Try To Magic Away Lois Lane's Pregnancy

"You can do that?" Lois said. "Magic away a pregnancy?"

"Yesss..." Zatanna said.

"Okay. So do it on me. If it works, you can do it on you. If I start shedding IQ points ago, you can impregnate me again." The reporter said.

The witch stared at her. "You're treating this awfully casually. We're talking about the conception of life itself. That's advanced, powerful magic, not to be invoked lightly or..."

Lois laid down and composed herself. "C'mon. You want to see if you can do it."

Zatanna sighed. The reporter was back to her old self alright. Curious as a cat, and twice as much trust in her luck. She composed herself, working over the possible spells in her head.

"There's a possibility of reciprocal effects," she warned the recumbent reporter.

"Am I going to get more pregnant?" Lois asked.

"Probably not," the magician admitted.

"Am I going to die?"

"You shouldn't." Zatanna said after some consideration.

"Then let's magic away this pregnancy."

Logomancy is the most complex of the magical arts. In the beginning was the word—a name, a divine name, split into all of its multifarious echoes and reflections. With the right words, reality itself might be flipped apart...changed...moved...

".em ot ycnangerp s'enaL sioL refsnarT"

The longer the spell, the more difficult the magic. Each syllable had to be correct, the intonation perfect. By the end of the spell Lois could hear Zatanna's voice start to give, suddenly ragged. A shiver ran through her spine, her belly fluttered...then really fluttered.

Lois Lane stared down the length of her nude form. A tiny ball of golden light rose through the skin of her stomach, just two inches below her belly button. It hovered for a moment in the air, a tiny glowing mote...and then it zapped straight over to the magician's own stomach, sinking invisibly through the clothes. Although she did not feel physically different, the reporter felt an incomprehensible sense of loss.

Zatanna settled her hands on her stomach. She couldn't feel any different either, but the knowledge that she was now pregnant with twins had a psychic weight to it.

"How do you feel?" The magician croaked, as much to distract herself from her suddenly more-gravid condition that anything else.

"Not...bad?" The reporter blinked. Tentatively, she reached out and touched Zatanna's stomach. "Is it...I mean, is it still mine? Gen-genet...little DNA...things..."

Lois blinked, a sudden dazed look coming over her face.

"Genetically," Zatanna finished, voice still raspy. "I don't know. I haven't done this before. But I think now we definitely know that the curse is still effect."

"I ain't feel stupid."Lois said. Opened her mouth, closed it, brain processing what she just said. The witch could almost hear the cogs churning. "Am I?"

"You are," the witch confirmed, coughing slightly. "And faster than before. Which is a problem. Possibly the curse will only resolve with birth...or maybe it won't resolve at all, and you'd have to remain perpetually pregnant to keep your normal intellect. And if I got part of the curse...that means the same thing for me."

Zatanna looked at her stomach, somewhat ruefully.

"Don't wanna be dumb." Lois pinched the bridge of her nose. "Can you knock me up again? Or somethin'?"

"Let me get something to drink," Zatanna sighed.

"Vodka in the freezer," Lois said helpfully.

"Pregnant!" Zatanna croaked back.

She opened the reporter's fridge and dug out a carton of orange juice, her mind a-whirl with thoughts. In her bedroom, Lois turned on the television. The pregnant magician hoped she didn't find the home shopping network...and then heard the familiar refrains of some sort of fashion show or infomercial.

Okay, she thought to herself as she poured a glass of OJ. Getting pregnant is, apparently, only a temporary fix. So what is the solution? Birth, maybe. Only way to test that would be to fast-forward through forty weeks of pregnancy...which Lois might be amenable to. Or maybe some sort of perpetual pregnancy? That would be kind of ****, but if I freeze the development of the embryo, body stuck in pregnancy mode...the terms of the curse would be fulfilled, but what would that do to us?

"Hey Z?" Lois asked. "Would I look good as a blonde?"

Zatanna shuddered. She didn't want to end up like that.