Jingfei had spent the better part of the morning dashing between the austere barracks, the earthy stables, and—on one especially turbulent occasion—the dimly lit armory, her stomach churning so violently that every step threatened disaster in the form of splattering vomit upon someone's well-polished boots. Even with all her careful maneuvering, she faltered once.
"Sorry, Eron," she mumbled, her voice thick with humiliation as she hastily dabbed at her mouth, leaning against a ancient stone pillar. Poor recruit Eron stood frozen, his gaze fixed on his ruined, mud-splattered right boot that now resembled a casualty of the chaos in motion.
This unfortunate episode had become a regular spectacle over the preceding weeks. Initially, Lorianthel had assumed that Jingfei's suffering stemmed from a simple seasonal chill, the sort that whispered through the corridors of their compound with an icy bite. Soon, however, he entertained thoughts of a bizarre curse at work or perhaps a mysterious allergic reaction to the exotic firebloom tea recently acquired from the distant southern trade routes.
Then the inexplicable cravings emerged.
One crisp morning, as golden light filtered through the narrow windows of their shared quarters, Lorianthel stepped inside to discover Jingfei in the midst of a peculiar culinary experiment. She was seated at a worn wooden table, busily crunching on a fantastical dish—a curious blend of fried pickles artfully dipped in strawberry jam. The aroma mingled with the sweet tang of the jam, producing an oddly enchanting scent that filled the room.
"Are you... dipping fried pickles in strawberry jam?" he asked incredulously, his entrance causing Jingfei to pause mid-crunch, her eyes sparkling with unabashed delight.
"Mm-hmm," she replied with a mischievous smile, holding out the plate as though it contained the finest delicacy ever to grace the banquet halls of Zvjezdano Nórland. "Want some?"
For a long, baffled moment, he blinked as if trying to decide whether to laugh or cry. "I want to un-see it," he finally muttered.
Yet, as if to add another layer to the surreal morning, Jingfei cheerily announced, "I've also been dreaming about grilled onions wrapped in honey leaves."
Lorianthel lingered in the doorway, his intricately forged armor half-unclasped and his face etched in a portrait of baffled helplessness. His heart brimmed with fierce love for her, yet nothing in the ancient and revered tomes of elven war strategy had ever prepared him for this culinary rebellion and whimsical transformation.
By the third week of this bizarre affliction, Jingfei's body betrayed her at every meal; she would be overcome with bouts of vomiting before breakfast, immediately after, and on rare occasions even during breakfast. Her emotions spilled as easily as her physical sickness—tears flowed over a fallen spoon, and in one heated moment, she almost launched a punch at him for suggesting she "maybe get some air."
In sheer desperation, Lorianthel summoned healers from the farthest corners of their realm—mystical herbalists, enigmatic spirit-talkers, reclusive woodland shamans, and even an eccentric elderly halfling who claimed that his diminutive goat possessed the uncanny ability to diagnose imbalances in internal energies. One by one, they delivered the same surprising verdict.
"She's pregnant, you fool," declared the healer from Moonbirch Hollow, her tone dripping with exasperation as she rolled her eyes and adjusted her gleaming crystal monocle. "And you call yourself a commander?"
Lorianthel's jaw dropped in a mixture of shock and disbelief. "I—I—what?" he stammered, his words catching in his throat.
Mid-crunch, Jingfei merely blinked, her fingers halting their delicate dance with the strange pickle and jam concoction. "Oh," she said with an air of nonchalance, then punctuated her remark with a soft belch. "That makes sense."
Lorianthel stood immobilized, as if frozen by an unseen force. Slowly, however, a tender smile began to creep across his face. Rather than speak at once, he simply gazed at her with quiet wonder, as though rediscovering her all over again.
"You're pregnant," he murmured repeatedly, as if the words might finally anchor the surreal reality. "You're pregnant. We're going to have a child. A child!" His excitement was so overwhelming that he promptly tripped over his own boots, nearly toppling the healer's satchel in his disordered state.
