exactlyjaneporter:

nowehavebarelybegun:

exactlyjaneporter:

[MAAAAAAAYBE]

Jane looked sharply at Zira, having expected some solidarity.  She’d never even known that Zira was a mother.  In fact, out of all of the women (or lionesses) Jane knew, she would have least expected Zira to be the maternal sort.  Helga, as well.  And Meg - but then again, not only was Meg apparently the motherly sort, she was four months pregnant.  Jane shook her head, clearing it of such irrelevancies.  ”What’s it like?” she couldn’t help asking.  ”Being a mother?  Having children?”

((There is no maybe about it!))

Zira watched Jane closely, her ears flicking every now and then and her tail swishing the dust on the ground, “It’s an experience…” The lioness chuckled, “I was a fool in a way though, Jane. I did not value my children until it was too late…”

Jane opened her mouth to ask what Zira meant, but was almost certain Zira didn’t wish to go into detail.  Then she assumed Zira had lost her children and opened her mouth to offer condolences, but Jane might be wrong and, anyways, she knew for certain that Zira would not accept pity.  She traced random designs in the dust with her finger.  

“I’ve never particularly cared for children,” she mumbled, leaning her cheek against her knee.  ”Perhaps because I am an only child.  Perhaps because I was briefly a governess and the children were little beasts.  Perhaps because I have hardly ever known a mother’s touch and I don’t know how to bestow it in my turn.  But since I was married…” Jane didn’t know why she was telling Zira all of this, but she knew somehow that she could tell nobody else.  

“The concept - of a child that is somehow myself and John, combined - is…overwhelming to me.  But in a better way than before.  Still,” Jane sat up straight and dusted her hands off on her skirt.  ”I wouldn’t know how to be a mother, anyway.  And John feels the same way I did - DO! - about children.  He’d find it absolutely inevitable if I told him the way I feel.  ’How like a woman,’ and so on.  I’d never hear the end of it.”  Jane managed a weak smile.  ”I’m making it sound like a competition.  Who doesn’t want a baby?”  They never had.  Not even at the beginning.  Their relationship had begun, defined by that fact.  Jane sighed, and wasn’t sure why she had sighed.

[HELP.  I WAS READING TARZAN FANFICTION INVOLVING BABIES AND I ACCIDENTALLY ALL OF THIS.]

(and Zira is just like… Welp… this is awkward…)

Zira listened to Jane, nodding slowly as the womans words sunk in, “A child is a permanent thing. Not something to be bought into the world on a whim…” The lioness frowned and tilted her head, “You humans are so strange…”