“I don't know,” Philotes echoed. Honestly until this moment she'd never really considered having her own, because it had never struck her that she was missing out on anything. But it was impossible to ignore that one of the essential parts of being a mother was something she'd never experienced, when her best friend was standing there holding onto her tummy. Did she want to have babies? Did she need the physical experience of it to feel satisfied? She loved her “children,” as she'd told Harmonia. Would her heart be any more full if they had been nurtured inside her own womb?
It was something to ponder.
“But you already know I'm going to spoil him rotten,” she informed her friend. “I'm going to spoil all of them.” Because there was little doubt there would be others. An heir and a spare was the usual set up, more if one of those were a daughter. “I'm going to bring them all kinds of toys and games and clothes and pretty things. I'm going to teach them to jump in mud puddles and dance in the rain, I'm going to feed them honeyed figs and candied lemon peels, I'm going to teach them silly poems and tell them the best stories. All of that and more. And you already knew that anyway.”
Then she put her hand over Harmonia's where it rested on her belly. “I don't know who told you that you weren't a good queen, or who suggested you weren't a good wife, but I'm going to talk to some of my siblings and have whoever it was set straight. Because here's the thing, Harm: you're a good person. All that other stuff? Queen, wife, mother, daughter, sister friend... all of that? Comes from you being you. And if you're a good person, you're a good everything else. So I don't think you're going to be a good mom. I know you're going to be a great mom. You can learn what you need to learn to take care of the baby, but you're already a great mother. You'll see.”