The second egg begins cracking before I've fully processed the first child. This one moves faster, splitting and releasing within minutes. The baby that emerges is different. More tentacles, fewer limbs. His torso is humanoid but his lower body is pure Aylth. Six small tentacles instead of legs. His face is angular, alien, but his hands are human. Five fingers, no webbing.
“A son,” Aylth says, and I hear awe in his voice.
We place both babies in a sheltered part of the nest while the third egg begins its process. This one takes longer, the shell thick and stubborn. When the baby finally breaks free, she's larger than the others. More human in appearance except for the scales covering her arms and back. Her eyes are brown like mine were before the modifications. Human eyes in a face that's otherwise purely her own.
The hatching continues through the morning and into afternoon. Each egg cracks in turn, each baby emerges unique. By the time the twelfth shell fractures, I'm exhausted and exhilarated and so full of love I can barely breathe.
The last baby is the smallest. The one I felt as most delicate during the transfer, the youngest. He takes the longest to emerge, his movements tentative. When he finally slides free, I understand why the eggs always protected him. He's fragile. Beautiful but fragile. His bones are visible through translucent skin. His tentacles are thin as thread.
“Will he be okay?” I ask Aylth.
“He will be perfect. Just needs more care, more attention.” Aylth cradles the tiny body in his tentacles, supporting the fragile limbs. “This one was smallest in the clutch. Will be smallest of siblings. But smallest does not mean weak.”
I look at all twelve of them. Twelve children arranged around the nest, each one glowing softly, each one breathing water and air equally. Some have more human features, some more alien, but all of them are ours. All of them are perfect.
“We did it,” I say.
“Female did it. This one merely provided genetic material.”
“You were here. That's what mattered.” I reach for his hand, tangling our fingers together. “We're parents now.”
The weight of that settles over both of us. These twelve tiny beings depend on us completely. They need food, protection, guidance. They need to learn two worlds, two species, two ways of being.
But looking at them, at their small perfect faces and hybrid bodies, I know we'll figure it out.
We have to.
The palace transformsin the first week.
Every chamber fills with the sounds of twelve babies learning to use their voices. Some cry in human tones. Others produce subsonic frequencies that make the coral vibrate. A few manage both, creating harmonics that are beautiful and unsettling in equal measure.
I'm exhausted. My body hasn't recovered from the hatching, and these children need constant attention. Feeding alone takes hours. Some can nurse like human babies. Others need food pre-chewed and delivered directly to their mouths. The most aquatic ones require live fish small enough to swallow whole.
Aylth helps more than I expected. He's devoted, patient, gentle despite his size and strength. I watch him cradle the fragile one, supporting the tiny body while the baby learns tocoordinate six thin tentacles. His voice rumbles soft, speaking in frequencies I can't produce, teaching the child how to communicate in ways I never will.
“That one responds to deep tones,” he tells me during a rare moment when half the babies are sleeping. “Hears better than the others.”
“What should we call him?”
Aylth considers this. His people don't name children until certain milestones pass, but he understands human need for immediate identification. “The sound he makes when content. That clicking. Perhaps something meaning delicate strength?”
We settle on names over the next few days. Some fit immediately. Others we try multiple times before finding something that feels right. The largest girl, the one with brown human eyes, becomes Marina. The smallest, fragile boy becomes Kael. The spirited one who kicked constantly in the womb, now revealed as a girl with six tentacles and my stubborn chin, becomes Tempest.
Each child develops personality quickly. Marina is calm, observant, barely crying. Kael is anxious, needing constant reassurance. Tempest lives up to her name, demanding attention through sheer volume. The others fall somewhere between, each finding their own way to exist.
The reef creatures are fascinated. Small fish drift through the nursery, glowing brighter when babies notice them. The coral pulses gentle patterns, responding to infant moods. Even the flesh-renders keep respectful distance, somehow understanding these small beings are precious.
I nurse Marina while watching Aylth teach three of the more aquatic children how to swim. They're only eight days old but already moving through water with instinctive grace. Their tentacles coordinate, their bodies streamline. They were born knowing how to do this.
Marina finishes nursing and makes a sound that might be satisfaction. Her brown eyes focus on my face, tracking my movements. She has human eyes, human hands, human need for milk. But her back is covered in fine scales that shimmer when she moves. She's both species, neither species. Something entirely new.
“You're going to be beautiful,” I tell her. “All of you are going to be extraordinary.”
The babies who heard that pulse their bioluminescence brighter, responding to my voice even if they can't understand words yet.
By the second week, patterns emerge. The morning belongs to the most human children. They wake crying for food, for clean moss, for attention. I handle these hours, my body and instincts understanding what they need.
Midday belongs to the hybrids who need both worlds. Aylth and I work together, teaching them to breathe air and water, to use tentacles and limbs, to exist between species.
