Evangeline Anastasia McDowell

[Bazza]

Entry#: 128
Date: 01 - 01 - 819 AS @ 20:35 SUT
Title: Untitled.

It is truly amazing what can happen within the space of a week. It is equally amazing how little of the last week I can properly recall.

I find myself once again using my diary not to record events as such, but to put thoughts into order. Read back my own deliberations and ponder them.

First and foremost, my extended stomach has disappeared and, in its place, rests now a sleeping baby. Six days old, born on the 27th of December at about ten to five in the evening. A healthy 3.6 kilograms and a bastion of health. Or so I've been told.

I don't actually remember most of it. I recall when Elisa came out, I don't think it's even possible to forget the hellish agony of that moment. If you had told me the human female was designed to accomodate something that size I would have laughed at you and called you a dim-witted clot. I now understand.

After that I vaguely remember her crying, and then an image of her on my chest, with me breast feeding her. That's about it.

Misaka tells me that Gunther did in fact make his appearance at the event, but I honestly can't remember. Fractured glimpses of him pop in and out of my head... the entire ordeal is a blur. Apparently I was suffering from exhaustion; passed out shortly after the fact and didn't wake up for an entire day.

Of course he was gone by then, in his place standing Misaka and the rest of the girls, all crowded around my hospital bed waiting for their boss to wake up. Little Elisa taking pride of place within her "second" mother's loving embrace.

Adding more fuel to the fires of confusion is the fact I somehow ended up in Rheinland again. Planet Berlin, of all places.

And then there was the Maelstrom, in a million pieces, clamped to the orbital mooring fixture of the planet. I asked Misaka to explain to me exactly why my cruiser was in such a state, but she refused to tell me - instead closing my lips with a finger and then sealing them with a kiss, the likeness thereof I haven't felt since after the last time we fought...

Much like with Gunther, I can pick out little bits of the past week involving her. I think we did indeed have a fight about something, but the rest... will have to wait until she feels like telling me.

I am still somewhat weak and lethargic, not that it is unexpected having just recently given birth. Just sitting here with the laptop positioned where Elisa used to live is draining. Even for a normal woman it is a strenuous exercise, then there is the fact I have much lower strength than others like me thanks to my weightless environment on top of that.

Which reminds me. I am not going to raise a baby in an environment without gravity. It ruins adults and would be catastrophic for a growing infant's health. I will be promptly installing a gravity generator aboard the ship. My own preference for ease of mobility takes a rapid back seat when compared to the well being of a child.

I am led to believe, by the passing scenery outside, that the Alsatia is moving through New Berlin. I have also been informed that the cruiser is under tow behind us, the same system we used the first time around making a reappearance.

I think - I hope - we're going somewhere quiet. I really need some time to recuperate... and to get rid of this sickening loneliness.

I shouldn't feel like this, right? This can't be how normal mothers feel.

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