Gestation
Gestation for a sphynx is not the same thing as it is for a human. The eggs develop within your body, and young are already half formed when you lay them in the nests in the back of the cavern. Though you're still slightly miffed about everything that has happened, you have to admit that it's better to be in here than to be outside on your own. Now that you've mated, the males are doting on you. They bring you your food, they preen the feathers of your wings and carefully groom your fur. Perhaps part of the punishment that the Genie had in mind was the fact that your nature was going to change completely.
That your stomach was going to swell, and you were going to feel a maternal instinct that you didn't think you were capable of feeling.
That you were going to be so entranced with the idea of having young and the babes that were growing inside of you that you suddenly couldn't imagine leaving this enclosure, because to do so would be to leave them behind.
You can't take care of them on your own.
You need the males.
You need their fathers.
You need the enclosure and the safety that it provides from whatever world exists beyond it.
You don't know where you are, after all. You don't know if the zoo is here for preservation, or if it is here because you are the last of your kind and they want to make sure that you further the bloodline and bring your species back to life.
And it is your species. You can admit that if nothing else. There's a permanence to what has happened to you that hasn't reversed. You aren't just going to magically change back to a human.
And honestly, what would happen to you now if you did? You'd be chased from the eggs that are hatching, from the motherhood that you're craving, even though it makes no sense in the mind of the human that you used to be. You would be taken away from your new home, your new family.
And you're not willing to allow that to happen.
So that is the curse -- you were transformed. And not only were you transformed on the outside, but on the inside as well... because you know that now, even if the Genie appeared in front of you and offered you your freedom and your old life back, you wouldn't be able to accept.
This was where you belonged now, and there was no going back to the person that you used to be.
Written by Karlyene on 22 October 2020
The end (for now)