...right. This isn't just a matter of wanting to meet their baby sooner. 

Please – if there's anything at all, anything in the world I can do to make this easier for you, tell me. 

You're terribly sweet. Just be here.

Two hours and many contractions later, Naima remembers how she feels about waiting: it sucks. She hates it. The entire concept of sitting somewhere doing nothing is deeply upsetting. The nurses have brought her food and water, which is something, but it's hardly enough to keep her occupied.

"Hate waiting," she murmurs, leaning against her husband. "I keep wondering if I could wander the hospital tapping people for the next hour, and then remembering that I made the rule against sick people interacting with women in labor for perfectly good reasons, and also that I'd screw up all of our data, which seems like an incredibly heartless reason not to heal people, and it usually doesn't even come up, right, because tapping people on hospital island is fundamentally less efficient than tapping people in my designated tapping areas, but - "

She hisses, tensing up again. Hate waiting. I'm against it.

"Do you want to help me with my work? You know that crafting spell I'm working on, I want to use weaving as a test case, and I need you to help me understand how it works." 

I know, I know – I could round up some sick people in the city and bring them here, if you wanted, they could come in through the back entrance like I did. As long as you think it's safe. 

No, no, I really did make the rule for a reason. I could probably weave intermittently.

I'm not sure we could get the loom in here. Just – here, he can make an illusory one. Show me where that bit goes – 

She can show him where the bits go. That's about the right level of challenge right now. She forms, but decides to ignore, the question of whether this is actually useful work, or whether he's just humoring her. If ever there were a time to just humor her, this would probably be it.

She gets a rhythm down, for a few hours - a few minutes at a time of working through the lighter pain, then a minute or so of enduring as calmly as possible as the pain flares up, then a few more minutes of work. Occasionally she instead stops to pee, or paces the room aimlessly. The nurses check on her every now and then, different ones as the sun dips below the horizon and then the stars come out. She wishes she'd finished out the day - she thinks perhaps she could have, and keeps having to try not to calculate the number of people missed - but it's far too late for that now. And it really is sweet, that Élie is trying so hard to get this right. Maybe next time they'll both be calmer.

At some point she gives up on weaving; she isn't entirely sure when. Labor carries on into the night, well past midnight. She's exhausted, and the pain is getting much worse. She'd vaguely planned to use the stool, but instead she finds herself kneeling on the floor as she did last time, artlessly prodding Élie to keep touching her and saying the same meaningless things over and over.

He can do that. 

(If he was a better husband, he wouldn't have to. He'd have already invented a spell to remove pain, not just delay it – it's not like he didn't know childbirth hurt – he'll have it in time for the next one – but that doesn't help Naima now). 

He's so sweet. Honestly it's probably good that I'm experiencing it this way - this is how everyone else experiences it, it's really the best possible way of testing how the hospital works for this, how the hospital feels, on levels that the numbers we have can't capture, whether we help people feel good about having children or they feel weak and scared and sad.

It seems so much worse here, actually, on an emotional level. It might be safer - than other places in the city, anyway, I'm not actually sure that we're outperforming places out in the country, and in that case maybe we should actually be encouraging people to go give birth outside the city if they can - but it's so depressing? It's lonely and it's boring and it's nerve-wracking not to know anyone - of course I suppose if people left the city to give birth in the country they wouldn't know anyone where they were going, either, so I guess it's not as if the villages are outperforming on that front for city residents. I just keep thinking about how last time there were lots of women everywhere, women I knew, and I didn't even like most of them most of the time, and they didn't really like me either, but somehow it was good to have them there anyway, I guess because childbirth isn't really an emotionally complicated thing between women, it's really pretty simple in terms of how it goes and what you're there for and it doesn't give you that many opportunities to do things that people can get ticked off with you about, or maybe it does but everyone just gives you a pass for the day? Anyway, there are women everywhere, and now it's just you, and you're great and I love you and you shouldn't leave, but it's honestly also kind of awkward? Although maybe it isn't objectively awkward, if there's such a thing, maybe it's just that I absorbed that the way this is supposed to work is that all the women see each other when they're being ridiculous and vulnerable like this, and the men don't, they just kind of hang out outside and worry, I guess, and then later on you can just present them with a baby, and with you still being alive, hopefully, and they get to be so proud of you, without having to have any feelings about seeing you when you were in pain and probably scared and being kind of ridiculous and doing the endless babbling thing, not that everyone does that, I think that's just me, and I'm aware that it's absurd to be worried about the social side of things while I'm in the middle of having a baby, I'm honestly sort of wondering whether there's some sort of conservation of worrying thing where if you don't have to worry about yourself and the baby surviving you have to latch onto some other much more ridiculous thing to worry about, but the feelings I actually notice are kind of wishing that I were around all of my sisters and mother who already know that I'm ridiculous, but instead you're here, and I don't actually want you to think that I'm ridiculous, particularly, I mostly want you to think that I'm really cool for having created a little person, even if the process of getting the person out is really one of the least dignified things that people do.

I love you.

