Valishnu Rising

by Chogan Swan

  Though Una had never spoken with him before, she recognized him from her meetings with the assembled tribal gatherings that she had attended.

  Jorge Tewawina.

  “Thank you,” said Una, switching languages. “Your cousin, Razor sends greetings from the Sun Sea settlement.”

  “Razor?” Jorge said.

  “Sharp Knife,” Una said in his language. “We have danced the Roda together.”

  Jorge nodded. His face relaxed a little, and he stepped aside as she entered.

  “These are my apprentices, Aryana and Aliyah, assisting me today,” Una said, motioning to her shadows. “Assegai, my other assistant is outside making herself useful. I hope you don’t mind that I told her to milk the goats and tend to a few other things so you can focus on our meeting.”

  “Please tell her that I value her help,” said Jorge.

  Una bowed her head. “I will. Aryana and Aliyah will do some housekeeping and then some babysitting when I’ve tended to Tonita. I’m sure Ximena could use some rest. Will you take me to see your wife and daughter?” As she spoke with Jorge, Aryana and Aliyah walked toward the kitchen.

  Jorge watched them go, measuring their size with his eyes.

  “Don’t worry,” said Una. “They aren’t as young as they look, and they are quite capable.”

  “I’m not worried,” Jorge said with a slight smile and turned to walk toward the sound of the howling baby. “Anything they do in there can only improve things.”

  Una felt her lips twitch almost involuntarily.

  A sense of humor is a good sign.

  Una took off her oilskin overcoat, and Jorge took it from her to hang on a coatrack by the door. Una slipped out of her sandals and left them below the coatrack. “Can I see your wife and daughter now?” she said.

  Jorge nodded and motioned for her to follow. In the bedroom, a young woman with tired eyes and a haggard look paced the floor, bouncing a screaming baby, trying to get her to settle.

  “Good morning, Ximena,” said Una. “Can I hold her?”

  Ximena’s eyes measured Una, flicking from her face to her tail and then to her outstretched arms. She handed the baby over without further hesitation.

  Does she trust me already, or is she just desperate?

  Una peeled the blanket from the baby and ran her fingers over Tonita’s taut, distended tummy. She could smell the breast milk on Tonita’s breath, so shed just fed. “When did she last move her bowels?” Una said as she dipped finger filaments into Tonita’s skin to pull in a blood sample.

  “Yesterday morning?”

  Una nodded and licked her finger before offering it to Tonita who stopped crying for a few moments to latch on, sucking on the new and interesting taste. The gentle dose of the emetic compound would get rid of the milk she’d just drunk and make her hungry enough to drink the recipe Una was starting to prepare now.

  “The quiet makes me feel like I just went deaf,” Jorge said.

  Una chuckled. “She’ll need a fresh diaper in a few moments and a towel to catch what she’s about to throw up.” She looked at Jorge who nodded and hurried into the attached bath, emerging a moment later with a clean bath towel.

  Una nodded thanks and flipped Tonita over so her face hung over the cupped towel. Una turned her head to call out to the kitchen. “Aliyah, can you come and change a diaper please?”

  Tonita wriggled and spat up the milk from her earlier feeding. Una dipped a finger into the substance, cataloguing the digestive enzymes there with her filaments.

  Finished with that, she rubbed Tonita’s back gently. In a moment, Tonita wriggled again and made a little vocal noise as her diaper filled explosively. Aliyah entered the room, looking at Una.

  Una walked Tonita across the room to the changing table. “Who’s a good girl?” she said, keeping the towel beneath the diaper to catch anything that might stray outside its boundaries. Aliyah took over at the changing table, and Una walked back to where Jorge and Ximena stood … staring.

  “You really are the baby whisperer,” said Ximena.

  Una’s ShwydH personality stirred. If my father could see me now. The inner voice was dry and amused. But Una knew the thought that lurked even deeper.

  Don’t play with your food.

  She snarled at the voice and felt the ShwydH personality signal agreement.

  He always was a vicious bastard.

  Una focused on Ximena and Jorge. “Why don’t you two sit on the bed and rest while we talk,” she said. “I’m sure you haven’t had much sleep lately.”

  Ximena nodded and leaned against the queen-sized bed. Jorge sat next to her.

  “My first medical advice is to Ximena. Lean back on those pillows and put your feet up,” Una said, pointing to the pillows that leaned against the headboard of the neatly made bed. Someone had gone to the trouble to straighten the covers, anticipating her visit.

  Ximena eased back on the bed and sighed as she leaned back. Jorge reached over and patted her arm.

  Una smiled at the look they exchanged. “You two have a good operation going on your farm here. I can see how you’ve set it up so that your animals take care of each other. I understand Tonita is your first child, correct?”

  Ximena nodded.

  “Starting a family has some similar features to the way things works on a farm,” Una said. “The dogs and donkeys need to know how to get along with the goats and chickens so they can guard them. In the same way, humans need to learn how to fit in with each other—first as husband and wife, and then as parents together. After having a few minutes to examine Tonita, I now need to do the same with Ximena.”

