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Sophie wasn't like her youngest sister, wanting ten children as soon as possible, but she did like the idea of being a mother, now that she was settled in as Mrs. Howl Pendragon. (Or Mrs. Howell Jenkins, or whatever other name her husband was going by at the moment.) Her husband wasn't the most fatherly of figures, by most people's standards, but Sophie had seen him with his niece and nephew on occasion, and when the topic had been briefly brought up in passing, he hadn't been against the idea. When the time came, she thought they'd be quite happy to raise a child together. She just hadn't expected it to happen in quite this fashion.
When Sophie had made an off-handed comment about Howl being as emotional as a pregnant woman on a day when he was in fine form, she'd forgotten it nearly as quickly as she'd said it. Perhaps by that point she should have been more aware of the way in which her magic liked to reinforce her words, but in her defense, who could have imagined what would come from this? Even Howl hadn't realized what was happening at first, which was why it caught both of them off guard when he finally did get around to realizing.
"This is your fault!" Howl accused as he burst into tears.
"Well," Sophie said evenly. "That may be so. But if I was the one who was pregnant, wouldn't it be your fault? That's the general way of pregnancies between couples, even if ours is a tad irregular."
"'A tad irregular,' she says," Howl repeated. "A tad irregular!"
He was obviously working himself up a great deal. This was worse than the time she'd accidentally caused him to dye his hair the wrong color and he'd acted like it was the end of the world, or the time when she'd ruined a favorite coat of his, or the time... Well, at least there was a lack of slime involved, at present. If she was fortunate, it would stay that way.
Still, she couldn't deny that he had a right to his dramatics in this particular situation. If she had found herself pregnant, mind you, it would likely have taken her a few moments to get used to the idea, and she'd been aware since she was a child that she would likely become a mother one day. Of course, that had been predicated on the idea of her finding a husband at some point, which she'd come to doubt during her teenage years, but having a baby was just one of the parts of life that people expected of you, even if her life had turned out nothing like she or anyone else could have expected.
"None of my clothes will fit me anymore!" Howl was wailing, and, yes, he was probably right about that.
"I can alter them for you or sew you new ones," Sophie assured him. "And I think your jackets at least should still fit; you don't like to fasten them most of the time anyway."
"I'm going to get fat!" he whined. Privately, Sophie thought that a little more meat on his bones surely wouldn't hurt him, especially if he was going to be eating for two now.
"Couldn't you use an illusion spell if you didn't want to look pregnant?" Sophie asked. After all, if magic could make her sisters switch appearances, couldn't it manage something like this?
"I don't know! My master didn't exactly focus on what spells were safe to be used when you're pregnant, since neither of us had any idea that I'd end up in this situation."
"Lettie could find out for us," Sophie suggested. They'd have to tell her family at some point, after all. About the baby at least.
They'd have to make sure the moving castle was made as safe for a baby as possible, which would be an incredible task. It wasn't as bad as it had been when she'd arrived, but there was something wild, still, about the castle and its contents, even if it was now wild and clean, courtesy of its self appointed cleaning lady turned mistress.
And in a few months, after all of this, they would have a baby, a part of the both of them to love together.
"Howl," she said suddenly, urgently. "We're going to be parents."
He stopped mid complaint and blinked at her, then grinned and swept her up and spun her around in a hug. When he lowered her down again, he leaned in and pecked her lips.
"Parents," he repeated. "A baby! Imagine that."
Later, lying in bed for the night, Howl brought up the topic again. They'd never quite dropped it entirely, as big of news as it was.
"I think I'd like to see Megan," he said quietly. "I don't know how she'd react to the idea of me being pregnant, and she'll definitely lecture me about having a baby when I don't have a respectable job, but if we don't wait too long, couldn't we just tell her that you were the pregnant one? She'll have my head if we show up with a baby out of no where."
Sophie hummed in agreement. "And she'd surely understand a reluctance to travel in the advanced stages of pregnancy, so it wouldn't be suspicious if we didn't see each other in the months leading up to the birth." And then a thought occurred to her. She sat upright in bed. "Howl. Howl, how are you going to have this baby?" She'd never heard, after all, of a man having his wife's baby before, and what she did know of childbearing didn't quite seem like it applied.
He laughed at her, pulling her back down to rest her head on his chest. "We'll figure it out," he said. "We've got a few months, at least, before we'll need to know. My Sophie has given me a puzzle to figure out, hmm?"
She sighed, but her mouth stretched into a smile. "Our baby isn't a puzzle, Howl."
"I think Puzzle makes a fine name for a little boy!" he said, and she was only half certain that he was joking.
"We'll have to discuss names at a later time," she replied, rather than taking the bait.
And eventually they would settle on a name they both loved: 'Morgan' was a far better fit for their son than Puzzle would have been, no matter what Howl said about it.