The toddler was standing in her playpen, fully awake at a time he knew she was supposed to be napping. Currently dressed as a gray shark, Skya’s bright golden eyes were wide and sparkling in clear anticipation of receiving her stolen prize. The little girl’s bob-length cyan curls were wild around her head, yet slightly flat in some areas, alluding to her likely having been asleep.
Killian couldn’t help but wince when he spotted the thin, dark line that extended from the shadow at her feet and out through the doorway.
Ahh, poor Seri. The Nymph was going to freak out for sure, he thought as the thieving shadow hand finally made it into the room. Snatching the cookie up, the hand and the line disappeared as Skya huffed. Killian wrinkled his nose as he eyed the now dirt-covered treat. It may be a good idea to switch to individually wrapped cookies.
After tossing the cookie into the trash receptacle against the wall, Killian moved to the playpen, gently admonishing, “Naughty baby, you know you aren’t allowed sweets right after your nap. At least, not when your daddy can easily point the blame at me. You know we need to be sneaky about it.” He chuckled, reaching down to tickle her.
She squealed, wiggling, before happily saying her amazing and semi-threatening nickname for him. “Kill-Kill!”
He smirked, but straightened up from the playpen when Severo walked in, the man frowning on seeing him. The six-foot-four tall, muscular Shadow Dweller, with deep-olive-colored skin, was wearing gray sweats. The bags under his eyes told him he may not have been sleeping well lately. Or maybe it was just because he had a damn toddler.
“Uhh? Did you need something?” the man asked, eyeing him.
“No, but I did follow a shadowy cookie thief right to this room. Wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
Severo winced, but the expression wasn’t reading shocked, more just caught. Or would trapped be the better word? He supposed it all depended on what the Dweller was about to confess.
“You don’t seem surprised.”
“Mm…” The Shadow Dweller grunted as he shifted nervously on his feet, before rushing into the room to pick up Skya, and cuddling her like a lifeline. To be fair, Skya was very huggable.
“You planning to tell Seri?” Killian asked. “I am, of course, assuming he doesn’t know. And based on the guilt I’m seeing on your face, he doesn’t, does he?”
“I…do…plan on telling him…” Severo rasped hesitantly, before swiftly blurting, “Just, HOW?! How can I!? I know what he said, and has said, and thinks…but I—I...” The man sagged.
“Paw-Paw,” Skya cutely cooed while she adorably patted her papa’s chest, the little girl obviously trying to soothe the big man.
Severo let out a distressed whine and kissed the toddler on the forehead. “Love you, Skya.”
“Of you!” Skya squealed.
Killian rubbed his chest as an odd hollow feeling spread. He wasn’t sure what it meant exactly, or why he felt it while watching the two, but it wasn’t the first time he felt something he couldn’t explain, and it likely wouldn’t be the last, so he ignored it.
“Severo, Seri is not the same Water Nymph you first met. He has made a lot of progress. He knows this is coming, and I would suggest that you tell him before he witnesses it and figures out just how long you have known.”
“I would have told him the first time it happened…but…”
He rose a single brow in question at that. “But?”
“Seri sort of had a small breakdown last week about Skya liking some ‘girly’ thing. It was a dress, or something like that,” Severo admitted with a sigh. “I came home to him crying, panicking, and just self-depreciating. He was feeling horrible, and said that he’d been selfishly lying that he was giving Skya a choice to be herself, when, at the same time, he was pushing what he considered to be ‘gender-neutral’ onto her. That the only one attaching labels to clothing was himself, and that he was pretty sure he’d likely been trying since day one to steer her away from picking things he considered too ‘girly’.
“With his childhood, and what Preston did, he’s just worried that he’s too messed up to make the right choices when it comes to this.” The man quickly added, “His words, not mine. I don’t think he’s messed up… He’s perfect.”
Killian wrinkled his nose. “Right…that…”
Yeah, clothing and gender were topics Killian mostly tried to stay clear of when it came to Seri. Mainly as the Nymph had some serious trauma when dealing with both, and he had assumed it would eventually come up in therapy. Because a therapist Killian was not. And he did not do well with crying, and there definitely would have been crying if he had pointed out that by Seri defining certain clothes as boy or girl, he was in fact upholding the gender stereotypes he swore he hated…
“Yeah, that happened Monday last week, and Wednesday was when I walked in to see Skya manipulating her shadow. I just…didn’t think the time was right to tell him.”
It probably hadn’t been, but still… “Severo, you need to tell him. The sooner the better.”
The Dweller nodded. “You’re right…” The man sighed before slowly holding Skya out to him. “Could you watch Skya while I…make the call?”
“Please tell me you aren’t planning to tell him over the phone,” Killian said dryly.
The man’s face twisted in disgust. “Do I look like a heartless idiot to you?”
He smirked as he plucked Skya from the man’s hold. “Do you really want me to answer that?”
