In Which Rox Learns to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Rox always had a knack for remembering conversations. His father had jokingly called him "my little sponge" when he was a child for his uncanny ability to pick up on anything and everything. He could remember conversations he'd had during playtime at the village school. He could remember tiny moments of talking with his siblings over early morning breakfast tables. Much to his eternal shame, he could also perfectly recall the awkward 'birds and the bees' talk his father had tried to have with him, and later, the much more thorough (and thoroughly humiliating) lecture his mother had given him about sex and sexuality.

So it was no surprise to him when, after Jackie approached him one night with an uncharacteristically serious expression on her face, he was able to recall exactly the conversation that had led to this moment.

"Rox," she said quietly, glancing back at the others, who chatted cheerfully around the fire, "Can I talk to you? Alone?"

He followed her around the back of the wagon, taking in every detail of her, from the furrow between her brows to the way she kept twisting her hands around. His cheerful girlfriend just did not fret this way. "What's wrong, Jack?" he asked, keeping his voice low. The others would grant them as much privacy as possible, he knew, but it was best to keep it down.

"I think I'm pregnant," she blurted out, and he thought that maybe she had cast a spell on him simultaneously, for his heart stopped momentarily.

He didn't sputter. Rox did not sputter. He just didn't, okay? Rox was completely and utterly calm, like a still pool, when he said, all professional-like and calmly, "Are you sure? I mean, how do you know? Maybe it's a mistake. Maybe it's not your baby."

Jackie gave him a look she must have learned from Megan, for it conveyed that she thought him a complete and utter idiot. "I've missed my period for the third month in a row now, Rox."

Rox did not reel backwards like he'd been sucker-punched. He did not reel. He just didn't, okay? Rox was as steady as the rocks his name sounded like. He was cool and collected. "But, I mean…are you sure?"

And then his traitorous mind betrayed him, and he recalled a conversation from three months prior.

"Rox, I want to, but we really shouldn't. I'm out of herbs, and the last thing we need to do is make a new discovery in the realms of racial reproduction."

"Oh, come on Jack, it'll be fine. All that miasma exposure has likely made us both sterile anyway."

"I don't know."

"We don't have to do anything. Come on, let's just go to bed and cuddle."

But of course they hadn't been able to resist the time to themselves away from the others. Rox took a deep breath and sighed. He should have known this would happen. He could practically re-hear his mother's lecture now. If you ever have sex outside of marriage, your partner will get pregnant for sure! Even if you have a boy-partner! Pregnancy!

"Okay, Jackie," he said, taking her hands and rubbing her knuckles gently with the pads of his thumbs. "I'm here for you. What do you want to do?"

She looked at him, still frowning. "I want to keep the baby."

He sucked in a breath, considering. "Are you sure? We've got a long way to go on the road still. And I have no idea how the mixed race issue will play out in terms of gestation." He chuckled at his own little pun.

"Excuse me?"

He shrugged. "Just that having a baby that's half Yuke, half Selkie might make your pregnancy term shorter or longer than usual. I really don't know."

"So you're really okay with this?" Jackie asked, eyes shining in the dim glow from the fire. "I don't want to rope you into anything."

Rox tugged her hands, pulling her to him and embracing her. "I really am okay with this," he said, and laughed ruefully. "The question is whether my mother will be."

"Forget about your mother," Jackie said. "What about the rest of the caravan?"

It was a good question, but she needn't have worried.

They waited until the next morning. Rox was still utterly cool and calm, not worried about what his friends might think at all. At all.

The group sat solemnly around the embers of last night's fire, listening as Jackie relayed her information. It was so simple. She was pregnant, they were having a baby, his and hers together. He pretended not to notice the way that Jackie's gaze drooped lower and lower until her eyes were focused on the dusty, rocky ground, or the way that Megan began to twist her wedding band around her finger over and over.

Jackie was beginning to babble about baby clothes when Layla abruptly stood from the blanket she'd been seated on, walked over to Jackie and pulled the Selkie into a hug. "Congratulations!" she said, taking her friend's hands. "Are you and Rox going to get married? What are you going to name the baby?"

Then Alain was up, following his lady's lead and hugging Jackie too, then clapping Rox on the back in a blow that did not make him stagger. "Congrats," the farm boy offered. "Just… don't name it after its daddy, okay?"

"I'm offended by that remark," Rox said, drawing up to his full height. "Raeanalas Ozeriata Xalferi is a family name, I'll have you know."

"Dear gods, let the tradition end here, then," Alain widened his eyes in false alarm, laughing at his friend. In the meantime, Megan had joined Jackie and Layla's hug.

"I call god-mum!" Elinor shouted before leaping onto Rox's shoulders. He took her weight with a grunt.

"What are you going to call the baby?" Layla asked.

