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This comes some time after A Possible Way Ahead and runs to 738 words. It was written for aldersprig's second prompt.

Rensa was looking after Mirren for once, not the other way around. Bannoc was away giving his lecture to another set of new military recruits and Mirren was within three weeks of her due date. Her baby could decide to be born at any time and everyone knew it, so they were making sure that help was near to hand. Tonight it was Rensa’s turn to keep an eye on her. Rensa’s pregnancy wasn’t as advanced as her friend’s but if they called for help to get to the medical section of the palace, she wasn’t sure which of them would be whisked away more quickly. At the moment though, they were two pregnant ladies, positioned to watch the moons rise, in comfortable chairs they could get out of, with their feet up on footstools of just the right height and an array of suitable snacks carefully positioned between them. Despite that, Mirren was eating fruit and nut ice-cream.

“Shouldn’t you be having something healthier?” queried Rensa.

“I used to get a lot of my calcium from soft cheese,” said Mirren gesturing with her spoon, “which neither of us are allowed to eat at the moment due to our interesting conditions, so I picked this ice-cream as my favourite substitute.” She ate another spoonful and then licked the spoon. “I have a very indulgent husband,” she sighed happily.

“You do,” agreed Rensa. “In the best possible way.”

“Speaking of which,” said Mirren, waving her spoon around in punctuation, “you should let your husband be more indulgent.” The light from the first rising moon made her spoon glitter.

“What do you mean?” Rensa turned to her friend and companion/keeper. “Yannic does a lot for me.”

“He gives you things you need,” replied Mirren, “but you don’t let him give you things you’d like to have just because you’d like to have them. You get enthusiastic about something, he asks if you’d like it, and then you’re all sort of ‘No, thank you,’ and withdrawing.”

“I don’t want to be greedy,” said Rensa quietly. “I already have so much.”

The second moon came up over the horizon as Mirren pointed out, “Not that much that’s yours, and you lost more, which may be unkind of me to point out, but it is true. I know Yannic feels guilty about his part in that,” there was another gesture with the spoon, “and you can make him drown in that guilt or let him come to think it’s not important, but I don’t think you should do either of those things.” She ate another spoonful of ice cream. “It wouldn’t be good for either of you in the long run. Besides,” she went on practically, “very soon you’re going to need all the help you can get because babies take a lot of work to look after properly.”

“I know,” agrees Rensa. “Another reason not to ask for too much now.”

Mirren looked at her oddly and asked, “Are you budgeting that?”

“Um?” Rensa stopped for a moment and thought before saying, “I might be.”

“I’m fairly sure that’s not the way it’s supposed to work.”

“I don’t know any other way.”

Mirren sighed. “You could just let him give you love gifts because he wants to.”

“Why would he want to give me love gifts? I’m not Kiriel.” Rensa began to look pensive.

“He might want to give you love gifts because you’re Rensa,” replied Mirren tartly. “He was a widower. He’s allowed to move on and what he feels for you may not be what he felt for Kiriel, but that doesn’t mean it’s not love.”

“My therapist says that too,” admitted Rensa.

“So do you listen to her?”

“I’m trying to. Can we change the subject?”

“Of course,” Mirren conceded.

“Good,” Rensa smiled, “because between you and me, while none of the men are around, I think I know someone who’d be good with Kolloc.”

“Oh?” After Mirren spoke both women took a moment to appreciate the rising of the third moon.

“She’s one of the leaders in my support group. She survived a nasty accident that killed her first husband and she’s just had a son, so she’s probably nowhere near interested in new relationships of that sort yet…” Rensa trailed off, and then began again, “She has scars and the prettiest red hair.”

“Kolloc has been partial to red heads and brunettes in the past,” admitted Mirren.

I wrote this to kelkyag's prompt "Missing pieces: Rensa and her therapist at work."

“I’m not sure about this.” Rensa looked at herself apprehensively in the mirror. “Do I look ordinary enough? Well as ordinary as I can with this hair and skin.”

