New Cottage

"I'm sorry," she murmured softly. She didn't like making him worry about her.

"It's just that...Everyone's been throwing around the idea of us two having pups and trying to convince me its the best way forwards. I don't want to disappoint everyone by not having pups." She ran her tongue over her lower lip and turned her gaze away from his eyes. "But I don't want pups. It scares me."

Her eyes slid shut and she leaned into the gentle hand stroking her hair, trying to relax. "I'm scared, Zeke."

"You don't need to apologize sweetheart, we're married, we're meant to worry about each other."

His gaze took on a hint of worry as she looked away from him, seeing her upset like this really did pull on his heart strings.

"You're scared? Darling what is there to be scared of?"
He didn't quite understand the cause of it.

"You know that if you don't want pups then I don't care, we wont have them, not matter what anyone else tries to tell us."

She started gnawing on her lip, worrying it between her teeth.

"Mother...She had nothing but bad things to say about pregnancy and childbirth." Kae had said nothing nice about her pregnancy.

'You made me feel sick.'

'You made me fat.'

'Giving birth hurt like a bitch.'

'I shouldn't have let myself get pregnant, it was a waste of nine months.'

And slowly the woman's comments had convinced her that there was nothing good about pregnancy. All it did was make you feel terrible and hurt. She didn't want that. It scared her.

She curled closer to the man. "I-I want them..." She wanted children of her own, she really did. But she didn't want to go through pregnancy or childbirth.

"Your mother never has anything nice to say about anything or anyone. I would not be taking her word as fact."

He took her hands, squeezing them softly.

"I want to give you everything you want in the world, if I could carry the pups for you I would but it's the one thing I can not do for you, love.

If pups is something you want in the future we will be smart about it huh?"
He said, kissing her forehead.

"We will do everything we need to so that you are prepared and in the best care, but we will cross that bridge when we get there, alright?"

"She's not always bad," she defended in a whisper. Kae did have the occasional nice thing to say or nice gesture. The elf woman wasn't completely repulsive.

Her lip twitched and she gave a weak giggle at the thought of him carrying the pups. That would be very amusing to see.

She nodded softly then gave a small smile as he kissed her forehead.

"I researched it once. It's called Tokophobia."

He cuddled her closer, stroking her cheek with his warm fingers.

"Like I said, we will cross that bridge when we get there, because to be honest, I would love to be a father, a proper father, not like how mine was."

He replied with a shy smile.

"But that's not something we are going to worry about at the moment."

She leaned into the warm touch, eyes fluttering open to meet his silver ones.

"I'd love to be a proper mother."

Not like Kae. She wouldn't only be nice when it suited her. She'd be a good mother; loving. No beatings, no verbal abuse.

Any child she had would be treated like she had always wanted to be treated.

She was curious about his father. He hadn't mentioned his family before. Hadn't expressed a wish for his family to come to the wedding or mentioned them in conversation before.

But, if he didn't want to share, she wouldn't pry.

He smiled softly.
"I think you would make a wonderful mother, though between the two of us I fear that our children would be doted on."

He played with her fingers, entwining them with his.
He chuckled softly, at least he knew he could not be worse than his parents, there was always a plus side if you looked hard enough.

"Really?" She had hoped she'd be a good mother, but she wasn't sure. There were so many things she could do wrong.

Her lip twitched. "That's not an overly bad thing."

She squeezed his hand, leaning forwards to give him a gentle kiss.

He nodded.
"You will be an amazing mother love, you have so much to offer a child, there is not doubt in my mind about that."

He chuckled softly, "True, I would rather my children be doted on hand and foot then to ever go without."

She smiled brightly.

Hearing that other people thought she'd be a good mother.

She nodded with a small smile. "Of course, we'll ahve to teach them when enough is enough. Doting on them is fine, but I don't want to spoil them too much and have them grow up as sour, snobby brats." That was also something she was worried about.

He ran his hand through her hair, running loose strands through his fingers.

"Of course, not having my kids become like that."

He smiled softly and kissed her forehead.

She purred softly as his fingers ran through her hair.

"What do you think they'll look like? Me or you? My hair or yours? My eyes or your human eyes? Tall or short? Feminine or muscular?"

