"Whoa! Really! I don't know if even Urtho can do all of those things..." He's amazed and delighted and entirely distracted from being scared, and starts asking Carissa more questions about what kinds of magic Leareth could do. 

She starts crying, which is ridiculous. 

Leareth could  combine his Golarion spells and his mage spells to never get tired, pretty much, there are different things that go into mage-tiredness but you can handle all of them with the low-level cleric spells Recharge Innate Reserves and Lesser Restoration and all he ever prepared was an enormous stack of those so he could do magic constantly. Resurrections in Golarion require diamonds and Leareth was the one who figured out you could make them - only if you're as ridiculously powerful as Vanyel, though they were looking into whether other people could do it in concert - he's really good at that, too, he can work with his whole army and be utterly indestructible - he was selling everyone in Golarion permanent Gates, and he'd been planning to make his own god and altered the plans in order to build Abadar a better interface so he wouldn't get a headache when he talked to him...

Ma'ar is so impressed. 

...Also it's really upsetting, that he probably won't ever get to meet Leareth and learn how he did it, and probably Carissa doesn't even know about all of his magic so he won't have any hints to go on. He's kind of emotional already, from the suppressed being-scared, and he has to try hard not to cry as well. 

The Healer comes by every so often to check on Carissa, and smiles at Ma'ar. 

She normally wouldn't dump all this on Ma'ar but it feels hard to stop. Leareth had an interplanar communications spell. Leareth once built a horrible artifact that sent demons after the entire family of whoever it was triggered against. Leareth and her figured out how to use wizard magic to recharge Velgarth amulets. Leareth from the moment he first saw Aroden's demiplane where magic only worked for Aroden wanted one of his own, very badly, and eventually he got an operations building in Aktun, Abadar's divine domain, done up for him just like that. Leareth was working with Vanyel on a magic-surveillance system for Cheliax, that would alert them to incursions from devils or foreign armies or something, Valdemar had had something similar and Vanyel had built it when they were enemies but now they were working together. 

She asks the Healer for the pain herbs or magic or whatever, eventually, mostly because she hates how her voice sounds off and how it scares Ma'ar.

He can get her the pain herbs now, but probably not another dose after that - once she's ready to push they can use the Healing pain-block just for the worst parts, since they'll want a Healer closely attending her for that part anyway. 

Ma'ar squeezes her hand tightly and asks questions, and doesn't complain when he sometimes has to repeat them two or three times because she was distracted. 

She tells Ma'ar about how Leareth was delighted with her when she explained how she'd planned to assassinate him if he'd turned out to be planning to destroy Cheliax or something, and about how Leareth was was very offended about the city of Awaiting Consumption in Abaddon and was planning to do something about it.

She has no idea how to tell if she's ready to push and tells the Healer so, somewhat snappishly.

Many women find it very obvious, he says, but he can check and see if her body is ready to start for it. He does. Says that she's very nearly there, and often it helps at this point to get up and walk around, or just stand up and lean over something if walking is too uncomfortable. 

Sure. 

(She wants to be home.)

(She wants to be married.)

(She wants to be safe, for one glorious month of her life she was safe and it was the best thing in the entire universe and then -)

This part is the most scary, it's like she can't even hear the words he's saying half of the time, but Ma'ar stays next to her and talks to her, literally whatever he can think of to say, which means mostly rambling about magic. 

The Healer comes back and tells her that she can push now and that he'll painblock for her during each contraction, and then says 'now', and takes her hand and the pain goes away; the general sensation doesn't, it's not much less distracting, but it doesn't hurt, or if it does it's not parsing as bad, or something. It's very odd and different from how the herbs for pain felt. 

Delay Pain works better though she will acknowledge that it has the major downside of not, actually, causing you to not have to experience the pain and her intensely felt nostalgia here is probably not primarily about one cleric spell she's used once in her life.

She wonders if it is considered inappropriate in Tantara to let fourteen-year-olds watch people give birth and then whether it's inappropriate in Tantara for fourteen year olds to give birth and then how you're supposed to stop them, if you're too Good for abortion and mustn't tell them about sex.