“You look fine,” Mirren assured her, “and you’ll do fine. You’ll be drinking tea and eating healthy snacks while I’m waiting to see the obstetrician and you know how long that can take if someone’s baby decides to be born. I think the record so far has been four in one morning. And I get to do this every week from here on in.”

“Is everything okay?” Rensa looked at her friend with concern.

“Oh yes,” Mirren waved her hand dismissively. “At this stage the doctor always wants to see you every week. You’ll see, you’re almost at that stage yourself. Now, go and enjoy your coffee morning.”

Half an hour later Rensa cautiously opened the door of the coffee shop her therapist had directed her to. Once inside she looked around bewildered. She hadn’t been in such a place before without Mirren to guide her or an official to direct her to where she was supposed to go. There were several groups of women scattered around the shop and Rensa wasn’t sure which one she was supposed to be meeting.

“Excuse me, can I help you?” When Rensa turned to face the speaker, the girl added a hurried and startled, “Your Highness.”

“I hope so. I came for a pregnancy support group meeting that’s supposed to be happening here?”

“Oh yes,” the girl smiled, “they’re over in the back corner. The lady in the electric blue coat is with them.”

“Thank you.” Rensa smiled back at her and made her way between the tables to the group the waitress had indicated.

Coming up to them, Rensa had a sudden case of cold feet and froze. On the far side of the table a girl, she must have been at least five years younger than Rensa, looked up and did a double take. “What are you doing here?” The question was blunt with shock.

“Someone thought it would be good for me to get out and meet people I had something in common with who weren’t friends or colleagues of my husband.” Rensa thought there was no need to tell these women and girls that “someone” was her psychologist, not at this stage anyway.

“What do you have in common with us, Your Highness?” The brittle blonde on the right put sarcastic emphasis on the title.

“We’re all pregnant,” Rensa said quietly, “and, as I understand it, we lack personal support networks. I don’t know about the rest of you, but my entire birth family is dead and my mother-in-law, a lovely woman, lives towns away.”

“Sounds like you’re in the right place then,” it was a red-haired woman with a freshly scarred face who spoke. “Pull up a chair and make yourself comfortable, Rensa. Falen, shuffle round to make room and stop being a bitch – this is a support group, not a secondary school queen bee shuffle.”

I wrote this to aldersprig's prompt "Rensa, and something to give her some peace."

“In some ways,” the therapist said calmly, “it would be easier if you were still being abused.  Instead, the only ongoing abuse is that you can’t leave.”  She looked at Rensa with a considering gaze.

“But I don’t want to leave Yannic,” protested Rensa, “I…like him, a lot, and I want to have this baby and more after this one.”

“But you’re afraid someone will take the babies away from you?”

“Apparently,” she sighed.  “In my dreams, anyway.”

“Pregnant women do, occasionally, develop some odd ideas,” allowed the therapist, “so in this case we need to be able to determine whether it’s that or something more akin to a disease state.  Have you ever talked to anyone about your experiences on the day the Palace was sacked or on your pilgrimage?”

“A little, only to skim over it really.  The only people for me to talk to are Yannic’s cousin Mirren or people who were there.”  Rensa paused, “The ones who were there know and I don’t want to upset Mirren by telling her what her friends did that day.”

“So, there’s no-one you can talk to about these things?”  The therapist made some notes on her clipboard, “Have you considered developing other friendships?”

“I don’t meet other people on a regular basis, not to talk to freely.”  Rensa shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

“I think we may need to change that,” said the therapist briskly.  “Now, what were your interests before the regime changed?”

“My accounting, financial and economic studies, oh and reading.”  Rensa added, “I would have liked to have tried more handiwork, but materials were usually in short supply.”

“And what would you like to do now, if there were no constraints on your behaviour?  If you didn’t have to be Empress?”  The therapist smiled encouragingly.

Rensa thought for a moment and asked, “Could I still be married to Yannic?”

I wrote this to aldersprig's seventh prompt "More Rensa."

