Annoyed huff, "Fiiine," she says. Going back to the daycare is okay if Mika is coming, too. 

Zofin smiles at her. Moslty because she is so soft. They take the two of them back.

When they get back, Liarae takes Alesin with great relief (considering what Mika had gotten up to on his little adventure, returning to find Alesin gone was very worrying). They return home for the night so Mika can get some rest to deal with the headache from having the instructions for a notice-me-not necklace imprinted into his brain at such a young age. 

They decide on two as a reasonable age to start the three children with magicka on learning magic, despite the interest all three show in the subject once Mika is no longer in pain from it. Not all kinds, though. Just enchanting, which is difficult to mess up, and easy to supervise given there are only two tables in the small settlement.

There's quite a long time between now and then, however, and many more things to focus on. Lia completes the notice-me-not project in late summer, and from there moves on to physical shielding - a reasonably straightforward translation of the oakflesh spell into an oakflesh enchantment. This one she completes before winter, allowing her to move on to a series of even simpler enchantments in the hopes that understanding how to make glowing, heating, and cooling objects, and things in that vein, will speed up future enchantment crafting using those elements. 

This, along with her twins, whenever they aren't at the new school which is finally up and running for the residents of the island, occupies her time quite handily until spring comes around again.

It will take a long time until they have teleportation, so Patiri spends a lot of her time working her ability to perform Conjuration, she creates soul gems, she summons familiars, and invents lesser conjuration spells for both herself to train (and in the future) the three small Magicka users. She learns more crystal magic from Istevi too.

That's very time-consuming, and even thought she tries to have long-lasting relationships when the Tepam's second spring comes around none really became something serious enough for have a kid with unique magical powers together.

She decides to try a donor combined with fertility drugs for twins.

It doesn't work. It actually fails badly.

And it is the worst experience of her life.

But she has to survive, so she does that. Her daughter needs her, so does the world.

People give her the best support they can. Which is a lot. They don't have infinite resources, but their progress makes people very interested in throwing money their way. Even credits their way, though the international treaties mean that they have to make adjustments to distributed credits to account to the wacky fertility experiments.

He finally fixes his spine and can walk again, he can duplicate plants and small animals, but have not (for obvious reasons) tried the ability on actual people. His new project is figuring out how to use crystal magic to duplicate magical items.

Of course, his main join in life is just watching his children grow up.

The last year was a major improvement for Mura, she met someone and married them. The fertility drugs do end up working on her, and she has beautiful twin girls.

She also figures out how to make her own empowered crystal, pale blue almost like an opal, that creates a protective effect around it. Not quite a force-field, more like a haze that prevents things from becoming too hot, too fast, or other kinds of dangerous.

Life. Is. Wonderful.

(She can even see Istevi walk again without feeling like there is something deeply unfair about the world. Most of the time.)

Kui is wonderful, a gray firefighter but very humble and good-natured. Always with a charming smile.

They don't use and end up not having reason to use the fertility drugs. She ends up expecting twins.

That's not all that she does, of course, the Deosikuri School is officially open, and she has social experiment reports faking, while also doing her real work.

It's good that everyone is enjoying the new twin sets, because it took so much negotiating to make those drugs legal.

Not that Isteri complains, after all, she ends up with twins herself this spring. The world is about to change, and now is the time to take opportunities.

Lia doesn't intend to use one of the credits allocated for the project when spring starts. Unfortunately intent doesn't necessarily mean much when you have a fertility tattoo which works on what you want, instead. She spends a night with a cute blue she meets at a party she goes to as part of Isteri's security, and shortly afterwards discovers that her birth control has failed. Again. 

And she's having twins. Again.

Not that she's complaining. Far from it. With the project's resources she doesn't have to worry about buying a credit for her babies, so she just gets to enjoy the experience. 

Sigh. They will do their best to track down the blue, the only problem with this is that they have to be extremely careful about filtering blues.

But people are glad on her behalf for the babies. And the triplets make a point of visiting her and Zofin's twins (who have already been born but are still at the hospital at this point).

He's not that hard to find. All it takes is a bit of asking around to get a full name - Raeka Moro, son of the infamous Aeris Irien, one of the most publicised executions of Janon Jonoro's career. Incidentally, also a cousin of Arel Eteo. It's a small world. 

Despite how different his behaviour is from that of his father and cousin, his support of charity and reluctance to enter the public eye, approaching him is still something of a risk

She checks, but there is no reason to suspect he was there at that Blue party with a purpose. Which, does not mean they should not be paranoid. Maybe, Lia just has a type, maybe he was spying. They will keep an eye on him, from a distance.

...It is a reasonable precaution, no matter how regretful Lia is that he can't know about his own children. He hadn't treated her anything like Arel had, but if he spilled any secrets to his cousin it would be... unfortunate. At any rate, it's not as though she's raising her kids alone, with all of the childcare staff as well as her friends. Four small children at once would be a bit much for one person. 

On the day that their new siblings (!!!!) are being born, Mika and Alesin are left out in the waiting room with everyone else waiting for the birth. Both of them find this extremely unfair! At least they're not the only ones waiting, though. 

Yes, it takes forever, Tani and Ovali already had to wait a whole day for their younger half-sisters, they shouldn't need to do more waiting!

Migah is very nervous, what if something goes wrong like what happened to Tepam's mother?

Asilei is currently the main adult minding the kids while the others are taking a break or watching from a distance. "Why don't you draw a blessing to see what it will be like? How about if each one of you did that?"

Alesin is suspicious. She knows what a distraction looks like. This does sound better than sitting around waiting for ages, though. 

"We can use the bowl Aunt Zofin brought for the new babies," she suggests. 

Mika, pleased to have something to do, volunteers to go ask her. 

"Auntie, can we use your blessing bowl?" 

Zofin is a comfortable chair breastfeeding one of her babies (babies!!)

"Ah, of course. Just be careful with it." The blessings have chips which they can use to track down, but it's always good to have the kids being mindful.

"We will!" 

Blessing bowl: acquired. He takes it back over to the play area, setting it on the short kids' table there.

"Who's gonna go first?" He asks, poking through it. 

Everyone wants to go first. Asilei decides that Lesi can go first, and then they can go counter-clockwise.

So Lesi leans over the table to draw her coins. It's a full set, which means it has three each of all the coins, plus three each of each kind of ghost coin, all with chips inside them so you can tell which one it is.

Lesi draws Joy, Love, and... Endurance.

"That's bad, right? Endurance is bad."

"Endurance means you need to be strong, but there is Joy and Love there, so things will be turn out to be good. I bet that when it turns out to be Lakini's turn she will draw Hope."

"That's because I am Elay! And we draw the best blessings!" Lakini proclaims.

She is growing up to be like a green-haired copy of the Elay prime.

However, before it's Lakini's turn it's Migah and then Aden's, the first draws Resilience, Love and Endurance. "Resilience is like Endurance?"

To which Asilei says. "A bit, but not bad, it means that you can change to fit the situation better. Endurance is also not bad, bad." The grandmother says to the daughter that has that as a birth blessing.

Aden draws Beauty, Joy and Kindness. "That's good, he comments blandly. The babies are going to be that?"

"You can't draw birth blessings for them yet. But they might be."