  She turned her head. “Aliyah, can you take Tonita in the next room and walk with her until she sleeps? After she nods off, just sit down and hold her. I’ll need to see her again after this.”

  Una turned back to Jorge and Ximena. “I would like to talk to Ximena alone for a few minutes. Is that okay with the two of you? Most of it will be about things women usually prefer to discuss alone with their gynecologist.”

  Jorge stood up quickly. “Just call when you need me,” he said, closing the door behind him as he left.

  Ximena managed to offer Una a tired smile. “Men,” she said as though stating the subject was as good as an entire discussion.

  Una smiled for appearances.

  I wish you’d explain them for me sister. When it comes to human men, I don’t even know what I don’t know.

  Her current relationship had already made that clear. Though ShwydH had conducted an intensive study of human females, it had only been so he could turn on their lactation switches and find the pheromones that would help him get laid with satisfactory enthusiasm. Interacting with females hadn’t been that difficult for him. It had only taken him thirty-seven years to untangle 99% of the emotional indicators and their most likely causes and remedies

  Una was still centuries away from knowing what her unfolding memories from HumanaH would tell her about intimacy with human males, and as long as HumanaH was half-a-world away and cut off from long-distance communication, Una would just have to figure it out for herself.

  ShwydH’s personality stirred with an idea.

  ‘Maybe we can talk to one of the female counselors at the local clinic.’

  No. It’s not worth the risk of one of them breaching confidentiality. Unlike HumanaH, I can’t make them forget the conversation.

  ‘We could do it without admitting all the details of our personality matrix.’

  Let’s think about this later. Maybe when we aren’t in the middle of a complex problem.

  Una was about to open her mouth to tell Ximena it was time to take off her clothes when ShwydH’s personality interrupted again.

  ‘Talk first. Ask questions.’

  Does it matter? I’m not planning to have sex with her.

  ‘It matters. Besides, you never know.’

  Una considered. “I know this has been a challenging time, Ximena. How have you been feeling since the bi
rth?”

  Ximena’s smile seemed a bit tense. “It’s been exhausting, but it’s so fulfilling to finally have my little girl. The miracle of new life—”

  ‘She’s lying. She’s not just tired. She’s miserable.’

  Una put her hand on Ximena’s arm to stop her. “I know that’s what people expect you to say, but it will help if you are honest with me as well as yourself.”

  Ximena stopped, her mouth forming an Oh! of surprise.

  Una offered a smile that she hoped would convey acceptance. “Feeling depressed after pregnancy can often be caused by a disruption to the chemistry of your brain. I can help you with that if that’s what it turns out to be, but please just tell me the truth. Not what you think I want to hear.”

  A tear ran across Ximena’s bronze cheekbone. “Thank you,” she said, taking a deep breath as she wiped her face. “Everyone kept telling me I was just tired.”

  We should be able to check her brain chemistry without having her at the orgasmic state.

  “Ximena, I need to run some tests. It should only take about a half hour, but we can’t be disturbed during that time. But first, I want to make sure Tonita will remain asleep while we are doing that. I need to taste your breast milk. It may be that your diet is affecting Tonita, and I’ll need to drain you all the way down. Will you allow that?”

  “Why not? Everyone else does,” Ximena said with a snort.

  Competition for my food source?

  Una smiled to herself. The snarky side of ShwydH’s personality was active today.

  “But what about Tonita?” said Ximena. “She just spat up. I’m surprised she isn’t already yelling for another chance at the tap.”

  “Don’t worry about her. I’ll be feeding her with my own milk to make sure it fits her needs right now.” Una said, sliding from the bed. She walked to the door and opened it. “Aryana, please bring Tonita to me.”

  She turned to where Jorge was working on fixing a pump. “It’s important that no one disturbs us while I’m performing a procedure with your wife and daughter. Aryana will be assisting me, but no one else is to enter this room until I open it again. If you need me to explain exactly what I will be doing, tell me now, and you can come in here for the explanation. But that will probably take an extra half-hour.”

  Jorge shook his head. “You’re the medicine woman. It is not my part to know these things.”

  Una nodded and opened the door wider for Aryana to enter with Tonita snuggled into her shoulder. Though not crying now, Tonita was starting to fidget, searching from side to side for something to suck on.

  “Put her on the changing table again, Aryana,” Una said.

  Aryana nodded, and Una followed her to the table. When Tonita had settled, Una placed her thumbs at the entrance to Tonita’s nostrils then held the baby’s head in a gentle but unmoving grip with her fingers. Thankfully, at this age, immobility was a comfortable sensation for infants.

  Her filaments slid into the nasal passages and passed the foramina of the cribriform plate. From her filament’s position at the base of the brain, she performed a basic survey of brain chemistry and neural development then slid back out following the olfactory nerves back into the nasal passages then out.

