Jei bent down to Magnolia’s level and put his hand to Jane and said, “Mother.”
Magnolia looked at Jane and then Jei. She didn’t know what ‘Mother’ meant.
Jane broke down crying and picked the child up again, holding her, saying in English, “I’m your mommy, baby.” She began sobbing for a moment because she wanted to say, ‘You were in my tummy,’ as she would have to her other children, but then realized she couldn’t because Jane hadn’t completed the pregnancy because she had chosen to die. After a minute she gained some control back and said, “I’m Ellie’s mommy, too. I’ve come back for you. I’ll never leave you again, dear sweet Magnolia.”
Magnolia looked up at Jane. She tried to wipe away the tears from her mother’s face with her little chubby hand, and said in English, “No, no.” Trying to stop Jane from crying.
“I’m mommy, baby. I’m mommy,” Jane repeated, almost desperately, and pointed to her chest with her free hand. “I’m Magnolia’s mommy.”
“Nola’s mommy?” she asked mimicking Jane very poorly, but not understanding.
Jane looked at Jei, “Why doesn’t she understand the word, ‘mother’?” Jane knew as she asked it why Magnolia didn’t know this word and it broke her heart. She felt terrible that she had remained in the Afterlife.
Jei replied sympathetically, “She just started talking in simple words. You’re here now, that’s all that matters. She will never remember that you weren’t here.”
Jei and Jane spent the whole rest of the day in the nursery with Magnolia. Jane wanted to know everything. She grilled the nannies about Magnolia from day one and went through all her clothing and toys. Jane had been relieved to see that Jei had given Ellie free rein to buy anything from the Earth Store for Magnolia. As there were many products and options with so many human babies on the Capital Planet now, and Ellie had spared no expense, Magnolia had rooms filled with toys and clothing from Earth.
“I’m glad you thought to get her human toys, blankets and clothing as well,” Jane said looking at Magnolia’s closet half filled with black maximum class clothing and the other half a rainbow of human clothing.
“Jane, I may be a proud Imperial man but I’m also a father to a daughter who is half-human. I admired,” he caught himself, “Admire her mother more than my own culture’s belief in our superiority over other galactic civilizations. And I would always want Magnolia to feel proud of both of her parents.”
Jane leaned into Jei then. Seeping back into her consciousness were all the good memories she had with him and she let herself remember how much she loved him in every way. Death had given her perspective and she realized that her true nature aligned more with Jei than it ever had with Jim.
After they put Magnolia to sleep, he asked, “Do you want to eat?”
“It’s not the time for the evening meal,” she said.
“Are you going to hold to that?” Jei wondered, it was customary to forgo prescribed eating hours around birth or deaths and Jei assumed that reanimation would fall into that category as well.
“I am the goddess of humanity,” Jane said with fake haughtiness.
“Exactly when did humans eat at the prescribed eating times anyway?” Jei joked.
“You have a point, but there’s something else I want to do before I sleep. I want to see Ellie’s room.”
Jei nodded and led Jane through more impressive stone hallways, lit now by only dim artificial candlelight as it was the evening. After a few minutes of walking to the other side of the house, they arrived at a closed door. Jei didn’t hesitate, “Override lock. Jei, Head of House Rega.”
The door answered him, “Unlocked,” then opened.
Jane brushed past Jei and entered her daughter’s room. “This is where she has lived for the past year?”
“And more,” Jei answered staying in the foyer of the suite of rooms while Jane looked around.
Jane looked back, “Why aren’t you coming in? Is there something you are afraid of in here?”
Jei smiled at the thought, “Well she did adopt some mammals from Earth that look like rats, but no I’m not afraid. I just have respect for my ward’s privacy. She isn’t here and I’m not a slave. I have no business being here and neither do you.”
“She’s my daughter and I miss her. I want to see her things if I can’t see her right now.”
“She’s an adult, Jane. You should treat her like one.”
Jane paid Jei no mind and went to Ellie’s computer and opened it. She couldn’t access much as it was locked with her GC account password which would not only be a secret word but must also be opened by genetic identification. “Can you override this?”
“I can but I won’t do. Ellie is safe and will come back to us,” Jei struggled. He could feel a headache coming on for disobeying Jane because of the binding tattoos.
Jane realized Jei’s discomfort and dropped her questioning. She went back to going through what she could see in Ellie’s room. There were human and Alliance things mixed together everywhere. A holographic picture of her and Magnolia as a much younger baby. Jane looked closer at the image and wondered if that had been the day of her naming ceremony in the temple. There was another image of her and another young human woman, both dressed in maximum class formal dresses, “Who’s this?”
“Tamsin. She runs Human Food Two here in Alba and is the newest member to House Rega. She is at work now but will return in a few hours if you want to speak to her. She typically does not wake for the Watching.”
Jane shook her head, “Is she is a nice person?”
“As far as I can see she is a jovial kind of woman and is very decent. More so than her brother I would say.”
“You can’t blame him, we took advantage of those human men,” Jane admitted. After spending a good 30 minutes looking through her daughter’s things, not missing all the flamingo inspired Alliance clothing in her daughter’s wardrobe. When she had investigated everything she said, “We can go now.”
As they walked out into the dimly lit stone hallway, Jei asked, “Would you like me to show you to your rooms?”
“My rooms?”
“Of course, this is your house too. I have had rooms for you since I gave you the lovers’ bracelets.”
Jane was speechless.
They both stopped walking and looked at one another.
She looked up at him in the murky light, his eyes slightly gleaming like a cat’s, “I can’t believe you would do that. You think I don’t know now how scandalous even the name ‘lovers’ bracelets’ is now that I truly walk in both worlds?”
“It was never scandalous to me. It was the only way I understood you would be with me. You told me you never wanted to marry, and I took that at face value. In my experience, when you respect someone, you listen to them, and you believe them when they say things like, ‘I never want to marry.’”
“I was confused,” Jane confessed. She didn’t want to blame her mistakes on the forget-me-not-drug as she felt she had already blamed too much on that already. Nor did she want to blame Kara for her bad influence. “I didn’t know what I wanted, but I know that I was disappointed at the time that you didn’t want to marry me despite what I had said out of ignorance before. I was foolish for thinking that you would offer me marriage when I had flatly said I didn’t want to marry and then when you did and it was public and in front of my daughter, it was too much.”