She's mad at Leareth for not coming, which is stupid, because she probably erased him from existence, and he wouldn't be angry at her for that, so it's very uncharitable being mad at him for it. She's mad at Leareth for setting his stupid magic thing up with male descendents because otherwise he could've been a girl and then he could be pregnant, which is an even stupider thing to be mad about than the last thing. She is mad at the stupid baby for not being teleportable out of her safely, that's obviously the civilized way to give birth.

Healer Tamsin doesn't say anything to indicate that he thinks it's inappropriate for Ma'ar to be there. 

He encourages her and painblocks and doesn't actually take that long, maybe ten minutes, at which point he calls over another Healing-trainee to help, and kneels to catch the baby girl's head and help coax her out the rest of the way. 

It's bloody but it's not that bloody, honestly, and it's mostly really incredibly cool, watching a literal tiny person come out of another person, it doesn't feel like that should work. 

Healer Tamsin, beaming at her, ties off the cord and passes the infant to the trainee for some quick wiping-off, and then Carissa is being offered a tiny newborn baby girl wrapped in a towel by a very excited-and-nervous-looking trainee. 

Carissa is a wreck and hateshateshateshates it and Leareth's not here and the baby is ugly and slimy and she's worried that means she did it wrong, somehow, though no one seems distressed, though maybe they just know it wouldn't help to act upset about it and she wants - not this - 

Cleaned off the baby looks less ugly and less like something is wrong. She takes her, mostly because that's obviously what she's supposed to do.

She wants to pull herself together enough to cast Detect Thoughts, and she fails, and she looks over at Ma'ar - "are we safe? is the baby - is there anything there -"

He snuggles up next to her; the Healer is right there doing something to do with making sure the afterbirth makes it out safely, but Ma'ar ignores him. "Yes, she's there, I can feel her - uh, she's not having thoughts so much - she's cold and I think she doesn't like the bright lights..." 

She attempts to shield and snuggle the baby, ineffectually because her arms are not being very cooperative right now and she's not sure how to not crush it. Her. "Okay. ...thank you."

The Healing-trainee pats Carissa's shoulder and then drapes a blanket over both her and baby, and says something to Ma'ar about how they should get the bed cleaned up once Carissa is ready but she's doing fine and looks like she wants to be left alone.

"Babies aren't that squishy," Ma'ar reassures her, "my mother used to just sling them around - you just have to hold up their head when they're tiny, but they won't die or anything if you mess up a bit, they're just very floppy - aww, she's so little." He pets her. 

She is pulling herself together mostly. "Felt big," she mutters.

"She looked big when she was in you! Just seems really small for the outside." He's having kind of absurdly protective feelings, how she's so tiny and helpless and that means he has to keep her SAFE, he doesn't remember feeling that way so much about his other siblings - but so many of them died, they weren't traditionally even given names until they were five days old, in case they were too sick and died first when they weren't really people - and sometimes it wasn't because they were sick...

He can't remember if he ever told Carissa about his most recent would-have-been baby sister - the one who died inside Mother, they won't ever know if they were a boy or girl.

But that isn't going to happen, here, because they're rich now and have magic and Urtho feeds them and gives them Healers and they can be safe. Mostly. If they're clever. 

She squeezes his hand. She really really wants to use one of her healing spells but - they might need it, ten years from now, or a hundred. She is not, here, in any kind of danger that'd be improved by being able to walk. 

(If she were at home) -

But it doesn't exist anymore and it doesn't matter and hopefully the little girl will be smart and good and worth it. That's a lot to put on a little girl, but - 

"Dierne Aspexia Iomedae," she says. She doesn't think anyone asked. Whatever.

A different Healer, a woman, comes in to help her clean up a bit and get off the bloody sheets onto non-bloody ones, and then offers to do some Healing so she'll be more comfortable, though the birth went smoothly so it's not too bad, and does she need advice on nursing the baby, they heard she doesn't have family here so weren't sure if she had someone to ask.