Where do Babies come from?
an excerpt

“Mama, mama!” said a little girl, skipping to catch up to the tall woman.

“Yes, dear?”

The little girl reached up to tug on her mother’s hand with tiny fingers. “Where do babies come from?”

The woman reached down to pat the girl on the head before continuing to walk towards their home, holding the little girl’s hand. She replied as if she had rehearsed this speech endlessly for this day, and she had, to some extent, because she didn’t want to be unprepared and feel embarrassed in front of her young daughter when she had to talk to her about the birds and the bees.

“Well,” she began with a little smile, “when two people like mama and papa love each other very, very much, they spend a very, very special night together. Then mama’s tummy gets big, because that’s where she stores the baby to keep him or her safe.”

“Like that man’s tummy?” The little girl pointed to a tall, thin, white haired man with a distinct bulge around the stomach region walking hurriedly, but awkwardly, alongside an even taller man with a white stick tapping on the path before him. “So that one’s like what mama was like?”

The woman’s expression faltered, before she quickly covered the girl’s eyes and hurried them away. “Yes…no. Ah, no, not like that. Hush, don’t look,” she said, feeling an embarrassed flush rise in her cheeks. “Men can’t be mothers. Shouldn’t be,” she added firmly to herself, trying to convince herself that the thin man just had some sort of abnormal weight problem. Or a foreign disease.

Yes, a disease would be the best way to think of it.

That high wizard wasn’t pregnant at all. There was no way he could be.