Most women in the city must have family in the country, right? And the outcomes are better because there's less disease – maybe we should set up a fund to pay for women in Alexandria to travel to their villages for childbirth and lying-in, and see if the numbers look better. That's what the people who can afford it do in Galt. I'm from Isarn, but I was born in the town where my mother's people live, and had my wet-nurse there. Six months, Naima, I don't understand how anyone could stand to be away from their baby for so long, even if they can afford to visit, we're so lucky, our child won't die of pox or consumption or scarlet fever. 

(He's going to fix it for everyone. His prototype almost works. One day, wizards will be able to cast Remove Disease as easily as Light or Mending).

I can get a gaggle of women from Mut in here if you like, but I don't know if that would help. I could get your mother and sisters and Saira – or I could get Catherine to do it, because I don't want to leave even for twelve seconds. I wish I could experience this with you. It's not fair that only you have to suffer to bring our child into the world, and – this is probably insulting, you can tell me to shut up, I should probably shut up right now – I want to know what it's like. The last thing in the world I want is for any of this to be hidden from me. You're the strongest person I've ever met. I think the mortal condition is to be ridiculous, and the fact that you were in Tian Xia saving other people's babies until eight hours ago is ridiculous, and I'm ridiculous and you're ridiculous and little Ines-or-Zaire is going to be ridiculous, and I love them, and I love you. 

She loves him, too. And she's glad he's here, and she feels better knowing how he's thinking about this, and about her. She tries to send these to him without quite forming them neatly into words, because apparently she's coherent enough to babble on her own for however long but isn't entirely coherent enough to promptly respond to anything anyone else says. When she does get her words back they don't seem very interested in covering anything important.

It would be a good thing to test, how much better going out to the country looks, even if it wouldn't make any money. It would mostly be a terrible thing if having the maternity ward here were convincing people not to, if we can't actually offer any real improvements. And I guess I don't actually know how many women in the city have close family in the country, only having lived in the city for a handful - aaaaugh.

Maybe she's just going to gently headbutt him for the next little while, and hope that he can do something sensible with whatever kind of prompt that is.

He can – stroke her hair? That seems like an appropriate thing to do in this situation?? He'd like to be more than appropriate – maybe even helpful – but there's absolutely nothing he can do. 

You can do this – it won't be long now – I love you, I love you – 

And, in fact, it isn't long. The next nurse check-in brings with it the Pharasmin cleric-midwife, who sits with her and tells her when it's time to push. Dahab shows up to fetch things for the midwife, and then to stand awkwardly in the background, occasionally praying audibly (though Naima can't make out what for). 

It's hard. It's not harder than stopping Isarn from being dragged into hell, or saving Bachuan from its hubris, but it calls on different kinds of strength, ones that haven't been tested so recently. She holds her husband's hand very tightly, and doesn't move from the spot where she kneels by the bed. She focuses all of her energy on pushing out the beautiful new life she's grown inside herself, like some kind of mad alchemist. Anyone would be horrified and awed by this project that she's seen to fruition, if all women didn't work whatever not-quite-magic she has worked here. She stops worrying, somewhere in the middle, about whether she looks dignified while she does it.

And then it is over. The midwife cradles the child as it slides out, then hands it off to Dahab and heals up the bleeding. Naima finds herself sobbing, half in exhaustion and half in relief, and briefly collapses against the bed.

     "It's a girl," announces Dahab, quietly. She offers the blood-covered baby to Élie, maybe because Naima looks a little iffy on the holding things front.

A girl. Inés Saira. She has ten fingers and ten toes and a mind endowed with the potential for reason and like all babies looks a little bit like a hobgoblin. She's perfect. 

"Hello, Ines," he says, since he remembers you're supposed to talk to babies. "Your mama and I love you so, so much. If we were better people we might have waited longer to meet you, but we're impatient, so we didn't have time to fix everything up before you got here. But – oh, no, my darling, don't cry, you're safe, I promise, we wouldn't have brought you here if you weren't – that's the way – "

Inés gurgles. 

Naima, help. Her nose is very small and I do not know how I shall live. 

A long time ago - before they were married, before Naima proposed, before she had even settled on Élie at all - one of the very first things that made her consider him was the thought that he would be so good with any babies she had, and that she would be picking a father for them who was overflowing with love and adoration for tiny little humans who can't even do anything.

Naima loves being right. She also loves getting to admire her own handiwork, and she feels that this is near the top of the list. Everything that came before is worth it, for this moment, and for getting to look forward to all of the ones that will come after it. 

Oh, look at her. We made an entire person. Isn't she lovely?

She has all the same parts that adult people have but none of them are the same size and one day she will learn how to talk and I do believe she's trying to grab my finger right now, she hasn't been in the world ten minutes and she's already pursuing goals, she must be terribly precocious.

And at the same time he's telling Inés that she is beautiful and clever and certainly destined to be a great wizard, unless she decides she would like to be something else, in which case they'll make that happen for her, even if she wants to be the moon, although he'd really rather she didn't because it's very dangerous, being the moon – 

They're so adorable. She should probably be thinking about feeding Inés here, at some point, but she's still kind of exhausted, and she's maybe going to take a couple more moments to watch them, first. Her family. She has such a good family, probably the best family that anyone's ever made for themselves, and she's going to make sure that nothing ever happens to any of them, ever.

"Love you," she says, leaning again Élie a little, and doesn't bother figuring out who she's saying it to.