The little girl in my belly rolled then and stretched. Hannah and Ra both reached out a hand to feel her


    movements. She seemed to press into her sister’s touch before she settled again.


    “The way you breed,“ Ra stated, “is unheard of. They have tried it with several other Earth females.”


    Hannah growled and shook her head. Even Ra looked sad after her statement.


    “Boys are easy,” Ra said softly, “but girls…”


    Hannah looked troubled and touched my face.


    “The girls break the families apart. The men cannot deal with the differing opinions. The Earth females


    cannot deal with the influx of stimulus. They are driven to madness and the pregnancies are lost with


    the deaths of the human ves. The men, they barely survive.”


    A cool wind whipped through the deserted section of cave we sat in and I shivered.


    Christof was in my head scolding me for not bringing something warmer to wrap in. He was leaving the


    sorting room and bringing me something right now. I had known where Hannah and Ra would hide with


    me to talk. They always took me on long deserted walks. Getting sick would get all of us in trouble, so


    he wasing to take care of me.


    Hannah was snapping her fingers in my face when I realized where I was. It was hard not to be


    distracted by the voices in my head. My daughter found my inability to concentrate quite annoying.


    “You just stare off in space all the sudden,” she huffed.


    “It’s Like having a conversation with a schizophrenic!”


    ninjanovel


    I ignored her outburst and advised the girls Christof was already on his way, so they would not be


    surprised by him.


    “It is what you had with Christof,” Hannah said getting back to the conversation, “that saved all of us.


    He allowed his Brothers’ thinking to bend without breaking.”


    “We will save him one day, Mama,” Ra promised me. “We will save all of them.”


    Belonging ? N?velDram/a.Org.


    I believed them, I had to. They were the physical manifestation of the hope I had clung to since I’d been


    brought here. Hannah and her Sister were tireless fighters for freedom. I knew what they did when they


    Left and I saw the exhaustion it caused them. Neither seemed to care, they only wanted what was


    right.


    Apparently everyone was going to continue jumping on the freedom bandwagon.


    “What is a whale?” Evan asked one evening at dinner.


    “No, no Brother,” Kein amended, “a bloated whale?”


    I coughed and had to take a drink to avoid choking. I remembered the carcasses of whales I had seen


    washed up on television. Their huge rotund bellies reminded me of my own.


    Now many moons into this pregnancy my stomach had grown to enormous proportions. I realized how


    early I must have been with Hannah. The initial nausea and vomiting had probably stunted my growth,


    and hers, also. I was markedlyrger this time.


    I wasn’t entirely sure where the men picked up the phrase, though. “You thought of it today as you


    swam,” Damien informed me.


    “We kept hearing the Earth words, but we did not wish to interrupt your exercise.”