Megan laughed. "I think it's a little early to ask them that, Layla."

"No, I mean, you can't keep calling it half Yuke, half Selkie. What would you call a baby like that? A Yukie?"

"Sounds too much like Yuke," Elinor advised from her high position on Rox. "How about Seluke?"

"That's just downright strange," Alain argued. "How about Yelkie?"

"I don't want to get into this," Rox protested, only to be interrupted by Jackie's "No, now that's too much Selkie!" He groaned.

"Seuke?" Layla tried, twisting her tongue through the vowels.

"Kieyuk?"

"What the hell? That's bizarre!" Rox said, once again drowned out by his so-called friends.

"Okay, how about Kelkie?"

"No, no, no, Kelpie! Isn't that word cute? You're having a Kelpie baby!" Elinor clapped her hands excitedly.

Feeling as if he were completely in control and not as if everything had spiraled beyond his reach, Rox said, "That doesn't even make sense. It doesn't combine both names at all!"

Jackie looked up at him, eyes shining. "But it's cute!"

And so Rox conceded on the first of many, many things concerning his child.

Several months later, the caravan rolled over up and over the last hill to Tipa, the setting sun turning the peninsula golden and the ocean waves the color of dusk.

Several stone markers littered the path, indicating where the village crystal's barrier began. A little farther up the path, a purple-haired man waited, his wide grin even more visible than his lurid hair.

"Dai!" Megan shouted, leaping from the wagon and running toward him. They collided with a shout, kissing each other frantically as the rest of the caravan cheered and made obscene suggestions.

"I've always wondered how he knows to meet us out here," Rox said conversationally from where he rode in the back with Jackie. Once upon a time he had been the one to look as green as a brand new sailor. Now his pregnant fiancée put his old motion sickness to shame.

Layla turned from the driver's box to look back at him with a smile. "I asked Alain this morning what time he thought we'd arrive and then sent Mog ahead. I do that every year."

"That makes sense," the Yuke conceded with a chuckle. "Wait. Does that mean everyone knows we're here?"

"Probably," she offered sweetly.

"Crap."

Rox's mother took one look at Jackie's very round belly and equally grouchy face, and promptly fainted.

"Son, you've gone and done it now," said his father mournfully.

Outside, the villagers were gathering for a festival. The night was cool and lovely, with a slight hint of a breeze bringing in the salty ocean air. The dirt paths, fields, and grassy hills were familiar. They were home, and it was time to celebrate.

Inside, Rox stared at his mother, who lay prostrate across the sofa with her arms flung out dramatically. "Brandy!" she called weakly. "Husband, bring me brandy!" Rox's father obliged, helping her to a seated position, and she swigged it down like the drink was going out of style. "Now, son," she said, focusing on him. "Tell me you're not serious."

"I am serious," Rox said steadily. He would not lose his cool. Rox never, ever, ever lost his cool. "I'm going to marry Jackie Raie, and we're going to have a baby."

"No!" Rox's mother moaned, extending the 'o' as she flung herself back, arms akimbo once more, so that it sounded more like "NOOOOooooooo…" Rox gritted his teeth, marking the throbbing headache starting in his temples and knowing that it was only going to get worse.

"Raeanalas," she said. "My darling son. Surely you can't… she's a Selkie, sweetie!"

"I know that, Mother," he said.

"What will you even call that half-breed thing?" she demanded.

Rox yawned, "A baby, most likely." He wished his father would bring him some of that brandy.

His mother made another noise intending to convey despair, but just ended up sounding like a mu going through its death throes. "A half-breed! My son, about to have a half-breed! A freak!"

"We've decided to call it a Kelpie, for now," Rox told her, as his father leaned in through the kitchen door to helpfully chip in, "Sweetie, our son is one of those half-breeds."

Rox's mother shot up again, and then flung herself back to the cushions. "But he's a half-breed that makes sense: a Cluke! You can't make any words out of Yukes and Selkies!"

Once again Rox was left staring at his mother as his father said, "Oh, I thought we'd decided to call him a Yuvat," then ducked back into the kitchen, leaving his son to battle his wife's logic.

Rox staggered out of his house the next morning with his hair sticking up in all directions, his eyes bleary and bloodshot. The argument had started to wind down an hour past midnight, but then he'd unhelpfully pointed out that, given his own half-breed status, his baby would be a quarter-breed. His mother had found new strength then.

He found Jackie waddling up to the crystal from the river. "How'd it go with your folks?" she asked. He grunted in reply and she laughed. "My father's still not too keen on the idea, but I assured him it was what I wanted. Now all my family wants to do is make sure that you've more of your father in you than your mother."

"Oh gods," Rox muttered, rubbing his eyes. "Now you know why I like to pretend I came from the village cabbage patch." Lifting his head up, he spotted Elinor down the path a ways, heading for Alain's home. "I've got an idea," he told Jackie, taking her hand and tugging her down in Elinor's wake.

