Hessany, Inatra, and Jenlove Flibbertigibbet

Though Listed in alphabetical order above Jenlove Flibbertigibbet is your oldest, the lucky firstborn who was conceived on your wedding night. Twelve months to the day later: gnomish pregnancies last a full year, sometimes longer: you met little Jenlove for the first time in person.

You had met her before that in dreams; sometimes, when a special soul is set aside for a baby, the angels will send what is called a "Heralding Dream", where you meet the soul intended for the child and they tell you what they want to be named. You had planned on a more traditionally gnomish name, Majet, but Jenlove insisted on the name you gave her. At first, you thought she was saying Jelnove, a rare but still traditionally gnomish name, but she corrected you firmly. "My name is to be 'Jenlove', not 'Jelnove'," she had said, and you bowed your head in defeat.

Jenlove has always been a quiet child, even as a newborn she cried only briefly and suckled gently, so much that you often fell asleep while she nursed. Now at 9 years and a bit, roughly equivalent to three and three-quarters, she hardly utters a sound, sleeps through the night most nights, and has not begun to talk except to her birth-pet "Pickles", a small gray-and-white striped cat, and even there she only babbles.

Let me explain birth-pets a bit before we continue. Just before a gnomish child is born, divinations are conducted by the priests and a just-weaned animal of some kind is found and presented to the babe the day after, at their christening in the morning. These animals are the child's closest companion for the first years of their life, and it is through an empathetic connection to the creature that they learn the Gnome's traditional ability to speak with animals. For those Gnomes who become Adepts, Witches, Wizards, or Sorcerers the birth-pet also helps them with their career, as they or their descendants often become the child's first familiar, a very needful thing for proper study in those professions. Furthermore, the pet serves another purpose, it teaches them kindness and charity, but also eventually shows them their first instance of ****, for in a race as long-lived as gnomes it is often the case that a child would never see a relative or friend die of old age before they became adults without a birth-pet. Those who lack a birth-pet often become dark and bitter souls, their magic corrupted and discipline torn to ragged shreds, so the priests of the Gnomish Gods make sure that there are young animals about in gnomish communities at all times of the year if they can.

Jenlove learned to crawl young, only 3 years, and now can climb out of her crib with ease. She gets into everything and her first true nickname is "Little-Adventurer" as you once found her dressed only in her diaper beating a dead rat with a stick. It was clear that Pickles had been the one to kill it by the bite marks on the vicious little rodent, but 'Jen' was the one trying to pound it into sausage filling. This was not the last time she tried to "Earn Experience" by killing household pests, such as the incident where she threw your favorite carbuncle cup at a House Centipede, breaking it. She basically was never going to have an allowance over that one, that cup was worth 200GP, but as a countess daughter her stipend will pay that back in only a few months, and you are glad of that.

Your second daughter is Hessany Flibbertigibbet, born a little over two years after Jenlove. unlike Jen she is loquacious in the ****, saying her first word at only 5 months, and now at almost 7 years old being able to ask complicated and perspicacious questions like; "Why have you and Papa not had any more kids since Inatra was born?" That question was shortly followed by a much less insightful; "I have two sisters; I want a brother now!" which neatly deflected the conversation into the fact that you can't predict if when a mommy has a child it will be a boy or a girl, instead of the 'where do babies come from' talk two decades early.

Hessany did not have a "Heralding Dream" so you got to name her what you had wanted, something traditional to your family. Her birth name in point of fact is "Hessany Flibbertigibbet the XIVth" but the numeral designation is only on the birth record in the registry of the Gnomish settlement of "Tinker Tom's Village" where you were living when she was born. As has been stated previously, Gnomes acquire names like Wizards acquire spells, and Hessany already has several which distinguish her from her various ancestors and distant cousins who have also borne the name Hessany Flibbertigibbet.

One of those is "Fast-Talker", because Hessany has a tendency to talk too fast for you to follow, you must frequently ask her to slow down, or repeat herself more slowly. Another is the appellation "- the Loquacious", given by her paternal grandmother when she came for a visit last fall and heard Hess speak for the first time. Still another is "Badger-Tongue" because her Birth-Pet is a Badger named "Five-Stripe" and Hess regularly holds 4 and 5-minute conversations with her right in the middle of having been talking to someone else, but also because she will 'badger' anyone and everyone with questions at the most inopportune times.

Your youngest, for the moment, is Inatra Flibbertigibbet, and she, at just over 5 years old, is by far the strangest of your children.

Like Jenlove she had a Heralding Dream, but you were relieved to remember on waking that she chose a traditional Gnomish name, and all too gladly gave it to her at birth.

The birth, however, was painful and difficult: you went into labor when you were on the road between jobs, barely managing to make it to a wood burner's house and summon the local village midwife after your water broke before the real pangs of Labor began. The room and her services were paid for with your last three GP in cash money, and you had two babies in slings on your chest already, so you had no idea what you were going to do once Inatra was delivered. You were fortunate in that the midwife was experienced with Gnomish women, not to mention your husband had stood vigil over you in both your previous bouts of Labor, so both you and Inatra survived, but Mistress Jennifer, the midwife, made it perfectly and thoroughly clear to you that if you did not give your body a rest from the stresses of pregnancy for at least a decade the next child you bore would kill you, and probably not survive themselves without a Cesarean Extraction from your swiftly cooling corpse.

Luck has been with you in that however: the next job you had lined up was in the capital, and afterward you had enough coin to purchase not only a house, annuities, and furnishings, but also a dozen boxes of 100 'pleasantries' and a reusable Diaphragm made from the rubber of the distant jungles across the Tyrolean Ocean. 'Pleasantries' are alchemical concoctions that both lubricate the vagina and reduce the chance of pregnancy, and you use both them and the Diaphragm religiously when having sex with your husband. There have been some close calls; his penis is four inches long and point-seven-five inches wide so it sometimes knocks the Diaphragm out of place when it gets a tiny bit bigger right before orgasm, but it seems the Pleasantries have taken care of that.