Later that night, beneath the soft glow of a gentle fire and cocooned on a woven blanket under the open, starlit canopy of their quarters, Lorianthel rested a tender hand on Jingfei's still-flat belly, now imbued with a nascent sacredness. The crackling fire threw dancing shadows across their entwined forms as he asked softly, "What do you think our child will look like?"
Jingfei's eyes shone with sleepy amusement. "Beautiful, of course."
But Lorianthel pressed on, his words imbued with whimsical speculation. "No, but—like, will it have pointy ears and... flowers?"
Jingfei opened one eye in puzzlement. "What?"
"You're a flower spirit," he declared, his eyes widening in awe. "You've always said you were nature-born, so that means our child will be half-elf, half-flower."
"I'm not a flower spirit," she replied flatly, dismissing the notion.
Lorianthel blinked in disbelief. "You're... not?"
"I'm a grape spirit," Jingfei said without a trace of hesitation.
He stared at her for a long, silent moment before exclaiming, "You're joking."
"Nope," she replied calmly.
"But you always smell like blossoms. And your hair blooms like the first flush of spring. And when you get excited, glittering petals almost magically erupt along your skin."
"Those are just side effects," she waved dismissively. "I'm a grape spirit, through and through."
Fully baffled, Lorianthel leaned forward. "So you're telling me... my beloved wife is not, as I've always believed, a flower spirit, but instead, quite literally, a grape?"
"A very powerful grape," she replied proudly, a glimmer of mischief dancing in her eyes.
He alternated his gaze between her and the bowl of grapes resting on the table. Then, in an almost incredulous whisper, he said, "...But you eat grapes."
"Yes?" she asked lightly.
"But—how does that work? Are you consuming your own kind?!"
Jingfei groaned at his bewilderment. "Lori, no. Regular grapes are merely fruit. They don't possess spirits. Only living beings who embody nature's essence—or who have cultivated their inner being for thousands of years through Taoist practice—can awaken as spirit entities."
"So you're saying," he mused, holding a singular grape up to the light as if it were a mysterious relic, "that this is not your cousin."
"Correct."
With cautious relief, he slowly popped the grape into his mouth. "That's a relief." Then his expression shifted to confusion as he paused. "Wait. How old are you, exactly?"
Jingfei tilted her head thoughtfully, her voice soft and measured. "About... Three Thousand years, give or take a few lunar cycles."
Lorianthel choked on his grape, the shock evident in his wide-eyed gaze. "You're—what?!"
"I told you I cultivated a long time before awakening in a human form. It's part of how spirits gain their shape," she explained calmly.
His eyes widened further. "You—you told me you were twenty!"
"I said I looked twenty," she corrected with a wry smile.
He stared at her incredulously. "I married a Three Thousand year old grape."
"Better than a two-hundred-year-old mushroom," she quipped teasingly, her tone both affectionate and mischievous.
Exasperated yet amused, Lorianthel flopped back onto the blanket, his hand covering his eyes as he tried to gather his scattered thoughts. "I need a nap," he muttered under the weight of his astonishment.
Jingfei leaned in and pressed a gentle kiss onto his cheek, her voice calming him. "You need perspective."
Peeking through his fingers, he asked with a blend of hope and apprehension, "Promise me our child won't have grapevines for fingers."
"No promises," she replied sweetly, her tone lilting with humor. "Maybe raisins for toes."
"Jingfei!" he cried out, half exasperated, half delighted.
She laughed—a bright, warm sound that echoed like chimes in a gentle breeze. In that moment, as the cold winds outside the outpost howled like distant echoes of winter and the stars blinked above in a slow, steady rhythm, the commander and his ancient, enigmatic grape spirit wife lay curled together in their little sanctuary. Wrapped in a bubble of laughter and firelight, they waited with bated breath to welcome the little miracle growing quietly within—a miracle born from love, mystery, and the most unexpected of sources.