Sorova resorted to her usual compensating actions while waiting for them. Of course, she had legitimate reason to distract herself: her “home” was filled with tokens of a life that could have been. She attempted to mitigate the inevitable shock by looking at photographs of her other self’s family.
There were two children in the pictures. A young girl and a slightly younger boy. They seemed to have mostly taken after their mother’s serpentine nature with the exception of the window drapes that served as ears for her husband, and their grandmother’s rattlesnake lineage was modified in the form of a series of pom-poms at the end of their tails. They were beautiful.
Their names were Monique and Wynfrith.
Shuddering, she placed a framed picture down and approached a small shrine focused on something she had never seen, even though it required no introduction: her own skull. She stared transfixed as Wendell cautiously approached her side.
“She was stricken by the S2 Virus shortly after Wynnie’s birth. Neither of them remember her.”
“Just like me,” she whispered right before starting at the next sound.
“Uncle Doxxie!” chimed two young voices from outside the door. Followed by an unusually reassuring rumble informing them that they had someone to meet.
Sorova turned to the door and reflexively averted her face. She slowly returned it to see the two small children from the pictures and a deja vu of her dreams.
She collapsed in tears.
Tensions melted away over the next few hours.
As Sorova demonstrated her renowned talent as a couch for her family, they laughed and reminisced with Pyrodox and Elder Saleria.
“Oh, you guys should have seen it. You two were really going at each other! I’ve never seen Saleria so mad.”
“Good night, Wendy, what did you do?” Pyrodox chuckled. Wendell flinched at this. Sorova observed a slight, but civil tension between the two.
“I have a way with people, I guess.”
“I couldn’t believe it and I saw it! You don’t even know, it was the worst fight I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure if they were trying to actually kill each other, because they almost did it by accident so many times! Imagine these two getting into a fight, I mean, y-you cant!”
“Well…” Pyrodox mumbled. “We did get an impression.”
“What do you mean?”
“Wendell and I did partake in a staged fight…for charity.” Saleria answered as he pretended to drink from his gingerly held teacup.
“That fight was over a charity,” Sorova inanely observed (she had already established that).
“It seemed to transpire in a way quite similar to your description,” the Elder observed.
“Oh.” Sorova made a note to remember that so she could inform Saleria when she got back.
When she got back.
“I…I’m a little tired.”
“You’ve had a long day,” Pyrodox said with genuine concern.
“You want to go to the spare bedroom, honey?” He showed the way while nodding shyly at Pyrodox.
“Yes, thank you. I’m sorry.” Sorova was suddenly exhausted, but she appreciated her “husband’s” apparent restraint.
Maybe he shared her misgivings.
Spilling over a bed far too small for her frame, she stared at the ceiling until she fell asleep later than normal.
Sorova’s uncertainty was tempered somewhat by the revelation that this version of Wendell was a not a half-bad cook. She dug into her breakfast with enthusiasm, her Rathi metabolism combining the concentration of a snake’s diet with the frequency of a humanoid’s.
“Better get used to it,” she smiled at the amazed children. “It’s gonna be you in a couple years.”
“Okay!” a bemused Wendell exclaimed. “Who’s ready to go to school!”
“Can Mommy walk us?” Monique asked.
Mommy.
“Of course,” Sorova said uncertainly, then with genuine enthusiasm: “I’d love to!”
“I’m making good grades!” Wynfrith said as they made their way to Education Center in the Compound.
"Your'e going to be as clever as big Wynfrith, aren't you?"
“And I want to get into singing, just like you!” Monique volunteered.
“Oh!”
After she had escorted the two to their studies, she returned home to find Wendell as he was cleaning up. Unsurprisingly, he was a stay-at-home dad.
“Hey,” he said without looking up. “Pyrodox missed you while you were out.”
“Oh, that’s too bad…awkward without me?”
“Oh, yeah.” Wendell quipped.
Sorova was not surprised at the tension between the two even in this world. Wynfrith had once told her of his own older brother, Olaf. He looked up to him his whole life, like a big friend. Idolized him. But as the younger dragon had fallen short of Gionachbalg standards, he had received so tongue-lashings from the older one. He had learned and improved from them, but there was always that tension henceforth, even if Olaf was unaware of it. They continued to be outwardly friendly, but it was never the same for Wynfrith. A brother cannot treat a brother like a naughty child in adulthood without permanent damage. The resultant feeling of otherness had contributed to his decision to cut himself off from that life, and he made it clear that he never wanted to make that mistake with her. She suspected he had no such qualms about is brother-in-law. Of course, she was not as eloquent about as he.
“Big brother stuff, I guess.”
“We have catching up to do, I guess.”
“I know. Maybe we should sit down.” She patted her prodigious coils, inviting him to sit.
Wendell was exceededly pensive after her account was completed. He bit his index finger lightly. “Is that…Is that really what I’m like?”
“No, its…Wendell, you’re everything I’ve always wanted. I-I…It’s me who’s broken. I’m fat, scarred...I…I’m not…I’m not the mother of your children. I’m a killer.”
“It was me who did this to you, Sorova! I…I made you this, and yet after all that…you’re still beautiful. More than beautiful than I deserve…”
“Wendell, you raised two children by yourself with out me…without her. You deserve her. And that doesn’t matter, anyway. This is wrong, and we both know it. We can’t have each other, It isn’t right.”
Wendell hesitated, defeated. “I know.”
“It’s just…hold me, just hold me.”
They held each other tight until the tears stopped.
PART 3
