How Green Becomes Wood

"Right, smudges," Daizi agreed, nodding, "I always forget about smudges. It's a wonder Dark hasn't divorced me yet." She took her cane, and lightly found the bottom of the mirror, and tapped it there. She was gentler than many of the children who came in would be, so the mirrors would be perfectly fine.

The held the cane on an angle in her right hand, and began just slowly sweeping it along the bottom of the mirrors, "Don't run ahead," she advised them, "This is more or less how I navigate everything, I'll find the way out."
 
"I bet whoever designed this maze did not anticipate people like us who have a secret weapon!" Alec grinned.

"As long as no one is dumb enough to bring in a laser pointer, we should be good," Xander commented. He stuck close behind Daizi, not quite touching her, but letting her know that he was following her.

"This is kind of fun, if really trippy and unnerving," Alec commented, looking around. "It's a bit like if you had to figure out which of the mugs of coffee was the real mug before you poured it, I guess."

Xander glanced at him. "You will never give up on trying to find comparisons, will you?"

"Nope! Never!"
 
"Sometimes they're helpful," Daizi chuckled, "but I'm not sure that one was, since I think the point of the mirror maze is to figure out the right way without touching anything, and..." She shrugged, "From what I understand about mirrors, it's more like if there were echoes of my voice and I needed to find where it was muted."

Then she turned slightly towards Xander, still keeping her cane to the wall, "If someone brings in a laser pointer, close your eyes. Alec can hold onto me, and you can hold onto him, and I'll still be able to get you out. I'm also immune to laser pointers."

She frowned as she felt them turn a corner, then again, and again, "The problem with this system is it means you're bound to walk along the walls of dead ends. But you don't lose yourself. This is how firefighters navigate burning buildings."
 
"Oh, yes, the echo makes much more sense in this context," Alec murmured thoughtfully. "I'm sure no one will actually bring one in. Who carries laser pointers with them to a museum exhibit?"

"Teachers, cat enthusiasts, and maybe motivational speakers," Xander commented, shuffling awkwardly to navigate the dead end.
 
"I'm not sure anyone in those categories would use it in a place like this though," Daizi said, "except maybe Cat Enthusiasts. Cooger seems like the type to make that mistake."

Finally, Daizi found the exit of the maze, only realizing she had when suddenly the wall just ended, and surprised by it, she, tentatively, moved her cane about her in a circle, only to find empty space, "There!" She cheered, "We made it! Are you both still with me?"
 
"Nope, the mirrors ate us," Xander said from behind her.

"That was amazing!" Alec cheered, half hugging Daizi's arm in excitement. "We would still be lost at the beginning to the maze if not for you! That was absolutely brilliant."

Xander stepped away, already distracted by something else. "It looks like the senses exhibition thingy is over, but there's another one here. It looks smaller."

Alec hurried over to join Xander in looking at the flyer. "Huh. It, uh, it looks interesting," he remarked. "Unless you want to go back through the senses place again or through an emergency exit, it looks like the easiest way is through... this one."

Xander turned around. "Right. Back through the maze it is!"
 
Daizi smiled and pressed against Alec, since she couldn't exactly hug him in that moment, "I'm pretty used to navigating weird spaces without being able to trust my eyes. But I'm glad you found it impressive, I'm sure you eventually would have found your way out. Eventually. Or not---maybe you'd have ended up trapped in the mirrors or, like a good fictional friend of mine did, went straight through the looking glass."

Then, when they read about what was next, "What is it?" Daizi asked, coming back up to them after they had hurried off to find what else was out there in the world, "I can't read the map, remember? Why do you want to go back through the maze?"
 
"Make Room for the Baby: The Experience of You!" Alec read to her. "It's all about, well, Xander's most favorite topic in the entire world." He opened the flyer to find the self-guided tour map. "Oh, in 3-D models and technicolor! There's more about what it is to be a person and stuff like that, but the baby bit is very well advertised."

"Yeah, but it's not designed for blind people, which means certain of our group won't enjoy it, so, oh well, maybe another day," Xander chirped, trying to figure out how to find his way back into the maze. The door had closed behind them, indicating it was a one-way experience.
 
