Milka chewed her cud idly. It was another boring day of being a pregnant cow. As she had feared, and the farmer worried, she had become pregnant from the bulls. Which bull had impregnated her wouldn’t be known until after she gave birth. She felt enormous already, but the farmer said that at six months, she still had three months left to go.
The door to the barn opened. Milka continued to chew her cud, ignoring the interruption. It was probably just the farmer, his wife, or his daughter come to milk her. After all, she was still producing milk, to the extent that she had to be milked daily. When she heard a different voice, however, her head went up.
“Thank you for taking care of one of our heifers,” a voice with the accent of the Eastern Hills said. “We think that she must have been the subject of an errant teleportation spell by a younger member of our family.”
“Really?”
“Well, there is one other possibility. One of our members may have transformed someone attacking them into a heifer with our family crest. If that is in fact the case, she is still our property, however, so it matters not which.”
“…I suppose.” The farmer approached Milka’s stall with a tall, handsome blond man. The blond man looked Milka over carefully. “Well, Mikhail?” Milka recognized the name. Anya had mentioned her cousin Mikhail before. He tended to the Copperstone family farm.
“She is one of ours,” Mikhail said after a moment. “I sense my cousin Anya’s magic on her.”
“Was she…a human before?”
“I do not know. When I bring her back, I will speak to Anya about her.”
“Ah. About that.” The farmer cleared his throat. “Milka, as we call her, was mounted by our bulls before we found her. She is pregnant.”
“She cannot travel?”
“She can.”
“Is it wise for her to travel?”
“That is for you to decide. I, personally, would wait until she gave birth, but she is your heifer, not mine.”
“How far along is she?”
“Six months.”
“I see,” Mikhail muttered. After a moment, he nodded. “I have made a decision.”