Now, Uriel smiled. "It might be a lot to take in at once," she said. "Believe me, it took me quite some time to accept. I'd spent six thousand years not thinking of myself in terms of gender, and suddenly was I not only stuck in one gender, but also pregnant."

She laughed now, with the slightest edge of mania in her laughter. "It's a good thing I never was entirely sane, or it would have driven me crazy for sure."