"I see," Daizi said very slowly, before making a face at what she had said, "No I don't. But..." She shifted, not wanting to torture her son, but also not knowing if there was another option, "Is there another path we can take? Or is it the only option? If not," she turned towards him, "You can always just close your eyes? Like we talked about with the lasers? You wouldn't have to see it, then."
 
"I wonder if you get fined if you run out through the emergency doors and set off the alarms," Xander mused.

Alec groaned and grabbed his arm, taking Daizi's much more gently. "Come on, mister scaredy cat! Just hold on and close your eyes. You'll be fine! It won't be too bad. Right? Just one step at a time. It's this way."

"I never should have gotten out of bed this morning," Xander grumbled, letting Alec pull him gently along toward the start of the exhibit only a few steps away.
 
"At least for you it's only a few minutes," Daizi chuckled, knowing the joke was probably a bit in poor taste, but she couldn't resit. For her 'make room for baby' was every second of every day for nine months, "And it's okay if you just rush through it to the next room, you don't have to linger to look at everything, alright? I'd wait with you, since I, I'm rather familiar with the information in that room, but I'm afraid we'd lose your brother if I did."

The room itself was a bright white, not like a warm, cozy, motherly environment, but more clinical, to focus more on the science of it all rather than the emotion. In the center was an interactive display to see how the pregnant person's organs moved to accommodate the growing uterus and fetus, and off to the side, in a more somber, seperate atmosphere, were specimens of different phases of prenatal development, but many people didn't seem to notice it was there, since it was so off to the side and dimly lit.
 
"I'll stick with you, I guess. People tend to get nervous when they see a lone teen male wandering around anywhere where there's expensive stuff," Xander muttered, remembering past experiences. "Besides, Alec might get you both lost in here. I'll just, you know, keep my eyes closed and stuff."

"Don't worry. I'll tell you when it's safe to look, and I'll keep you from running into anything," Alec assured him.

They both fell silent as they started to walk through the exhibit. Despite Xander's statement that he was going to keep his eyes closed, he couldn't help peeking, and soon both twins were staring in absolute horror at the interactive display. Alec managed to squeak out to Daizi what it was, but nothing more than that. It might have just been the lighting, but Xander looked distinctly green. They moved slowly toward the side area, but Alec stopped them at the last second.

"Wait. We don't want to go this way," he said soberly. "We should turn a bit to the left and go straight." If those specimens were real - which he was fairly certain they were - then he could guess where they'd gotten them, and Daizi did not need to walk down that road.
 
She did her absolute best, but could manage to resist laughing at their horror. She had said from the very beginning pregnancy was horrifying, and their reaction made her glad, in a weird way, that they finally were able to see what she was going through, and what their mother had gone through, and what the origins of every person they had ever met was, "See, I told you. And that's why it's only right that I can be as cranky as I'd like. My organs are all mushed around." Daizi rested a light, loving hand on her belly, the trade off feeling very worth it.

When Alec stopped them, though, she paused, confused since she couldn't see where they were headed, and asked, "Why not? What's there?" His tone suggested to her he was to be believed, but it surprised her.
 
"Please don't say mushed," Xander whispered shakily, closing his eyes. He didn't pay attention when Alec told them to turn, doing as told but not knowing or caring why.

"It's just... a bunch of reading and stuff, and I don't think they have the read-aloud stands," Alec told her. "It's probably the most boring corner of the entire exhibit. Just ahead, there's a simulation for how a birth is supposed to go! It's just outlines and stuff, not real people."
 
"I'm sorry," Daizi murmured. She had known for a long time about how pregnancy bothered him, but hearing how woozy he was from spending some time at the exhibit concerned her, and she had no idea what to do about it, or if there could be any sort of intervention. And she could also tell Alec was lying to her, but she guessed whatever was actually in that room was bad indeed, so she didn't question it, as curious as she was, "We can, if there's no way to avoid it. I don't want to torture your brother, and you also seemed pretty horrified. I think that sort of education is important, but maybe it's not the best idea to get it all at once."