Now four inches and less than an inch across may sound somewhat paltry, but when you yourself are only three-feet-three-inches tall and the rest of your anatomy is proportionately smaller than one of the Big Folk, it is quite big enough, Thank You, and you have no complaints. Ironically for all that he is above average for a gnomish male in the Dick Department, it's his balls that are freakish. They look like the testicles of a horse or a bull, just as large and just as hairy. When you first saw them you almost panicked and called a priest to cure his case of testicular cancer, but he assured you that they had been checked when he was 37 and they got to their maximum size, it was just a random mutation, not a disease. You estimate that your husband could have sex with a gnomish woman every day and regenerate enough cum during the night to still get the one the next day pregnant too, but you know he would never try to find out. He, as his parents suspected, is un-gnomishly staid and solid, the thought of 'having an affair' would probably never even enter his head, for all that he is a sexually superior specimen.

Getting back to Inatra and her oddness...

Inatra was the only one of your children born in natural surroundings instead of within the confines of a village or town, and it seems to have imprinted on her soul. She has never been at home in the city, her first full sentence, uttered only a few days ago, being "Take me back to the wild!" She shows none of the Gnomish natural antipathies towards goblins and kobolds, can already cast a handful of Druidic Spells when she is in the capitol's forested parks, even though she doesn't speak Druidic, and though she is only equivalent to about a-year-and-a-half old if she were a human, she already can use the traditional gnomish magics. Furthermore, she seems to know things about the natural world that no child her age should know: the mating habits of bears for example.

You once tried to read her a story where two anthropomorphic bears fell in love and had a family and she would not stop saying, "NO: BAD!" When you asked her, "Why is it bad?", she replied, "Bears no do this: bad story!" It is important to note here that she had at that point never seen a live bear in her life, let alone studded their behavior. After that, you read her simplified abstracts of scholarly treatises from the Druidic Council on animal behavior instead, and she liked those a lot better.

Now, as you may have observed, all your children take your last name instead of your husband's: this is normal. Among Gnomes marriages are not the stiff, formal affairs of the Big Jobs, people Marry for as long as they still want to be together, and the ceremony is a raucous seven-day affair which only culminates in the physical union, it doesn't happen at the end of the first day.

All through the marriage process pranks are played on the couple, gifts are given by different types of relations, wine and ale are drunk, and displays of storytelling-with-illusions is done by all. Because the union is expected to often last only until any children are grown and then go their separate ways, often utterly without rancor, or even regret, just satisfaction in a job well done and fond memories of the good times they shared, but an acknowledgement that it was time to seek new horizons for both parties: the wedding is not a solemn and weighty affair but a stress test for the soon-to-be-formalized relationship.

Women and men will attempt to seduce both bride and groom, not out of malice but concern for their friends' well-being, because it is said by many, and there is some truth to it, that a marriage can survive anything: except infidelity. This typically does not cause problems, Gnomes are mostly Neutral/Good, and would not dream of hurting their partner so, but more than once it has caused quite a bit of ribaldry when the flustered couple finds a way to ditch their escorts and hook up for a quicky: with each other. They are almost always found out, and the occasional jokes about "slipping it quick" can follow them around for decades, especially if they conceive children. It also occasionally leads to 'weddings' that last two months and more as the bride and groom play pranks on those trying to seduce them tricking friends and acquaintances into beginning their own relationships with other people who must then perforce be married. So-called 'rolling marriages' are seen as a blessing from the gods and will be brought up in conversation for centuries to come.

Still, more occasionally such events produce triads or 'group marriages' when former romantic rivals try to seduce their intended one last time and instead of being precisely rebuffed are tricked into meeting with the other partner(s), asked if they would like to try a Mange-A-Trios or orgy and no one says no. Of course if someone does say no things can get ugly, but due to the natural curiosity, passionate nature, and common kindheartedness of Gnomes it sometimes happens that they come together thinking it will be a one time thing, 'to get it off their chest' and find instead that they would rather see where this goes, and thus a "Poly-Union" forms. Some Gnomish communities see these events as scandal and heresy, but others note that the Gnomish Gods and holy texts are silent on the matter, and as they say "silence is acceptance". It can be difficult to name the children in such unions, for reasons I will now innumerate...

When children are born they take the surname of their same-gender parent, unless that is not known, such as in the extremely rare instances of **** and even rarer Poly-Unions with multiple husbands. If one parent IS known but the other is not, the child, even if of the 'wrong gender', takes the known parent's surname. This leads to one important but odd custom: if a man and a woman wish to marry but have the same surname they must get the written permission of the High Priest of Garl Glittergold for their nation as if they were third cousins or closer. When no parents names are known, such as with foundlings, that child starts a brand new surname, made up on the spot by the priest or priestess doing the baptism. These seem to be divinely inspired since they have never once been identical to an existing surname. Some of them have been ridiculously long, such as Granlifvarkinosiparienateulikavridlia, which roughly translated means "The-name-that-will-be-carried-by-all-the-Daughters-of-this-girl-I-am-baptizing-whose-surname-I-didn't-know.", but they have never been identical...

This custom means that in a sense each family is not a distinct unit, but a semi-durable alliance of two families: the mother and her daughters, and the father and his sons, and that is a problem, a minor one but still, in that you have not given your husband a child to carry on the Derringer surname...

Now you need to answer a few questions:

1: What are your husband's feelings on that fact?

2: Has he talked to you about them?

3: Did you hire other Gnomes as your Men-At-Arms?

4: How do you feel about the big folk?

5: Where are you at the start of the story?