Birth Throes - Epilogue

Eight months later . . .

The whole company celebrated the "returning of the mature Yue Ying" in the back garden of Chengdu Castle; the people there were the Ladies Mi and Gan, Liu Bei, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Zhuge Liang and Yue Ying. They sat around a fire, made by Zhuge Liang of course, having mastered the book Fire and Water. After a flick of his sleeves and a snap of his fingers, a fire was lit.

Laughter and stories were exchanged.

Their conversations were hard to hear, except for the last one of the night ...

"You know," Liu Bei said, "When Lady Gan gave birth, she seemed to have more than a hundred times her regular unusual strength. Zhuge Liang, when Yue Ying gives birth, you better be careful! When Lady Gan was in labor ... well ... that's why I'm so virtuous. I don't want that to happen to anyone else again!" He shuddered.

"O yeah, that happened with my wife too," Zhang Fei noted. "Somehow she had made this scar on my face with her pinky, the skin, not the nail!"

Yue Ying looked over at Guan Yu. "How about you, Lord Guan? What did Lady Hu do to you when she was in labor?"

Guan Yu hesitated but then replied, "She pulled off half my beard just by looking at it! Now, you especially should be careful, Prime Minster!"

"That's right!" Zhuge Liang exclaimed, laughing. "When Yue Ying goes into labor, I would probably lose my head!"

The whole company included Yue Ying began laughing, but shortly after her face turned a pale white in an odd expression and she was frozen.

Zhuge Liang, who was next to her, was the first to notice this. "What's wrong?"

Lady Mi was the only one to recognize the face.

"I saw this on Lady Gan before," she said, fright on her tone.

And she finished, "Zhuge Liang? Prepare to lose your head."