Picking at her clothes had become a habit when she was uncomfortable, because since her body was different, and her clothes fit differently, it seemed really obvious when she felt awkward or embarrassed or, currently, guilty. More specifically, guilty about how Xander's extreme discomfort with pregnancy managed to make her feel so insecure, like she needed to apologize for existing-while-pregnant around him, and she knew so deeply it was illogical, and that Xander's feelings were not targeted at her specifically (and even if they were, the opinion of a fifteen year old boy was irrelevant), but even though she knew perfectly well it shouldn't bother her, it did.

And Daizi also did just want to protect him and not make his day terrible, so she smiled and shrugged her shoulders and said, "I wouldn't be depressed to miss that part of the exhibit, I think I'll learn a thing or two about it regardless. So unless you both are aching, or if there isn't a way to avoid it, there's no harm in going somewhere else. There's still the bed of nails!"
 
"No, no, it's fine!" Aec assured her cheerfully, leading the way. "It can't possibly be as bad as some of the stuff we've seen! Why, this one time, we- Oh, great merciful carbonara with bread sticks, that has to fit out of that with that difference in size?!?" Alec gaped at the simulation, which also had a graph off to one size that showed the size of the baby's head in comparison to where it came out.

Xander stared as well, suddenly very pale, his mouth open. "It can't possibly," he whispered in a strained voice. "Even squishy, it can't. How could it possibly? No."

Both of them turned to stare up at Daizi, twin expressions of abject horror on their faces. One of the museum workers was standing off to the side, keeping an eye on the guests to make sure no one tried to do anything fishy, and they were grinning openly at the twins' expressionsas they involuntarily drew a step away from Daizi.
 
"Well how do you think it works?" Daizi asked with a cackle, "the baby needs to come out somehow. Although your mom probably had a c-section, but that's just another horror. But really it, you know, it stretches. That's what most of labour is, before the baby comes out the opening gets bigger," She held up her hands to be roughly the 10 centimeter diameter and muscled down her own apprehension. They got to be horrified by the process. She had to go through it, and be the one whose body would stretch to the size she was indicating. And even though she was acting calm, and knew it was natural, and had done it once before (although giving birth at 20 weeks is not the same as giving birth ro a full term baby, just because of the difference in size), the little thought of what was to come was still... Disconcerting, "And then the bones in the baby's skull aren't fully fused, so the head squishes a bit. Most of labour is just waiting to be dilated enough to push. And then you have, like, a month of recovery. At least."
 
The twin's heads swung to look from Daizi to the display, to Daizi again, and back to the display.

"It's not possible," Alec said flatly, denying the proof in front of his eyes as, inwardly, his brain was running in circles screaming frantically at the thought of the discomfort and pain a person had to go through to achieve birth. "Nope, not possible."

"Babies just poof into being smelling of rainbows and unicorn poo," Xander said in a distant voice.

Alec nodded. "Exactly. Rainbows and unicorn poo. The rest of this is just... is just..."

"SIlly nonsense," Xander supplied.

Neither seemed capable of pulling themselves away as the simulation started again. Both looked more than a little pale, and Xander seemed ready to pass out.
 
"Now do you understand why I want to do it at home?" She asked, still chuckling to herself, "If it's such a painful and arduous process, shouldn't I get to be somewhere I feel comfortable and safe? Believe me, I wish she could just poof into existence. It would save me a lot of trouble." She considered sharing what little she recalled of her experience giving birth to her son (much of it had been blocked out of recollection), but figured it'd only make it worse, "Come on, my dears, I'm sure you'll learn much more about it at the end of November. Let the unseen days be, and be grateful you'll never have to experience it first hand."
 
That last bit sent a shudder through them both, and Xander nearly lost it right there. They clutched each other's hands and scurried like mice away from the display. Neither of them ever, ever wanted to see that ever again, and neither of them ever wanted to be the cause of that ever again. Now knowing exactly what was in store for women, it was amazing the human species hadn't gone extinct long ago.

They didn't say anything as they walked out of the exhibit, not sure what to say or where to go. There was more to see, but they were both a bit shell-shocked and not thinking at the moment.
 
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