Using
\n\t\t\t\t\tmalga 's icon base found here.========================
The intercom clicked again as the signal passed through the fourth relay on its way to her home planet, and Singularity shifted in her seat. Her hands rested on her distended belly, unhindered by her shirt, which had crept up to just below her breast hours ago.
It was really too small an item of clothing to be wearing in her condition. She only wore it as a bra substitute, what with her breasts having grown a cupsize or two since she fell pregnant.
Another click sounded through the room, but it was quickly followed by the voice of an operator;
"You have reached Esparxia Central, how may I direct your call?"
"Princess Singularity speaking. Verification Alpha-Iota-Omega-Delta-Six-Five-Niner. Connect me to the royal palace please," she spoke in the direction of the microphone.
"..five, niner," the operator recounted to herself. "Your identity has been verified, ma'am. Please hold."
Singularity smiled weakly as the operator's voice gave way to the lyrical sounds of an ancient folk song, used as a waiting tune. The words had been long lost, the tune dating back from far before the unification. Far before she left her home planet.
She winced as she felt a rough kick given in a sensitive spot, and she reached for the volume slider to turn the sound down.
"Yes, damn you too," she bit to the child in her stomach, her ears perking up as she turned the volume down enough so her passenger would not feel disturbed by it. "I happen to like the song. I'll be sure to play it at your going-away party."
Her bowels gurgled as they recovered from the kicking, but there was no other response.
"Larity! How are you faring, dearest sister?" came the sound of her older brother, and she quickly turned the volume back up again.
"Not too well, Rey," she responded to the query. "Is mother available?"
"Just sat down with some dignitaries, actually. I'm afraid it's going to take all day before she's done, you know how they are."
Singularity snorted at that. "Great, just when I needed some motherly advice..."
"What about? I may be able to help?" Lamprey, as was the prince's full name, offered in a worried tone.
"It's about pregnancy, Rey," Singularity cut to the chase. "I doubt you're the one I need to help me with that."
There was a moment of silence, then an awkward chuckle. "So who's the lucky bastard, sis?"
With her cheeks reddening and her embarrassment clear in her voice, she called out "Damnit, Rey! I would have expected mother to marry me off to some guy I never met, but you?"
"I'm sorry, Larity hun. I just mean that to become pregnant, you know... the birds and the betes and all that."
"Nothing like that happened! I swear," Singularity was quick to deflect, her shrill voice causing her belly's occupant to move again. "Erf... look, I ate something that I forgot to check for parasites the other day, and now I look and feel like I'm ten months pregnant, if not eleven. I swear I could pop any moment!"
An unnatural silence fell on the line, but Singularity could just see the reaction her brother would have given to this news in her mind's eye, even with him being some five galaxies away from her.
She silently counted the seconds until Lamprey's brain would catch up to the facts and he was capable of speech again, stopping as she heard him scrape his throat.
"Fifteen."
"I... er... what?" came the confused reply from the other end.
"Took you fifteen seconds to figure that one out, brother," she remarked with a chuckle, trying to get the mood back up. "You're getting slow."
"I'd show you slow if you were here," Rey responded with an amused tone. "You must look like a ripe pumpkin right now. I doubt you'd be able to waddle away from me."
"Yeah, I have been waddling like a penguin, that's true," she agreed. "Whatever's in my belly does not like it when I turn the gravity lower than point eight times that of our planet. I have it at point seven-niner now, and it was fussy about that earlier."
"I'd pay to see that," her brother chuckled, but then took to a more serious note. "So what was your question, sis?"
"I honestly doubt you could answer me," she hesitated.
"Try me," Rey returned. "If I don't know I'll ask mother to get back to you once she's done with her meeting."
"Well," Singularity started, fidgeting a bit in her chair, "how in the blazing fires of the Steep Divides do I tie my shoelaces like this?"
There was a thud at the other end of the line, as her brother Lamprey fell over, and Singularity looked down at her belly in embarrassment. Whatever was in there, however long it needed to gestate, whatever discomforts it brought her... some part of her was kind of fine with it. At peace with it. If only for those damn shoelaces...