He was already trying to paint a picture of the pups in her mind.

"Do you think we'll have a small litter or a large litter?"

He continued to stroke her hair.

"Hmm, I don't know.
I hope they get my hair, last thing we need is more fiery red heads running around."
He joked with a soft chuckle.

"I hope they get your eyes, for their sake I hope the boys inherit my height. I don't want too big of a litter.
But at the end of the day, as long as they have ten fingers, ten toes and a heart beat I'll be happy."

She stuck her tongue out. "You love us fiery red heads. And we always love more joining our little group. Uncle Aodh says he shares a room with three other red heads. It's not only our family that has red hair."

She was glad about that. There weren't all that many natural red heads in Japan so she looked very out of place a lot of the time.

"Do you ant boys or girls? Or a mixture of the two? What would we name them?"

She was getting excited talking about pups now.

He chuckled softly.
"Don't you think you are getting a little a head of yourself?
Personally I want boys and girls, if we are so lucky.

As for names, I have no real preference, if you wanted to pay homage to your family members I would be okay with that."

"Just because I'm scared of pregnancy doesn't mean I can't think about pups." She stuck her tongue out again.

Her lips pursed as she thought.

"I want twins. Two boys. One a red head the other black. I can picture the redhead being smaller, slightly more effeminate than the other, but not overly short."

She shook her head. "I don't really know the names of any of my aunts or uncles on Baba's side. They only mentioned them; never went into detail." If she was going to name her children after family members, she'd do it on her father's side. "And Grandaddy never really had a family outside of us."

"My family is out of the picture so I guess we will just have to think of our own names."

He said with a warm smile, he was happy that Moe was at least talking to him about this, normally she would be so worried about upsetting him that shed keep stuff like this to herself.

"I am sure with time and information the idea of pregnancy wont seem so horrible, don't forget conditions today for pregnant woman are much better than 300 odd years ago."

"That'll be fun. Are we going to use Japanese names? Or Irish? Or stick with the more common Western names?" She wanted to put a lot of thought into naming her first children.

"You cheeky-" Her hand came down on his chest in a light slap. "I'm not three hundred odd years old. I'm two hundred and forty three."

Conditions for pregnant women were better two and a half centuries ago compared to what they were three centuries ago. But even two and a half centuries ago, after over a thousand years of living and already having more than a few children, Kae had still had nothing but terrible things to say about her pregnancy.

"Japanese, Irish, Romanian, Western....the possibilities are endless."
He replied with a chuckle.

"Two hundred and forty three is close enough to three hundred, I was rounding up."
He replied, rubbing his chest where she slapped him, not out of hurt but reflex.

"So many wonderful names..." She smiled brightly. "It'll be fun trying to find the perfect names for them."

She pursed her lips. "In math, you would round down when a number is below two hundred and fifty, so if we were going by that logic, I'd be two hundred, not three."

She bowed her head to kiss him softly. "So with your logic you'd be, what, six hundred? I married an old man," she murmured against his lips.

Zeke chuckled softly, kissing her back.

"Yep, you married and old man."
He smirked up at her and shook his head softly, he'd never had any traditional form of school so math obviously was not this strong point, though trust Moe to pick up on one mistake and decode all the ways of which he was wrong.

"Now we have to decide which of us is taking advantage of the other."

Her lips curled upwards a little as she began to place kisses along his neck. "Are you the dirty old man looking for a young, pretty wife, or am I the manipulative young woman aiming to steal everything you have right from under your nose?"

She pressed a kiss against the hickey she left earlier then nuzzled into his neck.

"Not a very smart young woman if that is your intentions because I do not have that much."

He chuckled softly, yes he had a few things of value that he had collected over the many years but if she were in the business of gold digging she'd be better off stealing from humans, they tended to die faster.

"So I think that makes me a dirty old man looking for a pretty young wife."

"And my plans of stealing everything you owned and disappearing off to marry Saburo are over." She sighed dramatically.

Her lips quirked up into a smile as she ran her fingers through his hair.

"Well, dirty old man, you could have picked a prettier wife, but I'm glad you picked me." She kissed him softly again.