A very pregnant coyote in work overalls is sitting at a too-small table in a quaint little cafe, an equally very pregnant purple-maned mare seated to her right. The mare’s left arm is palm-up on the table; the coyote is examining the arm’s finer details with an impressed, curious smile. “The way this is lookin’, you’re makin’ me want to chop off mine.” The mare laughs. “Trust me, Henrietta, you don’t.” The prosthetic left arm Chloe sports is her own creation: a perhaps-unhealthy mechanical fixation is a trait the two share. With said prosthetic arm’s hand, the horse picks up and sips her tea, looking out a large front window for a moment before looking back to Henrietta. The coyote is ogling the machinery as Chloe uses it. Chloe furrows her brow for a second, then waves her free, “real” hand in front of the yote. “Sorry,” the coyote blurts, blinking off her transfixed state. “You really should be proud of your work though.” “I am.” Chloe smirks a bit. “But to be honest…” She waves her artificial left arm in the air a bit, and her equally impressive imitation of a right leg under the table. “I was going to build these anyway, so these aren’t my proudest achievement.” The mare lowers her hands to her belly. “This one is.” Henrietta nods. She gets the feeling and mirrors the motion, both palms now feeling her pups move inside her. Chloe suddenly stares intently into space. “Speaking of…” Her hands disappear under the table. Henrietta is briefly lost. Her confusion is only increased by the mare alongside her grunting and suppressing a curse word or two as she struggles with something underneath the table’s dark wooden surface. The coyote would love to see what’s going on, but she is too pregnant to simply bend down. Eventually, though, she hears fabric [i]flump[/i] and settle against the tile floor, and she half-bends, half-leans over sideways to look to Chloe’s hooves as they step out of her skirt and panties. Henrietta straightens up. Between deep, belabored breaths, Chloe somehow manages to find the wherewithal to smirk in satisfaction as she pushes through a contraction. The coyote takes a moment to process this. “You too?” Chloe tries to chuckle, but laughing mid-push is a great way to hurt yourself, so she bites her lip until the impulse subsides. However, there’s still mirth in her voice once she finishes the contraction and catches up with herself. “Yeah, I’ve been in labor for a couple hours. Started [i]pushing[/i] the foal just now though. Which, about time!” And the mare launches into a monologue the coyote has heard a couple hundred times now. (Not that she minds hearing it again.) “It’s just… really cool, that there’s a part of me that… that makes more of us, you know, and I get to feel foals grow inside me while I take care of them, of myself, and…” She catches her breath, and her train of thought. It tends to run away from her while she’s monologuing. “And, I get to carry them around in this [i]big round belly[/i],” she cradles and squeezes the aforementioned belly in her arms for a moment, “and watch—and [i]feel![/i] as they grow inside me, and I’m all full of life and it’s great.” She sighs, wistfully, relaxing into her seat. And then, her wistful tone continuing, “At the end, right now, I’m giving birth to them, watching and feeling and sensing and giving one more bit of work, watching all these months’ effort come to completion before my eyes, and then this foal will be off to a loving family to raise them as their own.” “Mhm.” Henrietta smiles softly, both polite and genuine. “It’s, [i]sigh[/i], it’s so exciting, and I love doing it so much. It feels so good to do, you know?” “Mhm.” Then, realizing what she just said, the mare straightens up. “Not in that way, though.” “Not at all?” Henrietta raises a hand from her drink. Chloe honestly didn’t expect the yote to reply that way. The mare thinks about the question. “…Well, maybe a little.” “Same.” Henrietta shares a knowing, sly smile. Then the coyote leans back in her chair and starts to breathe the heavy, measured breaths the surrogates all learn and learn until they don’t have to think about it anymore. It’s her turn to push. It takes a moment, but Henrietta feels her first whelp of this litter work through her dilated cervix, then out through her, slowly, further with each contraction, each push. Eventually she feels herself crown, after all these months, her pup’s head pushing out from her body— —into her panties, into her overalls. Right. Overalls. That’s going to make things difficult. When she peels off her contraction, she can feel—with her hands—that there is a definite bulge in the thick khaki denim where her pup is trying to push out. She doesn’t like the tension. Nor can she imagine, at all, that it’s good for the pup, or the one behind. “Um…” Chloe has gotten herself comfortable, sitting astraddle the corner of her chair, rolling up her sweater to show her belly, admiring the sensation of giving birth. She looks up. “Hm?” “I’m, um.” Henrietta undoes first one shoulder