Doe wants your head on a pike

As another contraction hits Doe grits her teeth. As it recedes she yells, "I should have strangled you!" There's a shift in her belly as your daughter moves and that silences Doe for a second. Then she growls, "Men should be the ones to suffer this!" That gets cut off by the next contraction.

All the while Linne has been galloping in and out of the room, dropping off everything she thinks might be needed. Towels, bowls of hot water, sorcerous tomes, a spare chair. If this goes on much longer you half expect her to trot in carrying your desk. She's so utterly frazzled from being near the birth that it's like she poured catnip over her head. Being in the room more than a minute causes her to dance from foot to foot and wring her hands.

"You'll be so happy when you meet her," seethes Doe. "Ha! Bullshit! They just wanted to put me through the same thing... unnnfh!!"

"Yes, just a bit more," you tell her, "almost there."

"Fuck you!"

But then, thankfully, your daughter squirms a little and Doe reflexively pushes. All of a sudden you're holding a big, slippery and very active baby lamia. Her little blue eyes blink and focus on you before she starts crying. All in all she looks heathy.

You place the newborn in Doe's arms. Despite hours of more and more vitriolic complaints your wife is now silent. She's looking down at this newborn, the worlds first newborn lamia. Her daughter with you. The crying soon stops and your daughter tries to coil herself around her mother's torso. Then she looks up at Doe and lets out a happy sounding gurgle.

"Aw, that's not fair," says Doe to herself.

"She's so cute!" Linne whispers. Her excitement has gone off the charts and she's sitting sphinx-like beside the bed, eyes like saucers as she watches your child's every move. "Oh, she's got her mother's eyes. Her scales, wow, so dark."

Doe doesn't really respond. She's staring at her little one, who's just grabbed Doe's finger loosely with her whole hand. Doe starts to sniffle and says, "So unfair," under her breath before pulling her daughter in close for a hug.

Only a few minutes later Doe hands the newborn over to Linne. "I'm not calling her something like Eva or Eve," your wife told you. "Everyone would expect that, so it's boring." After a pregnant pause she says, "Welcome to this world, Linneth."

So instead she decided to name her after Linne, but didn't tell either of you till just now. Aunt Linne, as Doe calls her, gets handed a little serpent girl wrapped up in a blanket. Your cataur is completely still, probably in shock, as the lamia girl wraps her body around this new, warm friend.

Meanwhile, you turn to Doe, who's watching with a grin. "So, Linneth?"

"Yeah, after all Linne's done she deserves it. And I am going to get her to watch over Linneth a lot..."

"You didn't even tell me what you were planning for her name."

"I wasn't sure till the last minute," she says.

Looking back over her long tail you notice she's not even breathing hard now that the birth is over. "You seem to be doing very well. You don't even look that tired. Honestly if I hadn't been here for the whole thing I would swear you're ready to get up and come downstairs for dinner."

"I could eat," she says, holding a hand to the side of her tail, several feet along its length. Roughly where her stomach now is.

"Even if it took an extra month for our darling to arrive I think some parts of that birth were easier than they would have been for a human woman."

"Oh no," she says, waggling her finger at you, "Just because I'm still awake doesn't mean you're off the hook. All that pain, all that mess, all that stretching. That's all on you. It's going to be a long while before I forgive you."

"Okay."

"No," she says, frustrated, "you don't get to take this well. No sex, no cuddling, no nothing at all till that one can talk."

You completely ignore Doe and pull her in for a hug. "Thank you, my lovely wife, my darling."

She whispers, "Sweet words or not, I'll..."

But she never manages to finish whatever threat or warning she had in mind. Because Linne has snuck up behind Doe and lies down against Doe's back. It's a big, three way hug with your newborn daughter happy to snake around arms and settle into the valleys between bodies.

Looking up into her daughter's inquisitive eyes Doe sighs, knowing she's beaten. "Mommy loves you, she's just sore right now," she says quietly.

Linneth lets out a happy gurgle, as if she understands. And you feel Doe use her strong arms to pull you closer.