Once Liam had checked for any updated requests relating to the trade areas, Liam brought up the map to check on Ondry’s location. Yep. He was at Holva’s workshop. Hopefully, he would get some nice pieces. She had been looking to pull Ondry’s tail for months now, and he wasn’t above using it against a woman if she had eggs in her eyes.
Liam should wander that way after getting some food from Tilm. He opened the door and immediately stopped. A huge female crouched near his front door. With a deliberation only an ancient Rownt could manage, she turned and then unfolded her large frame. She wore the single white stone of a Grandmother.
She was not one of the Janatjanay Grandmothers, although something in her coloring seemed familiar. Sometimes the shape of one’s eyes or the pattern of the skin of the face passed from one generation to another, so Liam might know a family member. If so, it would be impolite to say as much since a Grandmother gave up any ties to biological family when she took on the responsibility of leading.
“Grandmother,” Liam said with a bow as he tried to decipher why she might be waiting at his door. Grandmothers did sometimes travel to trade or learn some new skill, but it was unusual. And if a Grandmother wished to trade, Ondry would never decline a Grandmother’s request that he attend a temple in another town.
“Tuk-Liam,” she rumbled as she inclined her head toward him. “Be well.” She held a bundle out, and Liam accepted it on instinct. One didn’t offend a Grandmother by refusing whatever gift or payment she had chosen to personally deliver. She turned away, and Liam blinked, not sure what to make of the exchange. And then the bundle in his arms moved.
Half afraid he was holding a poisonous lifeform, Liam flipped the edge of the covering back and a tiny Rownt face looked up at him. It blinked. No, he blinked. Liam could tell the child was male because he had pulled his long, masculine tail around and was chewing on it. Panic almost made him call out to the Grandmother as if she’d forgotten a child by accident, but his brain kicked in before he made a monumental mistake.
She’d come to a new town to leave her eggling with a responsible parent. With Liam and Ondry. Liam’s eyes grew hot with tears, and his emotions were too big for his chest. He ached watching the eggling maul the tip of his own tail with toothless gums. No, not the eggling. His eggling. Their eggling.
Liam went to thank the Grandmother or at least learn which town she was from, but he had been so distracted that she was already out of sight. She might have laid the egg, but Liam was the baby’s father, and now Liam needed to get the baby’s other father on the computer and tell him to come home because neither Holva’s pottery or profits mattered, not compared to what Ondry had waiting for him at home.
Liam sent a half-coherent message to Ondry to come home, and then he retreated to their nest, placing the precious bundle down. The child rolled onto his stomach and wiggled into the pillows, his butt up in the ai r and his tail lashing.
Laughing, Liam put the child upright on the blanket the Grandmother had delivered him in. Within seconds, the child had, once again, shoved his head between the pillows so his butt was raised. Liam rescued him a second and a third and fourth time before his communicator beeped to let him know Ondry was near. Liam had programmed it after being ambushed too many times. While he appreciated being stalked and pounced on as step one in an afternoon of athletic sex, he also appreciated a little warning.
He bundled the eggling back into his blanket and took the baby out to meet Ondry. Maybe the first introduction should be private, but Liam couldn’t wait. He wasn’t more than two steps toward the front door when it burst open.
Ondry stood there, pale with distress, his nostrils wide and his tail straight out behind him, which suggested he’d been running full tilt. Liam stopped, shocked at Ondry’s appearance. When he mentally reviewed the text he’d sent, he winced. “It isn’t a bad sort of emergency,” Liam said as a sort of apology. He held the eggling up, and Ondry shifted his gaze away from Liam’s face.
Ondry took a step into their public room, his color returning. He turned his normal rosy plum before darkening even more. With his next step, his tail curled around his leg and the tension eased out of his shoulders. Ondry’s nostrils stayed open, and he huffed as he studied the eggling in Liam’s arms.
“A Grandmother from out of town delivered him this morning. I was so shocked that I didn’t think to ask any questions about who laid the egg or which town she was from.” The eggling reached for Liam’s ear, pulling at it before sticking a finger in the canal. Liam shifted him to protect himself, and the eggling then became fascinated with Liam’s nose. Liam wondered if the eggling could recognize that Liam was not Rownt.
Before fingers found their way in Liam’s nose, Ondry gently pulled the child from Liam’s arms. He was staring at the eggling as if he were every profit Ondry had ever earned, all stacked in one giant pile. He watched the eggling like he did Liam. Rownt might not have much love for others in general, but they had such intensity for the few individuals society and biology allowed them to love.
“He’s beautiful,” Ondry said in a low, reverent tone.
Liam moved closer and put his hand on the baby’s chest. “His eyes have the same angle as yours,” he said.
“Grandmothers do like to pull my tail,” Ondry said, and he darkened even more. Liam couldn’t argue with that.
“I don’t know how to raise an eggling. Do they need diapers? A crib?” The English words felt odd in Liam’s mouth, but he didn’t know the Rownt equivalent. He should. They had complimented others’ egglings, but it had been less than a week since Ondry had explained how Rownt chose parents, and Liam hadn’t found the time to study a new vocabulary.
Ondry finally looked away from the child. “No one knows when an eggling will be left on their step, so the temple will provide all that is needed for the first few months.” Ondry rested a hand on Liam’s neck. “We have an eggling,” he said, wonder in his voice.
“We have an eggling from a Grandmother—an ancient one,” Liam corrected him. Liam’s cheeks ached from smiling too hard. Ondry leaned closer, and Liam tried to angle his face for a kiss, but the eggling squirmed too much. Instead they rested their foreheads together and gazed down at their hatchling.
“We have to name him,” Ondry said after a long silence.
Liam straightened up. He had a favorite storyscroll. He’d gotten it in a trade before he’d ever met Ondry, and the story had convinced him that Rownt weren’t the mercenary psychopaths Command suggested. It was their version of the Midas myth, featuring a Grandfather who had accumulated great wealth by making ships that could sail over sea and land. He prayed for more wealth. Each time, the gods took away what he possessed and replaced it with something better. In the end, he had a ship that could travel impossible distances in any terrain. It was so large that a whole town could travel with him, only it had no temple, so he was the commander. He had more than any Rownt would ever ask for, and still, he prayed to the gods for more.
The gods took everything and left him with a single eggling.
He spent the rest of his life weaving nets and repairing ship hulls as he watched his child grow. Spooner had thought it was a cautionary tale about asking for too much, but Liam had seen the vocabulary used, and he thought it was a happy ending. He thought the grandfather was happy to raise one more eggling. Now he knew his instincts had been right, and every description of the small hut in the ending had revealed the grandfather’s joy.
“Is Takil too old-fashioned of a name?” Liam asked. That had been the name of the eggling in the story.
The skin around Ondry’s eyes tightened. “That is a very proper name. Let us go introduce Takil to the temple and get supplies before he introduces bodily fluids to our home.”
Liam laughed. He remembered the smells and chaos his siblings had created as infants. Apparently, all children—human or alien—were doomed to create mess. That was a truth Liam was happy to explore.
