Unexpected Changes

The next two weeks passed with no issues whatsoever. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem. A few weeks of nothing going wrong were a good thing, as that meant that everything was fine.

Except, when one is expecting bad news, and that bad news doesn't come, the question arises as to whether or not it was worth waiting for in the first place. If it had gone wrong, you were prepared, and that was a good thing. If it wasn't going to go wrong, you'd wasted all of your time worrying about it for no good reason.

Except, Cloverleaf had something else on his mind as the train approached the station. If nothing was going wrong with Lily, when she was supposed to be going through her second round of heat for the season, either the effects were so very mild that the first one was a massive overreaction, or it had been a false positive for her heat cycle several times over, or something was wrong with her that they couldn't have anticipated. He needed to know for sure, and that meant leaving his lawyer to look over the books on his own.

He believed Granny when she said that Lily seemed to be perfectly healthy in her letter. He believed Lily when she said she felt fine. But neither of those was supposed to be true. Three days of the last week, he'd expected her to have stomach cramps, he'd expected her to lose part of her appetite, and he'd expected her to take at least half of a day away from school, or worse, based on the extreme power of her first heat. That it wasn't happening; that she was perfectly fine was concerning. He had to see it for himself.

As he disembarked from the train, nearly forgetting his luggage, he rushed back to the house. It was Friday, and Lily would be back soon from the frozen yogurt place in a few hours. He started up towards the house, letting himself in. "Gran?"

Granny poked her head out of the living room. "Mr. Cloverleaf? You're home early."

"I needed to check on Lily. You can go ahead and take the rest of the day off, if you like."

"Lily not here. Out with friends. Having yogurt."

"I know," nodded Cloverleaf. "I'll just wait for her."

"I finish sweeping."

Cloverleaf looked over her shoulder. There was some debris throughout the living room, mostly dust and loose hair. It had just started to be swept, and the dining room looked like it needed a good sweeping, too. The chairs had already been moved out of the way, so she was probably planning on finishing up both rooms today before dinner.

"I'll go ahead and finish. You go ahead and take a day off and relax for a bit. I'll handle everything here, and you can come back in the morning."

Granny shrugged. "Hokay."

She deserved a night off. Lily could be a hoofful sometimes, and if Granny was taking the extra time to make sure the house was clean, something he hadn't expected or elected to pay her for, but now would, she deserved a break. She was a good sitter, as far as he could tell, and Lily had said in her letters that she was nice.

He finished sweeping and prepped his ingredients for dinner. No frills, no laces. It was a standard egg salad sandwich, not anything special. He needed something quick and easy, because he wanted to spend as much time as he could with his daughter. Not just to make sure that everything was alright, but because he still missed her. It had been almost three weeks, after all.

"I'm home!" she called from the front door as he was finishing up. Placing his spatula in the sink, he stepped out into the hall and smiled down at her as she was taking off her saddlebags. "Granny?"

"She took the night off."

Lily looked up. Her eyes went wide, and a big smile spread across her face. "Daddy!!" She ran up and leaped into his hooves, which were moments later wrapped around her. "I missed you so much!"

"I missed you, too, princess," he smiled back, holding her tight. "How's everything?"

"School's going good. We started on division, and Ms. Mayberry says we'll soon be going into the part of division where things don't divide down cleanly, so I'm a little scared of that, but we're also learning about subaquatic plants, and that's really fun! Did you know that seaweed is edible? Now I want to try some!"

Cloverleaf smiled and set her down, walking her into the house. "I'll see if I can find any before the next time I come back. How about your heat? It should have returned by now."

The smile faded from her face. "I... I don't know. You said it'd be back a week ago, but I didn't feel anything. Well, I mean, I felt a little weird, but... it wasn't painful or anything..."

"Did you take that tea?"

She shook her head. "You said to start it when I felt my first stomach cramp, and I never felt it. But, I mean, like..." She pinched her leg. "That hurt, so, I'm not unable to feel pain."

"You said you felt weird," he noted. "Can you describe it?"

"I guess... It's like that feeling when you're nervous, when you're not sure if you're cut out to be the center forward, and you're losing points. Or, not losing points, but not keeping the other team from scoring. You know?"

"Like there were butterflies in your tummy?"

She nodded. "But then I started thinking of you, and it all just sort of... went away."

He turned to look at her. "Just like that?"

"Well... I mean, not really, but it did go away on its own."

He took a deep breath. Things weren't exactly adding up.

"Part of me wants to think you were right."

"About what?"

She shuffled her hooves a bit. "You said that the first time was always the hardest, and that the next time would be easier. Maybe I already had it, and it was so easy that I barely realised it?"

Maybe that was it. Maybe the first round had hit her so hard because the bulk of the second had impacted at the same time. That may have even contributed to it being early.

He shook his head. There was a lot to consider, and he had to stay focused. "Let's have dinner, and then we can talk about it some more."