“Look no further, at the greatest miracle of life there is. Where the old give birth to their progeny, the young ones who carried on the line, onwards through the flow of time, until they in turn became the old and passed the torch onwards to their own progeny. Is there more great, more beautiful a sight, than the miracle where life came to be? From the union of parents, to form the offspring, carrying the best of both, like a torch to light the path of the future?” - Excerpt from the “Miracle of Life”, famed work by Uthos of Logarren, prehistoric philosopher and author.

“Come on, Friede,” said Grünhildr as she playfully poked Elfriede’s greatly swollen belly with one rough, callused finger. The brawny, scarred woman had such an annoying, playful smirk on her face that even the usually stone-faced Salicia couldn’t help but smirk as well. It only made Elfriede wish she had some shit in hand to shove into the mouth of her old friend right then and there. “It’s not that hard. Just think of it as taking a really big dump~”

“Fuck you too, Grün!” said Elfriede as she tried to slap the burly woman’s hand, only for her to retract it first as she giggled. Although she was annoyed to no end by her old friends - there were just five of them in the room co-opted as a delivery room, Elfriede, Grünhildr, Salicia, old Ursula who served as the midwife, and a nurse she brought to help out - Elfriede had to admit that at least the joking around had taken her mind off the pain of the contractions she was going through. In the end, she settled for giving her old friend a middle finger, which just made the brawny woman cackle some more.

Elfriede’s current predicament - her pregnancy and impending childbirth - was something that had stemmed from what started out as an innocent fling for fun months ago. That night, since she and her friends had been in the mood for some more carnal pleasures, she had been on the lookout for a receptive partner when she sensed Reinhardt Edelstein, the adopted nephew of the Company’s leader, at the bar.

At the time Elfriede had not known of his identity, just that he was a large and strong therian male, and more importantly, well-equipped where it mattered for her needs and wants. He proved quite receptive to her proposition, and before too long they had tussled on one of the beds in the large room she shared with her old friends. That night also proved to be a wild night that kept both of them up until nearly dawn as they kept going at it and immersed themselves in pleasure all night long.

What was intended to be a one-time tryst for mutual pleasure ended up becoming a repeated affair, as the two of them met up repeatedly after that night. Elfriede had not minded it one bit, for after all, the sex was amazing, so she had no reason to refuse. Their pseudo relationship carried on for a few months without incident, until one morning, she woke up from her sleep too early in the morning because she was struck by a sudden and furious bout of nausea.

When the sickness repeated itself over the next few days, she finally went to a healer to check her condition, and the reply she received was one that both utterly surprised her and changed her life for good from that point on. The old healer, one of the Company’s veterans, had only checked her for a moment before he congratulated her on her pregnancy.

Since she had only slept with Reinhardt for the past few months, he was the only possible culprit that came to mind to Elfriede, and she immediately sought him out and confronted him about it after she left the healer’s office. It took him a while before he recalled one time over a month before that time when the tincture he used for contraceptive had tasted a bit odd, but he shrugged it off at the time.

The eight months that followed was like hell on earth for Elfriede. Her body felt like it was no longer her own. She felt bloated nearly all the time, and the shift to her center of gravity due to her swollen stomach as her pregnancy went along threw her finely honed instincts off. The persistent soreness that accompanied her every waking moment was compounded by how she was frequently forced to get up and head to the bathroom.

As if that weren’t enough, she often felt peckish, and at times craved things that made no sense even to herself. One time she had even woken up in the middle of the night and craved for roasted poultry for some reason, though fortunately Salicia was around and shot down a migrating duck as it silhouetted itself against the greater moon for her, which they then roasted and dined on.

Needless to say, between her feeling like her body no longer belonged to her, and the various other annoyances, Elfriede’s mood became temperamental over those months, something Reinhardt - as the culprit of her present condition - was often subjected to. To his credit, he at least took the abuse without much complaint.

Everything that pissed her off seemed to culminate to the present day, where she laid in bed as the pain from the contractions of her womb nearly drove her mad, with just her two friends - Reinhardt was outside - along with the midwife and nurse for company. What Grünhildr said jokingly was surprisingly a pretty apt comparison, she found. To give birth - the so-called “miracle of life” - felt little different than taking a really long, hard, shit.

The pain was something else altogether though. When the contractions got bad, Elfriede had to really bite down hard on the bundle of cloth placed in her mouth so she would not shatter her teeth or accidentally bite her tongue instead. It felt as if her stomach was about to split apart from the inside, so badly that the hand she gripped the frame of the bed with left marks where her nails scored the wood.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity to her - and with pain on a whole other level compared to before - the child finally slid out of her womb, and entered the world. As the midwife expertly tied and cut off the umbilical cord of the baby and carefully patted the infant’s back, the child’s first cry - more like the mewling of a kitten, really - finally graced her ears.

One feel at the child’s form - who Ursula handed her nurse assistant to bathe in some warm water - made Elfriede certain just who the father was, as her baby resembled an oversized kitten more than anything, with her sharp little claws leaving scratches on the arm of the nurse who bathed her. Elfriede took the time to breathe a sigh of relief and to regather her strength, as the ordeal had left her utterly spent.

Still, when Ursula invited Reinhardt in and he brought the cleaned child - their child - over to her at the bed, she gathered enough strength to grab him by the collar and pull him close.

“Next time you want to fuck, get some bloody proper tinctures first, or else I’ll be bloody chopping off your balls and have them for dinner, understood!?” said Elfriede with every intent of making good of her threat.

The little baby girl in his hand chose that time to mewl as if to underscore Elfriede’s words.