Cecilia discovered short-form content once more. But this ti, it was through her own phone.
The device had beco an extension of her hand. How could it not? It was like a portal to a world of infinite information that she was only beginning to explore.
She had started, sensibly enough, with research about human female pregnancy experiences carrying a beast’s baby. The dical terminology was still unfamiliar, the abbreviations still confusing, but she was learning.
She read about calcium supplents and prenatal vitamins and the strange cravings that ca with carrying a child that was not human.
Then she fell into a rabbit hole.
It started with a recomnded video of a woman with an enormous pregnant belly, laughing as she recounted the ti she had cried because her husband had eaten the last pickle.
Then another video, a mother of twins describing the horror of morning sickness that lasted all day.
Then another. And another.
Pregnancy jokes, pregnancy horror stories, pregnancy vlogs that docunted every week, every symptom, every strange and terrifying change in the human body as it grew a new life.
Of course she filed everything in her brain. Again, how could she not?
She didn’t only search for pregnancy for lizard species, though she did that too, bookmarking articles about oviparous gestation and calcium deposition and the strange process by which a reptilian egg would grow inside a human womb.
Next, she searched for pregnancy for lions and for wolves. For any beast species whose reproductive biology might be relevant to the three n who had fathered the child inside her, even if only one of them had actually fertilized the egg.
After the steakhouse, Oathran had brought her to the dragon doctor. And guess who she had t?
Lazuardi.
Yes. In this universe, too, it seed, he was one of Oathran’s closest people. Or at least one of the first people Oathran contacted when he needed help. The dragon doctor had taken one look at Oathran, one look at Cecilia, and had promptly lost his composure entirely.
"YOU GOT A HUMAN WOMAN PREGNANT?! WHUH?!"
Was his general reaction.
All that, before calming down enough to give her notes and advice and supplents. Calcium, iron, prenatal vitamins designed specifically for interspecies pregnancies...
The list of warning signs to watch for went on and on, and a very stern lecture directed at Oathran about the importance of prenatal care and stress reduction.
But Cecilia felt that her eting with Lazuardi was not enough. She wanted deeper research. Her own research. Hence falling into the rabbit hole of short-form content.
But the algorithm, apparently, was not content to let her stay on topic forever.
The short-form videos had started to recomnd her other things.
Couple accounts. Beautiful influencers with handso boyfriends, posing in matching outfits and kissing in scenic locations... Famous actors with model girlfriends, their red carpet photos flashing across the screen... Singers with their scandals... Dancers with their dramatic relationship reveals...
Even ordinary people who had beco famous simply by sharing their lives with the world.
Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating.
She finally caught up to trends and learned what "viral" ant. Not just the technical definition, but apparently the way a video could spread from phone to phone, from account to account, until millions of people had seen your face and heard your voice and ford opinions about your life.
Apparently, fa in this world was not rely about power or wealth or noble blood, it was all about attention. It was about capturing the collective consciousness of the internet and holding it, even for a mont.
Slowly, she understood.
One of her tasks was to get viral on the internet. And that ant she needed to be famous.
Like the influencers and the actors and the singers with their scandals. She needed to make the world look at her.
Alright. Alright. Put that aside for now.
Cecilia still needed to find out a lot of things about herself in this world. For example—and most importantly—
How did AU!Cecilia et the three n?
She didn’t have AU!Cecilia’s mories. But she had a feeling that she had known the three n before what happened a month and a half ago.
Yes, before the club. Also before the orgy. Before the signed divorce papers, because Oathran told her he knew she had been sitting on it for months.
What kind of relationship did they have? How close were they? What prompted the eting at the club? The orgy?
And why... how did the three of them simply accept her like that, opening their ho and their lives to her, soone who could be called a stranger to them?
In hindsight, it must have been strange too. A newly divorced woman, fresh from a billionaire’s marriage, imdiately trusting the three n she had slept with to house her at their place.
Of course, it was not strange for her. She trusted them with her life in any universe, thanks to the fact that she had married them in the real world. But in this universe, she was the wife of a billionaire. And, well, a normal astrophysicist.
How could she trust a burger-flipper, a plumber, and a welder in a club? What did she see in them?
What if their relationship was shallow, a single night of reckless passion, nothing more? What if she was being completely shaless, intruding on their space with too much audacity?
No. She was sure she was not.
Cecilia would not cheat. She would never even think of cheating when she was still emotionally attached to her husband. Especially because she knew that this version of her had also loved Arzhen like she had in the real world.
AU!Cecilia had signed the divorce papers, but she had not signed them lightly. To the three n, she mustn’t be a cheap—
Well. Being seen as cheap and easy aside... she was being cheap and easy toward her own real-life husbands. So that was fine, right?
But how could she get that information? How to find out how she t them?
She couldn’t ask them directly, right? Not without revealing that she didn’t rember.
"Hmmm..." Cecilia humd, her phone forgotten in her lap, her eyes fixed on the ceiling of the guest room. "Should I fake a momnesia...?"
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