The baby resembled Al to a significant degree, having the same crests Al did along the back and sides of his head, and big, color-changing eyes. His body was covered in thousands of soft scales, so tiny they were almost imperceivable, and he had what Al would describe as an “adequate” number of arms. At the moment he was pink, but as Jude watched, the pink color faded back into a sandy white. His markings were quite prominent—they were a dark brown color in his natural state, and they formed a mesh-like pattern all over his body, grouping the sandy white scales into sections shaped like diamonds.
“What do his markings mean?” Jude asked.
“Courage,” Al said fondly. “Bravery.”
“And does his color mean anything?”
Al laughed. “The sandy color of his scales is a… I think you would call it a ‘genetic ancestral feature’ in English. We are all born this color as once—many hundreds of thousands of cycles ago—our species felt dependency upon camouflage for survival, and as we are native to the desert, this color allowed us to hide. As he ages and discovers what he feels happiness for, he will likely choose a different favorite color to wear. One which causes him to feel joy when it is on his body.”
“Like pink?”
“Like pink,” Al said, smiling. “Pink is a courageous color.” He held out his index finger to their son, who grabbed on to it immediately and turned the color of the summer sky at noon. “But other colors will suit him, too.”
The next baby came about ten minutes later—a little girl with three horizontal lines down her hips struck through in the middle with a single vertical line, which Al said stood for humor. Her sister broke free from her shell shortly after that, marked with a series of concentric semicircles that plunged down the length of her back, following the course of her spine. Al explained markings like those implied curiosity. Baby number four was a boy born with biceps marked by four wavy, horizontal lines stacked on top of each other, meaning adventure, and baby number five was a girl with the outlines of diamonds marking all four of her wrists, dotted at their very centers. When Al saw them, he laughed and said, “We must be careful—that means mischief.”
Their sixth child took much longer to arrive than the others, but with five increasingly mobile little ones to care for, the extra hour she took did not feel like all that long at all. By then, most of the babies had figured out how to use their arms and legs, and were eager to go exploring. Jude was in the process of removing one from the wall—because ofcourse,shapeshifting alien lizards would have the ability to create weird suction cup fingers—when her egg cracked open and she tumbled out. Twin columns of diamonds marked either side of her torso, which Jude learned meant responsibility.
With her born and cradled safe in Jude’s arms, there was only one more egg to go.
The last egg, however, was stubborn. A full hour after the last little girl had been born, it had yet to hatch. Every now and then, the egg would shake, and there were plenty of tiny cracks in the shell, but the baby inside did not seem like it was able to break through, and Jude was beginning to get nervous.
“Do you think it’s okay?” he asked. They had the babies cuddled up with them on the bed, all six of them either sleeping or on the brink of dozing off, exhausted from hatching and getting up to mischief. Their pointy little tongues tasted the air as they dozed, which was so cute, Jude thought he might die. Apparently, it was the Darvrokian equivalent of a baby sucking their thumb.
“Allow a few more Mississippis to pass,” Al said, but his cautious tone and the way he twisted his mouth in concern did not put Jude at ease. “I will not lie to you by saying it is usual for an egg to lag behind the rest of its clutch, but it is clear our offspring is alive. Perhaps it simply feels the desire to take its time.”
Jude did not like that one bit—what if by waiting, they sealed its fate?—but he trusted Al entirely. If Al did not think it was time to intervene, Jude would not intervene. While they waited, they discussed baby names and cooed over tiny fingers and toes, but all the while, Jude kept the unhatched egg in his peripheral vision, and saw that Al did, too.
Finally, after nearly another half hour passed, a small hand pushed through the shell of the egg. It only took a few minutes after that for the baby to come into the world, and as it did, the reason for its late arrival became immediately evident.
“It only has two arms,” Jude said, aghast, realizing after the fact that he’d said it like this was something debilitating and not something he had himself. He rose carefully from amongst their sleeping babies and gingerly scooped up number seven.
“He is more human than the rest of them,” Al observed, not with disdain, but with curiosity. It was true. The baby—who was the smallest of the bunch—took after Jude, with big brown eyes and a human number of arms. His features were rounder than his siblings’, and his scales were much more numerous and so tiny, they almost gave the appearance of skin.
“Look at his markings,” Jude said, heart swelling.
Al took in a sharp breath. “Those are…”
“The same as yours,” Jude said, finishing the thought for him. “Galaxies.”
And it was true. There were spirals all over number seven’s body, nearly identical to the ones Al sported when he wasn’t wearing his human disguise. Jude thought they were gorgeous, but when he glanced at Al, he found conflict visibly playing out across his face.
“Hey,” he murmured, leaning in and kissing Al on the cheek. “Don’t look like that. I told you before, your markings aren’t a bad thing. They’re beautiful on you, and they’re beautiful on him. He’s not unknown, he’s just gonna surprise us. That’s all.”
Al considered this. He looked from one baby to the next, and Jude did the same. They were the most perfect seven children that had ever existed, in Jude’s not-so-humble opinion, and he was so overcome with love that it was baffling to him to think there had been a time when he’d believed he hadn’t wanted this. He didn’t care if he had to work dead-end jobs for the rest of his life to make sure his kiddos were fed and clothed—even the worst, most soul-sucking gig would be worth it for them.
“They will all surprise us,” Al said after a while. “The markings are suggestions, not promises. They will be whoever they feel desire to be.”
“Absolutely,” Jude said soundly, glowing. He gave Al another kiss. “And I can’t wait to see who they are.”
* * *
“Okay, in order,” Jude said to Ezra, who had brought Buttons with him to come meet the babies. They were lined up in a row on the bed according to birth order, which had been no easy feat with how rambunctious they were, but had been made much easier when Buttons had come into the picture. When she’d appeared, all of them had stopped what they were doing to stare at her in awe, and were still staring now, even after Jude and Al had wrangled them into position. A few of them stared with their tongues hanging out, having forgotten to put them back in their mouths after tasting the air. “I’d like to introduce you to Harrison, Lucy, Penny, McCartney, Eleanor, Abbey, and Starr.”
“They’re beautiful, you guys,” Ezra said sincerely, smiling down at the babies. In his arms, Buttons mewled, and no less than four of the babies chittered at her, their eyes swirling through an endless cycle of colors.
“Thank you very much please,” Al said, although if it was to Ezra, Buttons, or both, Jude couldn’t tell.
“You guys are gonna be awesome at the whole parenting thing,” Ezra said, reaching over and giving one of Penny’s tiny hands a gentle squeeze. She ignored him, reaching out for Buttons. “And I’m gonna be an even more awesome uncle.” He set Buttons on the floor, nearly causing a mass exodus of little lizard children. All seven of them scrambled to the edge of the bed to see where she’d gone, almost toppling over the edge in the process, and right after Jude had recovered from his heart attack, one of them—Eleanor—stopped being an adorable baby, and started being a cat.