Rensa’s figure was blossoming, expanding its borders while inside her a small biological miracle was growing.  All the senior members of the regime treated, if not her, the baby she was carrying as a favourite grandchild, niece or nephew in utero so she was being coddled and advised and urged to do things that were good for her pregnancy.  Every time she made a public appearance there was a flood of letters offering more good advice.  Everyone seemed happy for her.

And then the dreams started.  Dreams where they came to take her baby away from her.  Dreams where she was alone, being pursued by angry, chanting men because everyone she thought she could rely on turned into mannequins as she reached them to ask for help. Yannic, Mirren, Tyrren and even Bannoc, leaving her in the end alone and surrounded by her pursuers.  She usually woke up at that point but one time they’d laid hands on her, she’d woken to find Yannic shaking her, and a voice had said, “The sooner you give this one up the sooner you can have another.”

She supposed the dreams were about the pressure to have children and the fear of losing them too, plus a good dollop of…something that her new life might all be a sham, a construct to hide the prison bars.  Figuring out what they were about might be scarier than having them…

“You have to see someone about these dreams you’re having,” Yannic said firmly over breakfast the morning she was officially seven and a half months pregnant by the calendar.  “It was only occasionally to begin with but it’s almost every night now.”

“I don’t think I had the dream last night,” Rensa replied carefully.  “Well, not to remember.”

“I think you did, or something as bad,” Yannic was looking stern.  “You cry and whimper in your sleep when you have that dream and that’s what you were doing last night.  I want to help you, but I can’t or at least I don’t know how.  That’s why I’ve made you an appointment with a psychologist.”  He put a card down on the table.  “She’s supposed to be very good.  I want,” he paused, “I want you to be happy and I think these dreams mean that there’s something that we need to fix for you.”

Rensa picked up the appointment and read it.  “For today?  Thank you.”

I wrote this to aldersprig's first prompt, "More Rensa, esp. Involving clothing."

“My clothes are starting not to fit,” Rensa announced to Mirren.  “Do I have a budget for maternity clothes?”

“Of course you do.”  Mirren’s pregnancy wasn’t that much more advanced than Rensa’s but she looked further along.  “Mind you, once I started shopping for my own maternity clothes I had them double it.”

“They’re more expensive than ordinary clothes?”  Rensa thought for a moment.  “Well, they do need more fabric.”

“I think it’s more that they see you coming when they either think you’re desperate or floating in a la-la land of happy hormones,” was Mirren’s tart response.  “I think we should start with the people you brought from last time and then expand from there.”

Everyday clothes and underwear for pregnant women were relatively easy to get although pricier than clothes for the not-pregnant.

The store that had reminded Rensa of her sex education lessons provided two made-to-measure coatdresses with frankly military styling.  The tailoring, as always, suited Rensa and the pleats below the high bust line allowed for her expanding belly.  The other stores she’d purchased from before didn’t have maternity clothes but they were prepared to suggest things and modify designs.

Rensa almost had everything she needed when they decided to try one of the stores that hadn’t let them in the door when they’d first been buying her clothes.  At this time of year it apparently didn’t need a security guard or a doorman.  Inside there were a few artistically arranged racks of clothing, two shop assistants and a woman with garishly dyed, multi-coloured hair who could only be described as difficult.

“Why are you offering me that size?  I’m obviously a 14, not an 18!”  Her hands telegraphed her indignation as loudly as her voice.

“Madam, you tried on the 16 in the green and it was that fraction too small,” the darker haired girl reminded her.

“That was a very tight cut,” the woman harrumphed, “and sewn even tighter.  It should have been relabelled as a 12 or something.  Get me a 14!”

“As you wish.”  The dark haired girl put the garment she was holding back on the rack and pulled out an identical but smaller one.  She turned to the lighter haired girl and asked, “Hellen, could you please see to the ladies who’ve just come in?”

Hellen turned but the customer grabbed her arm.  “No you don’t, I need both of you.  I’ll have a word with them while you get me that pink thing and in a 14 mind you!”