strap, then another. “I’m going to need a bit of help getting out of these.” “Oh!” The mare looks a little flustered. “Uh, yeah, sure thing. Um.” She adjusts her weight, and then the table wobbles a little as she pushes herself up to something like a standing position. That done, she waddles, still leaning on the table, the three or so steps to the also-birthing coyote, and lowers herself to her knees beside Henrietta as the coyote puts her hands on the mare’s shoulders. It’s the coyote’s turn to try to stand. After a moment of grunting from the both of them, she succeeds and peels off her sleeves. Chloe undoes the button around the coyote’s tail, then helps pull down on the fabric, the better to shuck Henrietta from her denim shell. Eventually the overalls get pulled down around the width of her hips and most of it falls to the floor. Henrietta then shakes her foot for a moment to get the rest of it off her legs, then sits back down, piling it into a loose bundle with her feet. The coyote is still wearing her bra, of course, and her panties. The whelp pushing those outward makes them effectively pointless—indeed a distraction—so with an absent-minded finger, she pulls the fabric aside, finally giving her pup free air. Her nethers now freed to do their sacred work, she leans back with a contented sigh. She forgets how good this can feel. Chloe is so transfixed by the miracle of life occurring not fifty centimeters in front of her snout that she barely registers her own contraction, her foal’s ears popping out from her nether lips as shoulders press through cervix. She’s kneeling at a right angle to Henrietta’s seat, her arms already instinctively readying themselves to catch the pup pushing out in front of her. Without thinking, the mare uses a knee to gather the overalls under herself, breathing, and wincing, and… praying to no one in particular, as she and the coyote both push. Eventually, both mothers’ wombs take a break from squeezing out their charges. Henrietta, between panting breaths, speaks first. “Thanks. Needed that.” “Yeah,” Chloe answers, “don’t mention it.” The mare is still exhausted by… whatever this is, somewhere between a runner’s high, arousal, and deep personal fulfillment. She’s felt this before, but it’s so much more intense with a friend. After a second, her head clears, and she looks at her left arm. She’s gotten so used to it—she senses the world through it as much as through her arm of flesh and bone; that’s how it feels anyway—that she forgot that it’s mostly cupronickel with a thin rose-gold shell. That’s fine, for her, for the majority of things she touches. But the cold metal of a false hand shouldn’t be the first thing this pup feels from the outside world. The mare scans across the table, and sees—unsurprisingly, given the coyote’s fastidiousness—that Henrietta’s cloth napkin hasn’t been stained at all. “Can you hand me that?” “Yeah,” Henrietta answers, passing it over, “not a problem.” “Thanks.” Chloe puts the softer fabric over the metal of her hand, making a mental note to maybe design a glove. Then she looks up, making eye contact with Henrietta for a second. “This is much better with a friend, by the way.” “It really is,” Henrietta answers. The coyote takes a moment to look up from the mare birthing alongside her to the rest of the cafe’s patrons. A couple gawk; most have politely turned their seating away. (The only real exception is the hyena behind the counter, observing the proceedings with attention, but oddly not concern. Henrietta vaguely recalls seeing that she too was pregnant, if not quite as big as coyote and horse.) Henrietta turns to her friend. “You don’t mind us birthing… out here, in public?” she asks. “Oh no, not at all! This is a miracle to be shared, as far as I’m concerned. Speaking of, I’m [i]loving[/i] birthing with you,” Chloe says, perhaps too loud, definitely too breathy. Then, to clarify, “I would have enjoyed it alone, but it’s…” She sighs in contentment. “Sharing the experience makes it better, helping someone else along, you know?” “I know.” “We should do this again next time.” “No guarantees.” They share a chuckle at that last remark. Standard medical procedure for surrogacy in this future-become-present has a tendency to cause group labor—if you’re due, birthing is almost as contagious as yawning is, and in the same way—but you pop when you pop, as the surries are fond of repeating to one another. That said, the dice can be stacked: get implanted at the same time; socialize with one another a lot. So while yes, there are no sure things, they’re definitely going to try. That said, the only time they’re in right now is the present. And in the present, a coyote is sitting spread open wide, a horse with two metallic limbs kneeling next to her. The coyote is wearing naught but her undergarments; the horse is bottomless. Each enjoys the other’s presence. And each is [i]thoroughly[/i] enjoying blooming with the next generation, pushing in total two pups and a foal out into the world.