Lisette, Priestess Of Spring Pregnancy <95% UPDATED>

“Priestess,” whispered the baker’s wife, kneeling. “My hens have stopped laying.”

By dawn, her belly would be flat again. She would rise, thin and shivering, and the village would hand her a bowl of lamb’s broth. They would not speak of what had passed. But the plum trees would burst into flower by noon.

For a moment, nothing. Then the woman gasped. A ripple of warmth traveled up her arms, and behind her ribs, something small and fierce—a promise—began to beat. lisette, priestess of spring pregnancy

Outside, the first crack appeared in the river’s ice. And somewhere deep beneath the frost, a seed remembered how to break.

Lisette smiled. She lifted her woolen tunic just enough to reveal the pale skin of her stomach, where a faint green-gold light pulsed beneath the surface, like sunlight through new leaves. She took the woman’s cold hands and pressed them to her belly. “Priestess,” whispered the baker’s wife, kneeling

That night, alone in the stone sanctuary that smelled of damp earth and last year’s hay, Lisette felt the gerbre weaken. This was the sorrow and the honor of her calling. Each spring, she grew heavy with life; each equinox, she labored not to birth a child, but to return the season to the ground. She would lie in the furrow of the first plowed field, and as the rain soaked her dress, the green warmth inside her would unravel into the roots of every sleeping thing.

“Tomorrow,” Lisette said softly, “you will find eggs.” They would not speak of what had passed

“Soon,” she whispered to the spring inside her. “You will wake them all.”