  Next, she slid a finger into the diaper and sent a few strands of her filaments into the baby’s colon to check her intestinal bacteria.

  Tonita grabbed for the sparkling bangles dangling from Una’s ear and nose, but Una kept the chains out of reach. At the hospital, she’d learned that babies could be faster than one might think. Finished, Una went to her backpack and washed her hands with the wipes she’d made up earlier that morning.

  She turned to Ximena. “When Tonita spat up, I noted she hadn’t taken much milk from when you nursed her earlier. Did she manage to completely drain one side?”

  Ximena’s eyes flicked to Aryana, and she motioned Una closer to whisper. “She’s so fussy, she keeps interrupting her feeding, so she never takes much. It got so bad that I clogged up here,” she said, pointing to her left breast and wincing at the memory. “Now, Jorge has to finish draining me or I would just be miserable. I don’t want to ever get clogged up like that again.”

  Una nodded and put her face through the sequence of her most effective expression of sympathy targeting human females. “I understand completely,” she said. “And you don’t have to hide anything from my assistants. This kind of thing isn’t new to them. Milk from my human clients is already part of my diet, and my own milk is a delivery method for medicines and nutrients for my patients. So they’ve seen it all.”

  Una removed her caftan and draped it on the corner of the bed. “Aryana, bring her to me please,” she said as she stepped out of her harem pants. She took Tonita from Aryana and steered the baby’s questing mouth to her breast as she lowered herself to a sitting position with her legs spread out on the floor. Settled, she dipped filaments into the skin at the back of Tonita’s neck at the top of the spine where the nervous system was easy to access.

  She’d already determined a good blend of nutrients, enzymes and active cultures for Tonita’s body and nerves, and Tonita latched on with a will, tugging at her nipple and sending a wave of sensation through Una’s neural net.

  After a few moments—when Tonita had latched on tight and was intent on feeding—Una looked up and smiled at Ximena. “Can you take off your top and sit in my lap so I can treat the two of you at the same time? Aryana can help you with the positioning, and you can lean on me and relax while I clear your system.”

  Aryana went to Ximena and held out an encouraging hand. When Ximena took it, Aryana led her to Una and then demonstrated the position Ximena should take, facing Una and kneeling to straddle her legs.

  Ximena lowered herself carefully into position.

  “Please let all your weight rest on my lap and lean into me,” Una said. “It will help you relax. I’ll support you, and you don’t need to worry about knocking us over. My legs and tail can stabilize all of us. Aryana is here to facilitate. She’ll be following my signals to make sure you can relax. That will include some massage. She’s quite skilled. I’ll start on the side that Tonita didn’t feed from to give you some relief.”

  In a few moments, the room was quiet but for the sound of suckling and the occasional sigh of relief from Ximena as the tension left her back and the pressure from the milk in her breast diminished.

  When Tonita relaxed and stopped suckling about twenty minutes later, Una signaled Aryana to take her for burping then took a few minutes to massage the remaining milk from Ximena’s right breast before taking Tonita back and switching sides.

  After twenty more minutes, she handed Tonita to Aryana again and stood up to carry a now sleeping Ximena, completely drained of milk, back to the bed. She nodded to Aryana. “Take Tonita to her nursery and put her down for a nap. She should sleep for at least three hours.”

  Aryana slipped out of the room with the baby, and Una turned her attention back to the sleeping mother and dipped filaments into her bloodstream to release a compound that would insure she would remain asleep for the next part of her treatment.

  After waiting a few moments to be certain the sedative had taken full effect, Una straddled Ximena’s hips then put her fingers on the sides of her patient’s head and her thumbs inside her nostrils. Ximena slept on, merely opening her mouth to continue breathing.

  Again, Una followed the nasal passages to the cribriform plate and along the olfactory nerves to send her filaments out to the hypothalamus and pituitary gland.

  As she’d expected, Ximena’s serotonin and dopamine levels were low, but there weren’t any major issues, she sent a message to the hypothalamus to tweak the production of the hormones then rested there, just keeping track of what was going on while she accessed ShwydH’s memories covering the human brain. Due to his years of working to improve human female health among his bodyguards in a stressful environment, ShwydH might be the world’s leading expert in women’s brain health. If T
iana and HumanaH knew anything he hadn’t already learned, they’d never shared it with him during his three years of captivity.

  Her lifestyle needs adjusting to make sure she doesn’t just fall back into this cycle. I would prescribe aerobic exercise and yoga in the sunlight as well as frequent orgasms.

  … everyone agreed about the orgasms.

  Una disconnected then pulled out of Ximena’s brain. She moved to the side of the bed and sat looking out the window, taking in the view of distant hills. An hour had passed.

  Ximena stirred as the final remnants of the sedative faded. Her eyelids flickered and she stretched her arms. “Oh, that was the loveliest nap,” she said, her voice fighting through a yawn. “I feel different, more like my old self.”