"Oh, yeah?" she asked, lacing their fingers together.

"Elli wants to be god-mum so much," Rox said, "And my mom's so obsessed with this mixed-race thing… let's tell her Elli's your cousin and you're half-Lilty too."

Jackie laughed so loudly that a few nearby sparrows took flight and the baby kicked so hard even Rox and Elinor could feel it and laugh with her.

After a long day of training, the group collapsed beside the river. Alain, Layla, and Elinor quickly shucked their gear and dove into the cool water, while Megan and Dai splashed about in the shallows and Jackie dipped her swollen feet in. Rox sat beside her, feet very much out of the water. It wasn't that he didn't like water. He just didn't feel like being in it right now, okay?

"So what are you going to name the baby?" Megan asked, wading over to the side to perch on a rock and chat. Dai followed, hopping on the rock behind her and leaning his head against her back, wrapping his arms around his wife.

"I was thinking Sam," Jackie said, "After my dad."

"That's sweet," Megan replied. "He'd like that."

Rox snorted, unable to help himself. "Sam Xalferi? That's a ridiculous name. I thought we'd agreed on Melvin."

Silence fell over the river bank as even Alain, Layla, and Elinor stopped their play to listen in. Megan's eyes were wide, and Jackie's face looked stormy. From behind Megan's back Dai shook his head slowly and pityingly at Rox.

"I thought I told you I hate the name Melvin, and I wasn't aware our baby's name would include Xalferi," Jackie said at last, smiling stiffly at him. "And you can't pretend you don't remember that conversation, dear. I know you."

"Well, of course I remember," Rox said, looking away from where Dai was making a severing motion across his throat. "But, I mean, Melvin is a great name, and you are marrying me, Mrs. Xalferi."

"I also wasn't aware I'd be changing my name," Jackie said.

Megan shifted uncomfortably on the rock. "Uh, maybe Dai and I should let you two have this conversation in private."

Dai shook his head at Rox. "Roxy~ you should quit while you're ahead."

Rox laughed. "Well, I'm not changing my name!"

As the cultured debate (Rox just did not have fights) began over whether the baby would be Sam Xalferi Raie or Melvin Raie Xalferi, Alain shifted uncomfortably in the middle of the stream. "I can't decide if it would be more awkward to drown myself right now or swim away," he whispered to Layla, but not quietly enough. Elinor winced visibly.

"Let me join you," she hissed, and the three of them floated away downstream as the argument escalated, Megan and Dai grabbing the discarded gear and making their own swift escape.

The baby was born a few weeks before the caravan was set to leave again. The healer said it had been an easy birth, but Rox's broken fingers would tell a different story. As it was, the group gave the couple a week to recuperate and catch up on sleep before they crammed into their new home demanding to see the cute little Kelpie. As it turned out, their argument had gone nowhere, for-

"Oh!" Elinor squealed, touching the baby's feet, "She's perfect!"

-the rather long, Selkie-tan skinned and crimson haired baby was a girl.

As god-mum, Elinor called first dibs on the baby, rocking her a bit before passing her on to Alain, who cooed even more than anyone else. At Megan's questioning glance, Layla shrugged. "He loves babies," she said in an aside. "He told me he wants to have an entire caravan-worth of kids. I told him to get a new girlfriend or do it himself."

Alain at last passed the baby on to Dai, whom Megan would later eye speculatively and contemplate how adorable and wonderful he'd looked holding the infant. Then it was her turn, and then Layla's. At last the baby was passed back to her proud parents, where Elinor reclaimed her.

"Little Aimee, huh?" Elinor asked, tucking a finger into the baby's instinctive grip. "She is the cutest Kelpie I've ever seen!"

"You've never seen another one," Alain teased her as Rox said, "Well, we both have siblings with similar names. Figured we'd keep both sides happy."

"A wise choice," Layla said teasingly. "And I noticed you conceded on the last name issue, Rox."

"We decided to both keep our names!" Jackie protested.

Rox shook his head a bit mournfully, then chuckled and leaned down to give her a quick kiss. "I'm getting more and more used to this conceding thing," he admitted. "But we're definitely naming the next baby Melvin."

The group laughed, and baby Aimee Raie-Xalferi yawned. Neither of her parents would be rejoining the caravan for the coming cycle, but Dai would be going as a substitute. Both in Tipa and abroad, it would be an interesting year.

The End?

It's been awhile since I've written a Loveshack chapter! I missed these guys. I have a lot of random speculative thoughts for our RP, but this one came up recently and was too good to pass up (and involved making fun of Rox, which I apparently can't resist :D). All jokes on Rox, Jackie, Meg, Dai, Alain, Layla, and Elli were made with love. Thanks for reading!