“It has only been three weeks…”
Retvik hurried over to the nest he’d made in the living area and laid down on his side. His stomach muscles were not happy.
“IT HAS ONLY BEEN THREE WEEKS…”
He didn’t understand any of this. He’d never gotten this far before. Which probably explained why Retvik was panicking. He rolled onto his back and started taking deep breaths.
“Three weeks. Supposed to be four weeks.”
Glancing around, Retvik wondered where he’d put his wrist bands. He needed to call Gath. Then again, he was in a lot of pain, and calling Gath would only make him panic too. Retvik was panicking enough as it was.
“Maybe… maybe it was a week before I did the test? No…”
After some more deep breaths, Retvik started to calm down and try and sort things out. He’d been reading a lot about the whole pregnancy cycle and it had scared him slightly. This was the dangerous bit, for both him and the egg.
Struggling to his feet, Retvik reached for the plastic sheets he had tucked down the side of the nest. If all those laminated pamphlets and glossy gossip magazines were anything to go by, things were almost certainly going to get messy.
“But still…”
Retvik laid the sheets down, then laid on top of them, this time on his back. Apparently it was the least painful way of oothing, of laying an egg.
The confusion and panic were still wandering Retvik’s mind though. He was clearly early. And he still couldn’t see his wrist bands. He’d taken them off to have a wash and left them somewhere. He should have kept them on. Just in case something like this happened. Gath probably had no idea what was going on. And why would he? They’d both expected Retvik to not ooth for another week.
“I would have known… I would have known if I’d been pregnant for a week before taking that test…” Retvik grunted.
Really, he was thankful for the confusion. It was helping against the panic. Panicking was the last thing Retvik needed to do. What he really needed to do was to calm down and take deep breaths. Lots of them. He needed to relax as much as possible so his stomach muscles could push his kid, still encased in its protective egg, out of the hole between his legs.
Retvik paused for a moment. He almost couldn’t believe any of this was happening. He’d been dreaming about this day for a long time, but he… almost expected to be helping Gath do this, not the other way around.
A sudden pain interrupted Retvik’s thoughts. In a single, painful push, a glistening, golden, squidgy egg appeared. The pain instantly vanished.
Retvik sat up and stared at the egg. He gently picked it up, inspecting it for cracks. Past the semi-translucent shell, he could see the form of his unborn kid. With a tired sigh, he placed the egg gently in the centre of his nest.
Suddenly, something knocked on the door. A key twisted in the lock. The door clicked open.
“Retvik! I have returned! And I brought those pain-reducing ooth tablets you wanted! As well as some other goodies! Should help you with oothing!”
Retvik glanced at Gath, then at his egg, then sighed.
“You are a little late for that, I’m afraid…”