The gift of trust

[Content Warning: This story contains topics of child birth or to be more precise, dying in childbirth. There's nothing graphic going on but yeah. Be advised]

A small drum that will turn into an explosion of things, given the time.

It's a saying from my mother, a midwife, describing birth. She's been dead, of course, 1500 years, I believe? Damn it, it's been a long time.

Anyway, it's exactly how it feels like having a newborn baby in my arms.

I try to think of the tips my mother used to tell me but I've never listen anyway because I would never get children on my own and didn't want to go into the same career as her. Or so I thought.

I try to avoid looking at the mother. Mu'fasah has already closed her eyes and I know it is final. My sight blurries, tears enter my eyes.

I look at her braids, the ones I have made her only a couple of days prior. They look pretty, I think but not enough. I wish I could have made them better, they're fine for a living but not enough for a burial.

The baby recaught my attention again. Sim'ba, a boy.

He's screaming, naturally, begging for the attention of his mother that will never come.

His eyes are closed, his cheeks are bloated but not too red or anything. I hope this is normal.

Shit, I should have listened more when the elders spoke about babies.

"Shshsh", I tell the baby. "Everything will be fine, Sim'ba. Everything will be fine. I am your auntie N'taka and you'll be alright."

I know the words are as hollow as a dead tree but they're for my own moral and lying to yourself isn't as bad as lying to a newborn baby, is it?

I sigh. I should place Sim'ba for adoption immediately. It would take a real miracle, the size of the sun, to turn this baby into a functioning normal human with me as his caretaker.

I mean for starters, my lifestyle isn't particularly kid friendly. Mu'fasah and I were performing travelers, a two-girl-circus, one might say.

Even if I would retire from that and start living at one place, where would that be? How would that be? Could I even live at one place, when I spend my whole immortal existence traveling from town to town?

I look at Sim'ba again. He looks like bread in my arms, I think, curled up like that in that brown blanket I just grabbed from the ground.

I smile, then I freeze. Right. Habits aren't the only thing that would complicate this all. They aren't the only thing lessening my chance to build real friendships and develop a normal lifestyle. My curse. Immortality.

I lived a long life, longer, than any other person on earth ever had. After all the people that are now living, are long dead, I will still be here. Still young, still the same.

I look at this baby, at this baby who will change so much, who will live...what, seventy years? Eighty years?

If he's lucky, I might add. If he doesn't get claimed by war or famine or illness of the thousand other causes people die regularly from.

But even if he gets lucky, if he gets old and grey haired, I will still look exactly the same. The mayority of his life, I will be younger than him.

There will be a time, where he will be an adult and I would look like his daughter. A freeze tangles up my arms to my spine.

Is that fine? For him or for me? For who would it be worse?

By accident, I look at Mu'fasah again. It might be the Mona Lisa effect but she looks like she is smiling, almost looking content, satisfied.

I shake my head. That sounds absurd she just died of childbirth in her late teens, how could she be haply about this. Then it suddenly stuck me.

Was it because it was me who helped her give birth?

I think. She trusted me. It's essential for doing a backflip onto someone's head but it never really occurred to me that she didn't just trust me as her colleague but maybe more importantly, as her son's caretaker.

Mu'fasah trusted me with her son. She thought, I would care for him gently, motherly, good.

I look into Sim'ba's eyes. They have the brown of the earth, the same color as Mu'fasah's.

I hear my heartbeat. It would make me a bad friend, wouldn't it? If I would give him away that easily, if I wouldn't even try. If I would throw her gift of trust within hours of her son's birth.

I press Sim'ba closer go me and although I don't feel it, I just know our hearts are only separated by our ripcages and our skin and other irrelevant stuff.

"Don't worry, Sim'ba, you'll be alright", I say. "We'll be together, we'll be alright. I still don't know how but it will be. It will be fine."

I place a kiss on Sim'ba's forehead. For protection? For a blessing? For a miracle to happen? I don't know yet. Maybe it's not really my kiss that first tells Sim'ba to trust and to love and to try. Maybe it's Mu'fasah's.

[Story End. Will add more tomorrow, I'm just incredibly tired right now and want to go to sleeeeeeeeep. Good night, pookies.

Hsjsjsj sisjsnsn jsjsns jdjs jdjsjs djsj djsj hdj dhj sjjs jsjsj sjjs eien ejen ejsjsn sjsjs bebdbx snsnd jdns w8s8is sijsiss ususjs isis jsjsj wenn wg inch honk tini hubungi cub gun hub hi see e w8s8is ehshshshshsus push segini rage bait skibidi sigma sleeping y d d guiño gunk fuji duh funk bingo MI in de e ex Dec no on him seed seed hi in few hi in de jy de gubuk bunk bunk bubun bun bunk bubun hubbub gung deserts look k goodnight my serious literature baddies]