The woman walked over to Rensa and Mirren, oblivious to the fact that the shop assistants were following her with worried expressions.  Both young women looked bemused when they flicked their eyes over the two security men who had taken up stations inside the shop’s doors.  “I’m sorry,” the customer told Rensa and Mirren, “but the staff will be busy with me for some time.  You and your husbands should go get coffee or something, then come back.  If you think this store would have anything for someone in your condition.”

“I have found people to be very accommodating about our current condition.”  Rensa looked the woman up and down.  She could see how the other customer’s hair style had been inspired by her own but those colours had no place in nature.  “They’re not our husbands and who are you to chase other paying customers out of this shop?”

The other woman returned the up and down treatment.  “You look vaguely familiar, perhaps you were some minor hanger-on at one of my parties?  Don’t you know who I am?”  The blue, pink and green hair on her head practically bristled.

“No.  Why should I?”  Rensa was calm.

“Majesty,” Hirroc, one of her security detail, was deploying his ‘early warning system’, “is this woman annoying you?  Do you wish her removed?”

Rensa and Mirren thought the other customer might be about to faint.

I wrote this to aldersprig's first prompt.

Along with a short list of don’ts pregnant ladies, Rensa discovered, were encouraged to both exercise in moderation and nap.  Her weight was still less than her doctor thought it should be and the first sign of her pregnancy had been a small dip in that weight.  As a result she was now on a ‘sustaining’ diet backed by a vitamin supplement.  Mirren, a month more pregnant than Rensa, was still the chief aider-and-abettor of the campaign to raise Rensa’s weight and she made sure small, regular, healthy snacking opportunities were being presented to both of them on a regular basis.

One more month, then they’d be through the first trimester and there could be a public announcement.  That might stop some of the letters.

People wrote to the Empress.  Rensa wasn’t quite sure why, but they did.  They’d had to give her a pool of secretarial staff just to open and deal with the mail.  Only a few of the opened letters came to Rensa herself.

A fair number were asking her to attend functions or support causes.  Those went to the people who organised the Imperial couple’s diary.

Another substantial subset was from school children who were writing to the palace as part of some set project.  There was a fairly standard reply for those with space for appropriate tailoring and Rensa signed those responses herself.

Most of the rest were begging letters.  Most of those got a politely worded redirection of their request for help, with copies of the applicable forms if necessary.  Others were handed straight to the criminal investigation liaison who now occupied a desk in the secretariat room, some for fraud investigation but others because what they revealed was some form of illegal coercion on the writer.

The threats, and there were some, also went to the criminal investigation liaison.  Some people just didn’t understand that it was illegal to threaten anyone through the mail.

A few correspondents’ letters got sent through to Rensa.  Mail from Yannic’s family that had gone to the public address and not the private one or letters from the woman who’d discovered a sketchbook and pencils hidden down the back of a dresser that she’d acquired which had come from one of the palace’s private apartments.  She’d returned the sketchbook with a note remarking that she was sure the Empress would want the pictures of her family back and Rensa’s return note of heartfelt thanks had led to a mail friendship.  The sketches themselves, beautifully done, weren’t of Rensa’s immediate family but they were of people she knew and were the only thing she could point to and show others what her world had been like…before.

The letters she hoped the announcement of her pregnancy would stop were the advice ones.  The embarrassingly detailed ones on how to get pregnant.

Of course, they were probably going to be replaced by equally detailed letters on what she should do in pregnancy and childbirth…

I wrote this to aldersprig's sixth prompt.  It comes after About That Bet.

“Your Majesty,” the dark haired woman bowed then straightened.  “Thank you for seeing me.”

“I’m not sure what advice I can offer you,” Rensa admitted, “but please sit down, Sevrin, and I’ll see what I can do.”  She waited for the other woman to lower herself into one of the sitting room chairs and then asked, “What seems to be the problem?”

“Tuluc.”  Sevrin looked embarrassed.  “You know that he’s been supervising my…rehabilitation since your wedding?”

