The Name Game Alicia glared at the mountain which had taken the place of her abdomen and put down her pen before one of her sons could make her arm flinch back again and damage the parchment she was writing on any further.
“Sit still,” she ordered the unruly one. “It might be your name I’m trying to sort out.”
Predictably, the brat ignored her.
The major discussion on names had been straightforward enough. Alicia had entered the conversation with the names Thaddeus III and Thesius Alexander in mind. Thad had wanted nothing to do with the former, but had been agreeable to rearranging the other. Alexander Thesius had sounded slightly out of order to her at first, but she had gotten used to it and so Carus had a real name. This just left the other one to settle on.
Alexander was a grand name, a name with aspirations, but Alicia found herself reluctant to treat their secondborn-to-be purely as an extra with no purpose but to support and potentially someday, in case of disaster, replace his brother. Both boys, so far as she could tell, seemed to have a fair bit of energy – in her loopier moments, she even suspected them of possessing something like proto-personalities that could be distinguished – and of course both would have their genes. It would be foolish not to set high expectations for the second son as well as the first, because if they did not point in him a different direction, he might just decide to kill his brother and that would be unpleasant for everyone involved. She had not mentioned that she had started thinking of their sons as people to Thad, afraid he’d laugh at her for disintegrating into unbecoming womanish irrationality, but had explained her theory that they needed to set a clear path for this son as well, preferably one slightly different from the one they had in mind for Alexander. The best option was for him to become a great scholar, or even two great scholars, so a list had been compiled and now just needed two components put together in a harmonious way.
Ignatius had appealed to her early on, and the first idea for that son had been Ignatius Nicholas, the second for the alchemist. Unfortunately, the two names rhymed. They had gone through their respective books and come up with Tycho and Jerome as alternatives. Thad had then come across Tavarius somewhere, the name of the old Arithmancer at Sonora, and now Alicia was lying on her rest-chair by the library windows and writing different combinations on parchment.
Ignatius Nicholas Pierce, Nicholas Ignatius Pierce, Ignatius Tycho Pierce, Tycho Ignatius Pierce, Ignatius Jerome Pierce, Tavarius Tycho, Tavarius Jerome, Tavarius Nicholas, Nicholas Tycho
To add to it, one had to think how the name would sound being called after Alexander’s – the children being the same age meant that they would almost certainly be gathered up collectively at least as often as not. It was giving her a headache and so she called for some jasmine tea. Some sources had suggested she forsake this, but she had considered that she had been drinking just as she pleased before she realized she was pregnant and then for a few days while concealing the fact she was pregnant and that nothing seemed to have gone amiss, but that her nerves might go very, very much amiss if she was cut off from her favorite beverage altogether. She’d lowered her consumption a bit, but not ended it.
Another month or so, she thought grimly as she sipped it. Then there would be a whole new set of problems, but at least figuring out how words sounded together and people telling her not to walk too much would no longer be among them. Just another month or so. She could survive a month of anything. Cheered, she looked at her abdomen again.
“There,” she said. “You two take some of the l-theanine and calm down so I can name one of you. Be nice brothers.” And then she picked up her quill again.