Egg Relay

Calvin glanced down at his stomach, more specifically, the massive bulge that was riding quite low. Over the last few days his egg had been slowly making its way down so that it now sat right at the juncture of his torso and tail. He'd noticed over his past couple of pregnancies that the egg would start its journey before his first real contraction would hit, making his labour and delivery blissfully short and relatively painless, when he considered his first droppings. Each development had been fascinating and he'd been grateful for his body's workings. Now, though, he couldn't help but feel and edge of concern creeping in around the relief as the position of the egg made swimming difficult. He could scarecely move his tail to get him from one end of the room to the other.

"It has to be soon," he assured himself as he laid back against the sponge bed for a rest. "It's been six months almost to the day." With this thought in mind he drifted off to sleep, only to be woken a mere hour later to his cousin bursting through the seaweed curtain that served as his door.

"I need your help," he panted, stopping abruptly and clutching his stomach just a tail's swish inside the cave as his wife slipped gracefully through the seaweek to join him. "Something - something's wrong."

With a gentle push at the sponge, Calvin propelled himself into an upright position. The action caused his abdomen to jostle and he felt - actually felt - the egg slip down a little further inside him. Not long now. "What is it?" Calvin asked, taking in his cousin's pallor and the way he doubled over. "Are you sick?"

"It's my fault," his wife said quickly, before he could reply. "He didn't want to at first, but I persuaded him to and then... then he just started to - to..." she trailed off, seemingly at a loss for words.

Breathing heavily, Tristan straightened, the pain that had been lining his face eased, but the pallor and worry were still firmly in place. "Be at ease, Greta," he soothed, reaching out to squeeze her hand. "Calvin has been egg laden dozens of times and not once has the mere act of coupling caused him to drop at four weeks. Isn't that right, Cal?"

"You're egg laden?" Calvin asked, surprised. "Why didn't you tell me?" He was generally close to his cousin and would have thought that he'd inform him if he was with egg. Then, if he was only four weeks, perhaps he had only just found out.

Tristan chuckled despite himself. "I just did, didn't I?"

Calvin sent him a grin. "I'll forgive you this one time. Four weeks, you say?" At the couples unison nodding, he scratched his chin. "And you were coupling?" Young Greta's blush was all the confirmation he needed. "You may want to take a load off," he informed his cousin. "This is going to be one hell of a night." He paused, travelling his gaze from Tristan to Greta and then finally down to his own bulging stomach. "For all of us."

Greta stared at him, confused. "Wh-what?" she stammered. "What do you  mean?"

"You've initiated an egg transferral," Calvin said calmly as a small twinge of pain rippled through his own abdomen.  It comes. "It's rare, but not unheard of."

"What the hell is an egg transferral?" Tristan gritted before letting out a groan and doubling over again.

Calvin scrutinized the young couple. He'd always throught of them as young, despite the fact that his cousin was ten years his senior and Greta was only three years younger than that. It seemed strange to him that at twenty-seven Tristan had never once heard of an egg transferral, when Calvin himself had undertaken one on three separate occassions. He sighed. "I keep telling them they should cover it in sex ed in school," he said, more to himself than the too mildly distressed mers before him. "But they keep saying there's no such thing."

"An explanation would be good, Cal," Tristan grunted. "I feel like I'm gonna explode!"

"Explode?" he asked, slightly alarmed. "We've got less time than I thought." Cal let out a small 'eek' as he felt his first true contraction, but endured to ignore it as he motioned his cousin to the sponge bed. "You're really not gonna wanna be supporting yourself when I tell you what's going on. Lie - grunt - down."

As Greta slowly led Tristan to the sponge as indicated, she looked over her shoulder, concern clear in her eyes and clearly it was not only for her cousin. "Are you alright, Cal?" she asked softly as Tristan floated gently down onto the bed. "You look a little strained."

Cal gave her a reasurring smile -  well, as reassuring a merman can get when he's just gone into labour and now has to explain to a lesser experienced couple about the process of Egg Transferral. The painful process. One he would likely need to coach them through. It was really unfortunate that this should happen right now, because he did need to focus on the safe dropping of his own egg, however, it was doubly unfortunate that thisi was the couple's first egg. Tristan did not have the experience of a previous dropping to fall back on. All he could do was trust his body.

"I'm fine," Cal said softly, rubbing his egg. "Just fine. Let's focus on Tristan and yourself for now. I'll deal with myself when it's time."

