embrace, rewinding time to the times she would spring at Bantii and she would accordingly spring to snatch her daughter from the air, no matter how sickly she looked or how exhausted she was.

They both squealed and laughed the same. Loudly, beautifully. They both looked the same. Loud and proud, beautiful. They both walked around the other, admiring their shared features with their hands placed upon their halo hips with cocky smiles and gloating compliments. They folded their arms and did a foot shaking dance, tapping their feet together. Each tap sounded like they were drumming on rhythmic djembes.

At that suspended moment, Genesia would have been happy to just stand there like a silent lamb, gazing at his mother and sister as they danced and drummed. Until they both stopped, turning to look at him.

Faster than he could blink, Bantii lifted him up and was hugging him with such a force he was sure his bones were turning to stardust, with such a heat he was confused to see his skin still attached when it felt like it was melting.

She put him down and moved back to feel his body, doting over him like he was a newborn. A boy remains a boy in the face of his mother. He just had to think of Minaleese's doting.

Mina. He grabbed his mother's hands, looking at them, inspecting her long fingers, the same long fingers he and Neosa had. He examined the jewellery she loved wearing all the time. Amber jewellery.

Neosa joined them as they formed a triangle. She flicked her mother's amber earrings and voiced the thing that was on Genesia's mind. "You raced through the past, the present, and the future, didn't you Mama? That's what happened when you had your first Impulse dream at the age of three, am I right?"

Bantii met her daughter's quick eyes and gave a helpless shrug as if she couldn't quite fathom her own Godly abilities herself. "That is what happened, my girl. Though it would be more accurate to say my astral self raced through time thanks to Òsun. My physical self was unaware, at least until the day of my death in which all my black spots sprinted back to my seer eyes."

Her pupils were tiny dots as if she was staring right through the Sun without being burned. She placed her right arm around Genesia's neck and her left arm around Neosa's neck as though they were best friends and walked with them, standing right on the line she had crafted between Jupiter and Neptune.