Francis gets out of the car, slowly and sullenly. He turns around to look at his two companions on their short road trip, and says some parting thank yous.

Those are the first words out of his mouth for the duration of their five-hour drive from L.A. to San Francisco. For almost the entire time, he was silent. Just catatonic.

Delta knows everything that Francis has been through, but there is also little she can do to change any of it.

That damned Eryk ruined her best friend’s life, and she will never forgive him so long as she lives. She has no idea what happened to him, and she doesn’t care one bit.

That chapter of their lives is over, and it wasn’t brief enough. Delta just hopes things will go back to normal and the whole world will revert to its pre-asshole state.

Julie and Delta drive their brand-new car a few blocks over to their house. The summer sun shines above and lights up the home with a nice afternoon glow. It’s a welcoming, warm sight after so long with it gone.

Home sweet home.

Of course... Delta looks down to her abdomen, and her chest clenches up. Things aren’t, in fact, about to return to normal, and it’s foolish to consider the idea. Everything is about to change even further.

Julie unbuckles her seatbelt, but Delta raises her hand to motion her to stop.

“Honey,” Delta says. “We have something to talk about before we go inside. We’ve gotta talk about it.”

“What do you mean?” Julie asks, that gorgeous face of hers shifting into an inscrutable level of curiosity and suspicion, or at least it seems that way. She’s never been able to read her wife’s emotions, which is as frustrating as it is sort of hot.

“Not gonna mince words here,” Delta says, “Some weird shit’s happened.”

“You finally figured out you’ve been a man on the inside all along?”

“Wh—What? No! What the hell are you...” The casual way Julie put it frankly freaks Delta out, because she has absolutely no inclinations towards the masculine gender. Ew, gross. “Way worse than that. Or better. Just... different.”

“If it’s not that, then I have no good idea.”

“Something magical has happened,” she says. “We’re having a baby. Or, I guess, I’m having a baby.”

Julie’s gaze shifts even more. “You went to the clinic without me?”

“Um, no.”

Damn, even to her own wife, this is going to be absolutely ludicrous to explain.

“Number one, I haven’t slept with anyone else, and especially not a dude,” Delta says. “Number two, I never went to a clinic or did anything else to get myself pregnant. Number three, I spent the last week or two in the company of an obnoxious magic-using man from another world, and he’s the one who found out first with some spell.”

“Delta, I think you need to rest a little while and get this Eryk out of your system,” Julie tells her. “Then we can work things out better, all right?”

“I took pregnancy tests. Three of them. As much as I hate to say it... I trust Eryk. I’m pregnant. And I have absolutely no idea how it happened.”

Julie sits there in the driver’s seat and stares at the steering wheel for a solid minute. She says nothing, and her expression betrays almost nothing but the fact that she is confused.

“I’m not getting any bad symptoms yet,” Delta adds. “So it’s still really early. We’re a long way off.”

“...Yeah, I guess that’s all we can say, then,” Julie says. “We always wanted a baby, didn’t we? So here’s our chance.”

“Yeah. We’re going to be mothers, even if there’s some sort of obvious magic involved that is absolutely baffling.”

Julie nods. “Yeah, yeah, magic. Whatever that means.” A smile grows on her face. “I can work with that.”

“I know you’re confused and maybe suspicious, but trust me, I am too,” Delta says. “No pranks, no deception, no nothing. I didn’t fight a bunch of surf pirates last week for nothing, and I think I’ve gained the ability to understand when I’ve gotten myself involved in some ridiculous bullshit.”

“Alright, you convinced me, gosh. You don’t have to worry.” She pats Delta on the cheek.

“Sorry, honey. I’ve just been so worried about this the whole time. Like, how can I explain this?”

“You can’t, and so we won’t worry about that for now. Let’s just go inside, get some rest, have some sex, and figure out how we can become the best mothers we can be afterwards.”

“I like the sound of that,” Delta says. “Especially the sex part, because holy crap I’m so pent up after all this time. I hear after your first baby the sex life basically disappears for a few years...”

“We’ll have plenty of time for sex, and plenty of time to plan for motherhood,” Julie says.

“Yeah, I guess. We’ve got more than enough time to prepare.”

Little do Julie and Delta know, however, that it will only be two months before delivery.