Kieu-Linh sat on the porch on the warm Spring day, rocking slowly with her feet propped on a small stool. The weather had turned mild early that year, bringing rain and melting the snow cover in late March a few weeks earlier than normal. April brought more moderate rains and warmth, as did May, and it was with a smile that she thought it might be a nice Summer spent with those she loved.

She cradled her daughter against her bared breast, her shirt off, no shame or embarrassment even as Jimmy stepped by her with a heavy jug of fresh milk, heaving it into the cabin. They'd all grown close over the many months spent living together, and it was not uncommon to see naked flesh of others, or to hear passionate cries in the day or night as one couple or another took pleasure in intimate touches.

Juliana-Ly suckled softly on her tit, her daughter calm and sleepy, and Kieu-Linh held her with love and genuine affection for the small child in her arms. It had taken a few months before her egg had caught her husband's seed and began growing within her body. They'd celebrated and chosen names for each possible sex. Juliana-Ly, combining a version of Hitch's first wife's name with that of Kieu-Linh's mother, had been the one she hoped to be able to use.

She remembered the times she'd talked to James about having a child, and at first, he had been a bit uncertain. Not that he said so, but it showed in his tone. But it clearly grew on him over time, and after returning from the west, he never withdrew or preferred to finish somewhere other than her vagina. Kieu-Linh loved the sensations it gave her, made more thrilling to think that he might be setting her with child each time. When she finally missed her period, and then, a month later, missed another, the morning sickness and general malaise she felt at times made it certain that she was pregnant.

Kieu-Linh had given birth two months earlier, in March, without serious complications. James was there with her father and mother, and she'd squeezed her husband's hand so tightly it dislocated one of his fingers. He'd said nothing, showing no signs of the pain, letting her hold fast until the delivery was complete.

Later, when she'd repeatedly apologized, he would laugh and tell her it was no less than what she'd endured for him, and he still owed her more. Thankfully, the finger was easily, if painfully, brought back into alignment, and he had healed well since those days.

Kieu-Linh had never fully admitted to her husband her fears during combat, but she had taken Willow's confidence on the matter as comfort. Willow talked to her often about it, and Kieu-Linh had felt safe to honestly admit how much she trembled during the Siege, how she'd dry heaved several times, vomiting little but water, from the fright and horror she felt. She'd pissed herself at least once, ashamed to admit it to the woman. She'd frozen, uncertain what to do several times, and there were moments she almost ran from the battlefield in terror. Kieu-Linh knew that her valorous medal citation didn't fully reflect the reality of all that she'd experienced.

But Willow shared with her some of her moments of fear and such feelings. She, too, had pissed herself in fear once or twice, and she knew many others, men and women, who had done the same, and everyone had felt the desperate urge to run and hide and never return. The only thing that mattered, Willow assured her, was that none of that fear, that shame, kept Kieu-Linh from her duty. She'd let her courage win out, Willow had said, and she'd shown herself able to function effectively despite her fears. Being afraid was normal, and expected, but the way Kieu-Linh had performed under such terrible stress, Willow had told her, was even more impressive given the newness of the experiences and the brutality of the combat that night.

Kieu-Linh understood, better, what James experienced when he went away in his mind. It had been happening less and less over the months, but was not completely lost. He suffered less often, however, and came out of each episode more quickly and with less confusion. Kieu-Linh understood those moments better after her own combat, and the ways those experiences had triggered in her moments of sudden terror, of waking in the night, panicked, looking for cover when a log cracked and fell in the fire. She sometimes felt sick to her stomach for no reason, and it wasn't just during her pregnancy. Vivid gore and horrible screams sometimes flooded into her mind, the sudden belief that she was in danger, trapped, pinned down, and it took effort and help to regain control. James shushed her and held her, calming her fears and letting her use his strength to let go her memories for a time.

Her thigh still ached, some nights after a lot of exertion, but it had healed well and no longer much troubled her. The last few months, she'd done less and less as her pregnancy bloomed and she then had a small child to feed and look after. James took Juliana-Ly often so that Kieu-Linh could bathe or nap, and she smiled to think how he was such a kind and gentle father to their daughter.

Her own father and mother held up over the year and a half or so since Kieu-Linh had returned with James and Willow from the west, despite growing older, her mother still looked young and appeared lively, her father less so but still getting around and full of energy for a man his age. He'd suffered a small downtime the previous Winter during a bout of intestinal distress, but he'd come through fine, and from the sounds they made in their bedroom in the night, Kieu-Linh knew her parents were still intimate and enjoying each other fully.

