Page 30 of Xel: Broken Bond
The munsend shook himself lazily, then padded back into the bedroom, and I heard a muffled thump as he flopped down onto the rug. And then I was hurrying out the door and over to the barn, hoping I hadn’t missed anything important in the few minutes I’d been delayed.
Inside the barn, Leesha was leaning on the stall door where Rose was penned up, peering at her intently. In the stall next door, the other thumbits were bleating continuously, roused either by Rose’s agitation or by our presence.
Rose herself was standing up, her legs spread and her head down, and there was a trickle of fluid coming from her back end. I wrinkled my nose at the sight. I knew the basic mechanics of reproduction, and I’d been taught a number of different ways that animals from a variety of different planets producedtheir young. Some laid eggs, some gave birth to live offspring, a few species had a way of cloning themselves by budding off miniature replicas of themselves, and still others required a separate host species to incubate their lavae for a time before the offspring broke out of their host’s body to begin independent life. Thumbits, apparently, gave birth to live young, but I’d never given the actual process much thought. At first glance, it appeared to be far messier than I’d ever anticipated. The videos had always shown images of clean, fluffy cubs or chicks, wobbling about on unsteady legs. But of course, when they first came out, they wouldn’t be anything like so neat and clean.
“She’s doing pretty well on her own,” Leesha said in a soft voice, sidling up to me. “We’re just here to help if anything goes wrong. But if we’re lucky, she’ll be able to handle it all by herself.”
We watched for another minute or two, then a long, pointy object appeared out of Rose’s back end. “That’s a foot!” my master blurted out. But the foot disappeared back inside Rose just as quickly.
“Why did it go back inside?” I asked, concerned that something was wrong.
But my master just shrugged. “Sometimes it just takes a while. The feet can pop in and out a few times, while the contractions get stronger and everything lines up in the right place. It’s not a problem unless the mother seems to be in distress.”
We waited a few minutes more, and then the leg slid out again… and this time, there was a second little foot beside it. “Come on, baby,” Leesha crooned at Rose. “You can do it. Nice big push. Come on, girl.”
Rose let out a bleating sound and stomped her feet a few times. Then she put her head down and her abdomen seemed toripple… and all at once, a tiny little version of herself plopped out of her and landed with a thud on the straw.
"Oh goodness, it’s so cute!” Leesha gushed, all but jumping up and down as she watched. “And it’s white! White thumbits are the cutest!”
As we watched, Rose took a moment to recover, then she turned around, sniffing at the calf warily. But caution soon turned to affection, and she began to lick the little body all over.
I couldn’t help but grimace at the sight. “That must taste awful,” I said – not so much a complaint as an expression of surprise. My trainers had never anticipated that I’d be involved in animal care in anything but the most superficial way, and so they’d taught me just enough on the subject to avoid the appearance of ignorance, but nothing more.
My master chuckled. “I think thumbit tastebuds are quite different from our own. They eat grass, after all,” he pointed out, quite sensibly.
“Looks like we got away with the easy option,” Leesha said. “Just give them a few more minutes to make sure the little one can stand up, and then we can go back to bed.”
We all stood there, watching with rapt attention as the calf slowly tottered to its feet, and then its mother led it to the rack of hay that had been set up earlier. Thumbit calves were born able to eat vegetation straight away, Leesha had told me earlier in the evening, which was in contrast to a lot of the species from Earth, which depended on their mothers making milk until their digestive system developed a bit more. The calf wobbled along after its mother, nibbling at the hay when she gave it a nudge in the right direction. But despite the clear evidence that it was safe and healthy, we all continued standing there, watching.
After a time, the mother went back to cleaning the calf, licking all the parts she hadn’t got to yet, and then she stood and lookedup at us, then back down at the calf, seeming for all the world to be saying ‘See? I made this. Didn’t I do a good job!’
“You’re going to be a terrific mother,” Leesha told Rose, and the thumbit shook herself, as if pleased with the praise.
It was a truly magical sight, and I was immensely pleased to have been able to see it. But the longer we stood there, the more I became aware of an odd sensation, in my mind and in my chest. It was not a comfortable feeling, though I couldn’t quite put a name to it. It intensified when I looked at Rose, paying such close attention to her calf, and clearly wanting to protect and care for it.
All of a sudden, I became aware of… anger. I was seethingly angry, and though I was certain that I wasn’t angry with Rose, something she was doing was nonetheless causing the anger.
I was aware of my breath coming quicker, and I abruptly turned away, wanting to somehow distance myself from whatever was making me so angry.
“Xel?” my master said, stepping away from the stall to come after me. “Are you okay?”
I ignored him. I strode up the aisle, heading for the door, thoroughly confused about how I was feeling.
“Xel? Wait! Xel!”
He was not my master. He could not command me to stop… and yet, the instant I was outside in the cooler night air, I slowed, waiting for him to catch up and forcing myself to take slow, deep breaths to calm myself. What the heck had just happened? Why would I be angry at a thumbit caring for her calf?
“Xel? What’s wrong? What’s going on?” My master didn’t sound angry. He only seemed concerned. I tried once again to locate the source of my anger, but as sometimes happened when I thought about things I wasn’t supposed to think about, it seemed like there was a wall in my mind, stopping me from accessing the thing I wanted to see.
“The calf will stay with Rose for a while?” I asked my master, not entirely sure how it was relevant. But it seemed to be part of the idea that was infuriating me, and I clung to that, hoping it would eventually start making sense.
“Yes. For about a year,” my master said. Then he again asked, “Are you all right?”
Behind him, I saw Leesha coming out of the barn, switching off the lights and closing the door behind her. She’d apparently decided that Rose and her calf were safe enough for the night and could be left alone.
“She’s going to care for him,” I went on, continuing the conversation with my master. “Protect him, and teach him how to be a thumbit.”
“Yes,” my master said, a frown on his face. “I mean, you must already know that, right? You understand how animals reproduce?”