(Note: Language Warning)
Ava sat across from the madwoman, trying to process what she had just heard. It was not the craziest thing she had heard, not by a long shot, but from Emma it was just lunacy
“So, you’re going to a festival, where you will choose a man by “stars” and let him knock you up?”
“More or less.”
“What the fuck?” She was having a difficult time picturing the upmarket executive as a werebear baby mama.
“As I said, it is a clan tradition. Every five years each of us, still blessed with fertility and single, come together to increase the clan size. I know you don’t see it this way Ava but it is an honor to bear a child conceived at the equinox moot.”
“But you have no kids.” Ava had gotten stuck on ‘five years’.
“I do, I was lucky enough to conceive the second and third time. They live at the clan’s reserve. Mila, my eldest, will be 10 soon and old enough to return with me.” The joy in her face touched Ava, though imagining her friend with a 10 year old daughter was strange. There was a pause in the conversations and she struggled to phrase her next question politely.
“Um, do you know who the father is?”
“Stars Ava, yes. It’s not a free-for-all. You meet, you date, the one you connect with most is your bonded one for that moot. Mila’s father will be arriving in town shortly after we return.”
Ava really didn’t know where to go from there. It seemed like the craziest cult crap and yet here sat a woman she considered logical and intelligent, off to do exactly that.
“Wait, what if you meet someone?”
“The moot is only for single clan members. I would still be expected to bear children but it would be with that partner.” Ava let that roll around in her head for a minute, then shrugged. Not her circus, not her cubs.
“How long do you want me to house sit for, and when does the cat get fed?”
346 Words
C.M. Wellsmore 