Jimmy had proposed to Willow a year earlier, also in the Spring, and they'd celebrated a few days later, letting the newlyweds have the cabin in privacy while the others stayed busy in the fields and with the cows. Willow had become her close friend, and Jimmy as well. They were good to each other, and Kieu-Linh knew it made James feel very proud and happy to see the two together.

Diego and Catalina's child Mariana was growing quickly, walking steadily at times and babbling words which Kieu-Linh sometimes heard in complete, if short, sentences. The girl had cute locks of dark-brown curls, no one quite sure where those had come from. They had also wanted to wed the previous summer, and another celebration tied the two teens together as officially as could be done. Catalina had told her that they did not want another child yet, though in the future they would. The girl had smiled when she said they were using 'other ways' to avoid the risk.

The War had essentially evaporated in the East as the Chicago-based United States and the Empire reached a truce, according to information picked up over the radio and on the rare trips to Waynesville. The agreement wasn't final, though, and didn't include the strength of a true peace, but the armies had completely disengaged east of the Plains, and though the Appalachian area was still contested on maps in government buildings, neither side cared much about forcing the issue. They had been completely left alone in Western North Carolina, though from time to time a visitor came by and stayed a day or two, then moved elsewhere. There were no more raiders and no more threats to their lives from strangers seeking violence.

In the west, the Denver-based government had gone back to calling itself Free America as international relations with the Chicago-based state were widely recognized as legitimate. They continued their movements against the Empire forces in the Southwest, but it had not really progressed the lines on the map one way or another. Kieu-Linh shook her head at the lives continuing to be wasted there.

James interrupted her thoughts when he climbed the stairs and offered her a small glass of freshly-drawn milk. Kieu-Linh swallowed the thick, creamy liquid. It was still warm and felt lovely sliding down her throat. Juliana-Ly had fallen asleep and James carefully took their child into his arms, resting the girl's head against his shoulder and sitting into the rocker beside her.

Kieu-Linh took his hand and smiled at him, no words needed to express how she felt about him. They looked at each other a moment, then back at the gentle slope down from the cabin through the apple trees. There was work to be done, still, and Kieu-Linh knew James was putting it off so that he could spend a while holding their child. It warmed her all over to see the joy on his face each time he held Juliana-Ly.

“You know,” James said to her, “I bet Willow and Jimmy would be willing to watch her this evening if you'd like to join me at the spring.”

Kieu-Linh smiled at him. “I'd like that. It'd been way too long... and I'm so ready for you to make love to me again.”

He returned her smile and squeezed her fingers. “It will be my pleasure, Linh. It will be my pleasure.” James drew her hand to his lips and kissed it gently. “There is nothing else I'd rather do...”

Kieu-Linh tingled with excitement, already growing wet, and she wished the beautiful day would move just a little bit faster into evening so that she and James could join together as they had so many times before. “I should nap,” she said, “I'll need the energy.” Kieu-Linh kissed his lips and went inside, soon on her side in bed, drowsy. Just before sleep, she drew her fingers across her stretch marks on her abdomen. Like so many scars, they showed proof of what she'd been through. Not like the ones left by metal or fire, these scars were born through labor and love. Their daughter's time inside her had marked her flesh, sure, but Kieu-Linh found that she had come to like those marks, too. It said where she'd been, what she'd done. She knew, however, that it said nothing of what was to come. Whatever challenges she faced, they'd leave their own scars.

Kieu-Linh moved from shrapnel wound to stretch mark and back again. They were one and the same, really, just different times, different emotions, different fears and challenges, both involving a measure of pain, but both also providing her with an assurance of herself that James and her parents had long said they had seen in her. She'd doubted, despite her outward confidence, but her smile became a gentle laugh as her fingers touched her imperfections. James often did the same, telling her how beautiful she was, that her scars were not imperfections but etchings on marble, an artist's landscape on her flesh that he saw as lovely. Kieu-Linh had come to accept that, finding peace in the idea. She couldn't change them. But she could manage how she thought about them.

She found sleep in the warm day, dreaming of her husband and the moments they would share together again that evening. By the time she woke, darkness had taken hold, and, bubbling with excitement and wet with anticipation, she rushed out of bed to find James, to kiss him, to touch him, and to share her body with him fully for the first time in months.