Furrowing her brows slightly in confusion over the younger mer's words, Greta nodded and lowered herself into a 'seated' position beside her husband. "Start from the beginning," she requested. "What is an Egg Transferral?"

Cal too, lowered himself to the bed and began his impromptu lecture, pausing occassionally to breathe through contractions.

"An Egg Transferral," he began in a calm voice despite the amount of tension in the water. "Is a rare and beautiful thing. It is an opportunity many merparents never recieve." He paused, choosing his words carefully so as not to cause undue concern for the couple. "An Egg Transferral is literally the transfer of the egg from the man to the maid."

Tristan hissed in a breath, though Cal was not sure if it was because of this new information or because of the increasingly strong contractions that ripped through him. From the look on his face it was a safe bet to say it was both. Running out of time.

"How does that even work?" Greta demanded. "Mermaids can't have the merbabes, it just doesn't happen. We don't have the capacity."

"Yes," Calvin responded, still keeping up his calm, though on the inside he was quite stressed. "You do. It's just that the merman is more... how do I phrase this? More adept at conceiving? More likely? Let's go with more likely. The merman is more likely to conceive because the biological workings are more aggressive. Much like sport in life. If you've ever watched interschool sports you'll know that every sport is a contact sport for adolescent mermen. They go out of their way to get what they want, even when it has negative side effects. Same goes for egg burdening. The male reproductive organs-."

Tristan let out a cry of pure pain, doubling over his stomach. "Cal, something is really wrong here!" he yelled. "It really hurts!"

Greta moved closer to her husband, massaging his shoulders. "Maybe we could have the Sex Ed talk later and just get to what Tristan needs to do right now?" she suggested, the panic clear in her voice.

Cal nodded his agreement, rubbing his own stomach as he felt a slight shift within. "For now we'll focus on Tristan, but remember, you have a part in this as well. There are changes taking place in your body right now to prepare you, they should start to intensify soon. You both need to remain ca-." He cut himself off on a cough as he felt the definite change within his canal. It had already been opening, widening slowly to allow the egg to make it's way down, but as he coughed his merflesh opened and the egg dropped down into the canal proper.

In the midst of a brief reprieve, Tristan looked more critically at his young cousin than he had since arriving. "Cal," he panted. "Are you...?  Are you getting ready to drop right now?"

He gave a short laugh in reply. "Yeah," he said. "But don't worry, I'm pro at this. Just ask ma."

"I can't believe Auntie Kay lets you do  this," Tristan said, shaking his head. "How much school have you missed?"

"Not all that much considering," Cal shrugged. "I mean, the first couple I took a week off for dropping and recuperation, but like, I'll drop this one tonight" – He gestured to the low bulge – "and I'll be back at school tomorrow. I'll be a little sore, and exempt from physical activity for a week or so, but other than that, I'll be fine."

Greta watched the interaction with a mixture of horror and awe on her face. "How many times have you done this?" she asked curiously. She'd heard about her husband's cousin, but she'd never actually taken the time to learn more about his habits. "What happens to the eggs once you've dropped?" Looking around the room she noticed that the only sign of an impending egg dropping was the egg cradle in the corner. If it was true that he'd done this many times, where were the merkids?

As one, the mermen groaned and curled over their abdomens. Tristan crying out in pain soon after as a new kind of pressure built while Calvin simply took a few breaths, straightened and gave a few short pushes. The egg moved down significantly and he watched as the bulge physically moved.

"Most of the eggs are put up for adoption," he said after a short pause. "Sometimes women come to me wanting a merbabe. They pay me to develop the egg for them whether with  their and their partner's DNA or with their's and mine. In that case I carry the egg to term and when I've dropped I deliver it to them. Or they specify that they want to be there for the dropping."

Truly interested now, and not a little distracted from the situation at hand, Greta wanted to know more. "So women pay you to burden yourself?" she asked. " How did that start?"

Leaning slightly forward, Calvin winced as the egg slid a little more down his canal, but kept up the conversation. "Well, the first few times I simply became egg laden to my maid-friend of the time. They were put up for adoption because neither of us were ready for the responsibility. After the third egg in two years the adoption agency we were donating to mentioned that I was incredibly fertile and  wondered if I'd be willing to help out couples who were having fertility problems and the like. Of course, I'm a big softy at heart, so I couldn't decline. Plus, they pay me."

Again, Greta felt compelled to ask, "How many times have you been egg laden?"

"This will be my twelfth dropping, but I've been involved in three Egg Transfers."

"What happens in an Egg transfer?"

There was no time to answer her question as Tristan cried out, demanding their attention.