Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 66904 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66904 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Lettie is not listening to me, and neither is our baby. That sharp little egg tooth is working ferociously at the egg, and before I can finish my sentence…
“MAMA!”
The entire shell splits in an instant, a tectonic crack appearing in the side as that pink little beak does an incredibly aggressive maneuver which bursts the whole thing wide open. Bits of shell fall open to reveal our baby, sitting entirely and perfect in the nest.
“Baby!” Lettie squeals back as our child calls for her for the first time.
The baby is perfect. She is green with a cute yellow belly. She has her mother’s brown eyes, and a little mohawk shock of brown hair right at the top of her head, running down the middle of her scaled little skull.
“My baby!” The words are tearful, but this time the tears are from joy.
The baby reaches out, clawed hands gripping air as she tries to get closer to her mother. On a deep, cosmic level, they already know each other. They are bonded in a way neither of them will ever be able to fully understand, and they will be bonded forever.
Lettie
The moment I saw my baby hatch out of that glossy shell, all the emotions I thought I didn’t have appeared instantly. I am absolutely suffused with feeling and hormones. I can feel the chemistry in my body changing in an instant as I surrender to motherhood.
My baby is so small, and she is so cute. She has the biggest brown eyes and the cutest little snub scaled nose, and a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth which make me very glad I will not have to breastfeed her. Her face is big and round and full of good humor. She looks like me, but she also looks like Shan. Probably more like Shan really, given all the scales and such, but I can see myself in her eyes.
She is not like a newborn. She is more like a three-month-old. She is bright and she is aware, and though she can’t speak or anything like that, or maybe even walk, she looks at me with so much intelligence. I wonder how much she heard through the shell. I wonder if she knows us already.
I reach out and pick her up, being very careful. I thought she might feel fragile, but she does not. She feels solid, and warm and snuggly, and she cuddles into me with an instinctual motion that makes my heart swell. My eyes are full of tears as I feel the full force of a new kind of love, a love that changes everything, tears all my previous priorities limb from limb, and puts her at the center of it all. I know in this moment I would do anything for her. I would burn the stars themselves if it meant protecting her. She is my world. She is my everything. She is…
“Ouch!” She is trying to bite me, and my skin is no match for those razor-sharp baby teeth.
I shift her slightly in my arms and look down at her. I have never found anyone or anything so beautiful before. I don’t even mind the fact that I am now bleeding from a shallow flesh wound.
“Oh, baby,” I murmur to her. “I waited so long for you, and I didn’t know I was waiting.”
There are some moments in life where everything makes sense. This is one of them. The pain, the suffering, all the terrible things that have happened in the past are resolving themselves in this moment into a chain of events that have culminated not only in this moment, but in this creature. My baby exists because of all I have been through. There is not a single event in my life that could have happened any other way, because all those happenings have led to her.
Shan is behind me, saying nothing, but wrapping his arms around us both in a silent, fatherly gesture of ultimate protection and belonging. This is not just a happy ending. This is the happy ending.
Ihave mostly resigned myself to living wild for the rest of my life, but as the weeks go by and my daughter grows, sometimes on clear nights, I hold her close and I look up at the sky and I imagine what it would be like to see the Mare uncloak above me. I tell her stories of the times we spent together on the deck, and in the various stations we visited. While she is too young to understand, I tell her about some of the crimes we did. She giggles at all the best parts, and though I know that’s just because my tone changes when I explain how very good it feels to be very bad, there’s a part of me that likes to imagine she does understand, and that I’ve given her a little bit of the strength I had to have. Whatever she grows up to be, I hope it is not obedient.