Rensa nodded.  The attractive young woman opposite her had been one of Trode’s most loyal adherents, part of a squad the late leader of the revolution had set up to carry out any “tidying” that he felt was needed.  Since she and her squad mates had crashed Yannic and Rensa’s wedding to protest the continuation of the Imperial model they had been closely supervised.  Rensa had heard the word ‘deprogramming’ used.  “Yes.  I heard that he was worried about you.”  No need to tell Sevrin that Tuluc had told her and Yannic that over lunch only a few days after their wedding.

Sevrin gave a short laugh.  “I don’t know that worried is the right word.  I came to you because, well, you agreed to marry Yannic despite everything.”

“It seemed my only option to have any sort of life that I would want to lead,” Rensa agreed quietly.

“And you two seem to be making it work.  You both seem happy.”  Sevrin hesitated, “Even if everybody wants you to have babies straight away.  I don’t even know if he only wants to do it because all his friends are getting married, first Yannic and now Bannoc.”

Rensa blinked hard for a moment.  “Tuluc has asked you to marry him?”

“Yes and I don’t know what to say!”  That ended in an almost wail.

“What do you want to say?”  Rensa thought that was a good place to start.

“I want to ask him why.  Why does he want to get married and why me?  Except,” she hesitated, “I worry that if I can’t figure it out for myself he might change his mind.”

“That sounds to me like you’re inclined to accept,” Rensa commented.

Sevrin nodded in agreement, “It does, doesn’t it?”

kelkyag

“What are we doing?”  Rensa thought that Yannic was being deliberately mysterious for the fun of it.  Having been married to him for almost a week, and after living with him for that time, she could believe that he was capable of that.  She hadn’t had much choice in marrying him of course but Kiriel had and, all in all, Rensa was of the opinion that on that point Kiriel’s head had been firmly screwed onto her shoulders.  Yannic, well being married to Yannic seemed to be rather nice.  But he was still being mysterious.  “Where are you taking me?”

“You could say we’re helping Bannoc win a bet,” he smiled at her conspiratorially.  “We just have to collect my mother and aunt, and then we can be on our way.”

“Are they expecting us?”  Rensa was hoping Tyrren and her sister knew more about this than she did.

“No.  If they’re expecting us, they might not co-operate.  The less the three of you know…,” he trailed off deliberately.

“You’re teasing me!”

“It’s the expression you get just as you realise that,” he smiled then added, “and I’ve told you what that makes me think.”  She dimpled and there was a private moment of warm looks and smiles.  “Parents.  Must collect parents!”  He led her in the direction of the guest rooms again.

“Parents, plural?  Is this something about Mirren?”  Rensa was trotting to keep up, Yannic had longer legs and was much fitter.

“I’ve said enough, come on.”  He hurried along and she couldn’t get anything more out of him until they reached the guest quarters.  There he frankly smoodged his mother and aunt into coming with them and led on towards the public rooms of the palace.

“I know you’re up to something,” his mother shook her head, “and I’m only coming to find out what it is, you understand?”

“Just as long as you come,” was all he said.

When Yannic opened the door Tyrren’s comment was, “Oh?”

Her sister followed her into the room and asked, “Where’s Mirren?  She must be the only one not here.”  Rensa and Yannic followed them into one of the reception rooms.  All of Yannic’s family was there plus a number of Yannic’s friends including brave Kolloc of the fussy plans who was wearing a close coms headset.  In the centre of the room was a pantu rug, the registration book on its stand and a Registrar.

Kolloc said something into his mouth piece and a few moments later the door on the opposite side of the room opened and Bannoc and Mirren entered with Mirren saying, “And why are you wearing that earpiece?  Are you-.”  She stopped as she realised they weren’t alone.  “What?”

“You said that if I got your family together and organised everything we could get betrothed now.”

Mirren’s face worked for a moment and a tear leaked down her face.  “I didn’t believe,” the tears were streaming down her face now, “I didn’t believe,” then she threw her arms around the puzzled Bannoc and buried her face in his chest, “that you really meant it.”

He put his arms around her and looked confused.