Floats a friend

It took a moment or two for Lucy to convince herself that the creatures in that pool were, in fact, human. They floated together in small groups or idly stretched and exercised themselves: slimy cascades of viscous fluid dribbling off whatever limb they lifted from the surface. They were all naked women; of every size, shape and skin colour. Submerged in this veritable lake of something that the disbelieving onlooker could very much guess. The unseen floor of the pool seemed to taper gently from its edges, allowing those within to sit or lie comfortably with their necks above the _'water'_line. Yet none seemed ever inclined to stand up and free their shoulders from the clinging goop. They moved around by half-crawling, half-swimming through its liquid consistency.

"Hello?" Came a voice, far closer than Lucy had been expecting.

She had somehow gotten a lot closer to the edge of the pool than she'd realised. So close, in fact, that her eyes now met those of an intrigued, but smiling face not a metre and a half away and below her. The woman was dark skinned and beautiful, leaning up on her elbows just below the lip of the raised floor that Lucy stood upon. Lying on her front, only the very top of her back was visible, the rest disappearing into milky white depths. If the urchin had instinctively labeled Diane and her upstairs ilk 'angels'; then here, lounging in the results of all their hard work… was a veritable mermaid.

"Who are you?" The slime-glazed woman tried again, though with no particular anger or impatience in her voice. Every inch and angle of her glistened and dribbled a little. Her long, black hair was clearly rather dreadlocked together by the substance it had been dragged through. Yet she seemed like a remarkably relaxed and normal person apart from that.

"Umm… I'm Lucy…" Offered Lucy, resisting the streetwise urge to lie. "Sorry… if I'm not supposed to be here?"

"No worries." Laughed the stranger. "We don't get many visitors… but I don't think the sisters will mind as long as you don't climb in. I'm Chantelle, nice to meet you Lucy!"

The explorer couldn’t help but be relieved by this answer. Half of her had been convinced she was about to be thrown back out on the streets, all her work fitting in here gone to waste. Now, though, the aching questions beckoned:

"Thanks… Nice to meet you too… What is this place though?! I had no idea what was down here."

Chantelle chuckled idly. "Yeah… the crazy 'Mothers' like their little secrets don't they. Makes it all seem so much more… spiritual, I guess. Officially I think this is called 'The Font of St Silvia', though we mostly just call it 'the seed pool'. It's the place the church performs its greatest miracle."

Lucy looked around again at their surroundings. It certainly seemed like the sort of place that miracles should occur in… though nothing particular magic appeared to be happening right now.

"What miracle?"

Chantelle gave her new companion an appraising look, that of an older sister weighing the younger's innocence. "The only one that matters, silly. Any woman who enters this pool… comes out with a baby inside of them!"

Lucy blinked. She had spent most of her existence detached from the more general concerns of society, her world more narrowly focussed on personal survival… than on the continuation of the species as a whole. Still, even she knew why the entirety of humanity spent ninety percent of its time and efforts fucking... or fighting each other for the chance to fuck some more. Sex was everywhere and everything because it had to be. Because every child was a miracle, whether you came from a long family line of multiple-birth households or not. The idea that one steaming bath of second-hand spunk was all that was needed to solve mankind’s greatest challenge just seemed… ridiculous.