Northstar Vale All the days of my life.

The empire was growing. By this point Ibis had hiked all the way to the borders and accepted Clay in to the fold, and returned to the valley bottom where Celara had helped her un-turtle, and after all the commotion and travel within the limits of the claim, Ibis was exhausted. She knew she needed something to eat but reaching a cache was going to be a laborious task. Her belly was so round, so heavy. Her back hurt whenever she stood up and her thin little legs often burned. It was harder for her to judge her own dimensions, so when she trailed along certain paths that were easy to maneuver prior to her pregnancy, now there were obstacles, dead-ends she could not squeeze out of. So she had to stay away from heavily forested areas, the mossy stonework lining the waterways, and anywhere that might prove hazardous to her unborn.

It was tedious. Everything about this stage of her pregnancy added to her discomfort. Ibis did not know how much longer she would have to be fat and awkward, but she hoped her babies would come soon and she could return to her normal shape - as if life were that easy. Gone was the famine-starved husk of a girl, gone was the sleepy faced dreamer. Ibis might not have been ready to mother anything but she was certainly much healthier these days - spherical, with an obvious ponch to her previously athletic little body. How much of this chub would remain after, she wondered...?

As she ambled, trying to place one paw ahead of the other but inevitably giving up and letting herself waddle along, she thought she spotted another new face. This one was just as unknown as Clay or Celara, except the rugged cut of Viinturuth's shoulders brought a glimmer to her eye, and when she caught a glimpse of his face and recognized him as the flirty man from before, she couldn't help but smile as she approached him. The valley was massive and he was, no doubt, trying to adapt to the space like all the others.

Hello again, she called to him, trying to pick up her pace so she could get to him swiftly (her waddling was not pretty and the less of it he could watch, the better she felt about herself). She moved a little bit too fast though, losing a step and then feeling the momentum of her heavy belly carrying her off-kilter just a touch, causing her tiny planetary self to collide with him. Oop..!