A little lady

Reblog this if you’re cool with having your fanbot/oc drawn by other people (in a SFW way obviously)

The campaigns always started in August.

The Government would say it, the planned parenthood clinics would say it, adverts would be rolling daily:

'Save your life.

Use protection.'

Constant reminders were everywhere. The government had recently opted for the use of Plain Lubrication Packaging, with the same warning in large, white letters on a plain black bottle and the accompanying photographs... Gruesome was an understatement.

Gender reveal parties weren't a thing. Nobody gave a toss about that. But people liked the Zodiac reveal. Revealing the due date would tell everyone all they needed to know.

Daphne had opted for something simple, and now was regretting the whole deal.

The plain cardboard box was now frankly forgotten, and sat on the kitchen table looking forlorn. Faintly swinging from strings tied to the box were two, plain white balloons.

“Gemini!” her father was growling. He spoke the word like profanity. His bullish Tauran tenancies shone through his anger. “Daphne, Gemini, of all the bloody stupid-” 

“For pity's sake, Jim, it's not all that.” Daphne's husband Noah tried to put himself between them, “the little ones are planned. They're both there, they're both growing and healthy.”

“Can it,” Daphne's father spat back. It was an intensely rude retort to an Aquarius, and she watched as Noah's grip tightened around his vase.

“Shut it, the both of you.” Daphne rested a hand on her belly where a foot tried to push her off. Then another. And a third. “You probably would've noticed yourself if you hadn't been so self-absorbed. I'm as big as a truck, there's no way there's only one baby in here.”

“You're sure?” her father pressed, “absolutely sure?”

“Completely. The doctor showed me on the scanner. Dad, I'll be fine.”

He let out a steamy huff and looked aside. “I can't understand why you would do something so risky.”

She would explain to him, but not yet. She wanted him to calm down.

This would hopefully be their first child, but not for want of trying. After two miscarriages, they were making up for lost time.

 If August was unpleasant, May was much worse. Now the rolling screens begged overdue women to get to hospital for induced labour. Every other billboard carried a white poster with loud black letters. On the left side, a heavily pregnant woman, wrist turned to show her watch, looking imploringly out of the poster. On the right, a doctor in scrubs, looking out with a much more serious gaze and arms crossed over her chest:

‘Taurus running late?

Get to Maternity now.’

 On the 20th, all maternity wards had double staff for the last-minute rush. Women were ushered in quickly, and emerged a few hours later, relieved, cradling their little Tauran newborn.

Everyone knew someone with a birthday on the 20th May. Hardly anyone had a birthday on the 21st, and everyone knew why.

Daphne's contractions started at 7:19 am, 21st May. Earlier than planned, but in the right zodiac. She braced herself for the hospital, where the Planned and the Unplanned Zodiac were kept separate, but that didn't preclude the possibility of seeing something awful.

Between the zodiac, changes could occur. Daphne's husband was planned to be a Capricorn, but complications in labour delayed him until his mother birthed a baby nested in a terracotta water pot. A potential Taurus born too early saw, frankly, little difference: sprouting horns began to curl backwards like a ram, rather than out to the sides.

The change from Taurus or Cancer into Gemini was beyond disastrous. The body was rarely capable of coping with the expansion from one nearly full-term foetus to two.

 Daphne didn't see much at the Unplanned entrance on her way in. One lady, barely walking, screaming with the pain from her slowly bloating belly. Another, unconscious and hurried in on a stretcher, her face obscured by an oxygen mask. The combination of the contractions and the sight of women going in who might not come back out alive made Daphne turn away, sick with fear.

 Inside the Planned side, there was a strange calm, and a lingering sense of guilt. The women here were prepared and hopeful for Gemini, and every one of them knew that on the other side of the wall was a horror of screaming and dying women, and a battle of the case-by-case decision to save mother or children.

Daphne's own labour was torturously slow. Hours were passing, and she was still not even close on dilation.

 A blonde woman arrived after her, and left before, with the vague smile of relief, but mostly of exhaustion. She was wheeled out with a small, fleeced bundle on her lap; two tiny faces were turned in towards one another, silently resting, curled up in the same blanket. That was very common for newborn Gemini; at a young age separation made them dizzy.

 In the end Daphne didn't give birth until the next day. The little ones weren't as prepared to emerge as they initially gave the impression of. They were perfect. Completely perfect, from their two little noses to their twenty tiny toes.

Weeks later, they were laid side by side on a play mat. Daphne and Noah still hadn't parted them, any time they tried they began to cry. As one they stared up, entranced by a plastic duck that played a little song. Daphne hated the tinny music by now but couldn't turn it off or they'd start crying again.

 They lifted a foot and began to chew on it.

That is to say, they lifted one foot of their right body into their left mouth.

Gemini were a little tricky to get your head round, at first. Two separate bodies, one mind, that saw the world through 4 eyes. The risk of having the child in the first place was immense, but Gemini children became the brightest and best of the world. With a whole extra body, they got twice as much done.

August 2015

October 2016

April 2017

July 2017

September 2018

December 2018

June 2019

February 2020

August 2020

“No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away...”

The Spine’s first token of love to her was a pure white handkerchief.

I’ve had this in the works for months. I decided to finish it since the song is by David Bowie. I kinda wish I’d drawn him as the one reaching out of the movie, but Clem has a thing for silver robots.

Life on Mars - David Bowie

SPG 30 day challenge

Day 29:  Day 1, 8, and 22 team up to fight a great evil