(44 years before the universe dies)

“There you go, sweetheart.” I put her cup in front of her on the coffee table and sat myself next to her.

“Thanks, hun.” She smiled at me brighter than our white dwarf, before completely ignoring the cup and leaning against me, softly. Her hand was looking for mine.

I closed my eyes. This was living, truly. Tranquility lay over me like the soft blanket over her, and a comforting silence struck the room. Just the faint voices on the television were there, but I doubt either of us still paid attention to them. I surely wasn’t.

“If you listen closely…” she whispered to me. “…you can hear her little heart beat.”

I couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah,” I whispered back at her. “I can hear it… It’s…”

“A small miracle, isn’t she?”

I took a long breath. “A little miracle, she’ll be…”

She’d always been very calm like this those nine months and a bit – I believe it was around 290 days or so, I’d lost count. Soothing and calming, like there wasn’t even a little girl growing inside her.

I felt like I got more stressed about the whole pregnancy than she was at times… But then she was there to ease those worries; everything was going to be just perfect, just like our little girl.

“Shhh…! I think I hear her say something…”

She curled up closer to me.

“Yeah?” I gave her a kiss on the top of her head. “What’s she telling you?”

“Hmmm… It’s a secret!” she whispered, and a gleaming smile appeared on her face again, paired with that little twinkle in her eyes. I couldn’t help but crack up.

Moments like these reminded me of how much I loved her.

We decided to go to bed early that evening. (Around 9 or 10.) Our little girl could arrive any moment now, and she wanted to at least try and get some sleep in before going into labor for God knows how long.

Before going to bed however, she walked up to the window looking out at our white dwarf in its usual spot, on the edge of the horizon.

“She’ll be with us soon, dwarfy. I can feel it; mother’s instinct.” She put her hand up to the window, saying, “Good night,” before closing the curtains again and joining me in bed.

She fell asleep quickly after that. She always slept quickly, regardless of whether she was tired or not, regardless of her mood. I followed that example with just about half an hour of delay… give or take ten minutes.

How long did it take before she woke me up again…? Two hours? Maybe even three…? I woke up to her shaking my shoulder, quite a bit rougher than I would’ve liked to wake up to. My head was still pretty woozy.

“Morning dear.” Her voice was… off. It wasn’t quite distressed – or just stressed, for that matter – but there was definitely a hint of soreness in it. I noticed she was trying to smile, but it wasn’t really working on her. “I…” she gulped some pain away, “She’s on her way.”

I’d never waken up fully so quickly in my life as in that moment.

I got out of bed and rushed for my jacket lying on the chair, clumsily trying to get my arms into the sleeves while searching for my shoes which had inexplicably disappeared from under the bed. It was a strange feeling after hearing those words. A shock of shiver came over me, a cold feeling creeping up my back, but at the same time I felt very warm, both on my skin as well as inside. It was almost like a battle between hot and cold being fought as the warmth spread from my chest throughout my body. It reached my knees barely, didn’t even come close to my feet.

All while I was being an anxious and stressed out mess, she slowly got up from bed, put on her slippers and made her way to the window again. Opening the curtains left the blue hue from our star to bleed into the room yet again.

“Good night,” she swallowed her discomfort and gave a weak smile. “dwarfy. I told you she’d be arriving soon.”

She put her hand on her belly.

“Our little K–” she was interrupted by her own groan.

I took both her shoulders and slowly pointed her at the door.

“Come on, hun. We need to head to the hospital.”

She nodded, and together we made our way to the car while I was supporting her, just so walking would be at least a little easier on her.

You wouldn’t believe how tempting it was to just rush there, ignoring just about all signs on the side of the road. It was 1 a.m.. Nobody was on the road anymore, nobody would’ve noticed.

But even with the temptation increasing as the distance to the hospital decreased, being pulled over by a cop or getting a mailbox full of fines wasn’t worth it. At all.

She was clearly trying her very best to bite her pain away, and to show her discomfort as little as possible. Perhaps because she thought I’d be calmer when I didn’t see it… Didn’t work, I’ll tell you that much.

We seemed to pass by everything so quickly, but so slow at the same time. Everything but the pond just outside our village. Time just seemed to drastically slow down there for just a moment.

She was looking outside her window, letting the landscape pass by with our white dwarf lurking from the horizon. The distant, blue-hued hills and the meadows closer by. And she’d be more or less silent the entire way through, until we got to that pond.

The reflection of dwarfy’s light in the water made it look almost surreal, especially with the several colored flowers blooming beside it, and the lily pads scattered on the surface, glowing with a turquoise hue which was broken up by whites and pinks from the flowers growing between them.

“Hunny…” She softly said, almost carefully. “Can we call her Lily?”

“But…” I shook my head in confusion. “I thought we agreed she’d be called Ka–”

“I know we did…” she interrupted me. I couldn’t put my finger on the feeling in her voice… Not disappointment or sadness… It was different. “But… it’s just that I really…”

She stopped speaking when she felt my hand grabbing hers.

“Let’s call her Lily.” My thumb stroked the back of her hand. “Our little Lily.”

I felt her look at me, and I felt the warmth of her smile coming straight for me.

“Our little Lily…” she echoed me, I could hear teary eyes in her voice. “A small, adorable, little miracle…”