Chiya sat anxiously in front of the singular door leading into the genetic laboratory of the Abstract Destiny, wings and tail twitching restlessly. The kind doctor Schroeder had very generously given them a cabin to share aboard that ship, by virtue of their agreement to take over watch of her children, effective that very day, but he still refused her access to his most sanctified, secret lair: his laboratory. Under most circumstances, Chiya wouldn't have minded, but this was not most circumstances. Her child was in there-- her first child, hatched three days ago from an egg she had also not been allowed to see-- under quarantine and being checked over to make sure the mix of genetics was stable and the kit was healthy. She was due to be released from quarantine today. Within the hour.

Chiya had been there since morning. Just in case. 

"Chiya, relax," Ketvia told her yet again, a sigh in her voice. She'd started off their joint vigil smirking fondly at her partner's young-mother concerns, but the novelty had long since worn off, apparently, and she seemed bored and a little exasperated, now. "She'll be fine, she'll come out when she comes out, and she'll love you."

"I wish they'd let me speak to her before she-- she hatched," Chiya fretted; she was most decidedly not bored, for her thoughts kept swirling around in anxious near-panic. "Mothers are supposed to be able to speak to their children before they're born.... She won't know me, she won't know her own mother."

"I'm sure they'll have told her who you were," Ketvia assured her. "I bet they even have pictures they've shown her."

"It's not the same..." Chiya moaned, pawing lightly and helplessly at the closed laboratory door, which refused to open for her. "What if she doesn't like me?"

"Then she'll go live with someone else," Ketvia grumbled. "They're going to make more than just her, you know."

"But she's my first!" Chiya whimpered.

"If I knew you'd be so stupid about this, I wouldn't have ever suggested it," Ketvia muttered. Chiya ignored her, but fell silent, at least, and merely went back to worrying. It had come to her, over the past three days since her firstborn-- or whatever you might call her-- was officially hatched and moved to the clean-room incubator for quarantine, that she didn't know anything about being a mother, and what little she did know was completely irrelevant in this strange mothering situation. Now that things had been set in motion, she was having second, third, and even fourth thoughts about it.

Not that she wouldn't make every effort to be the best mother she could to this little one... she didn't even know her name. All she knew was that she was a she: a "pretty little girl", according to Schroeder. So she worried. What if the best she could do wasn't good enough? What if, like that poor hatchling of Aedelian's, she simply hated her mother? Resented her for forcing her into unnatural existence? For-- for never sharing the flow of thought and emotion that mothers were supposed to share with their unborn? What if it wasn't even so blatant as that, but they simply didn't get along?

What if she was simply a bad mother, and made her daughter miserable?

"Chiya, you're twitching again! Stop it!" Ketvia almost-snapped.

"I can't help it! You wouldn't be so calm if it was your baby in there!"

That seemed to strike a nerve, and Ketvia looked away with her ears turned back. Before a slightly confused Chiya could ask what was wrong, though, the door to the laboratory slid open with a little hiss, and she completely forgot about Ketvia to focus solely on Doctor Schroeder as he came out to greet them, beaming in that grandfatherly way he had. "Good afternoon, Chiya, Ketvia," he began.

"Hello, Doctor," Chiya answered, wings flicking nervously again. Ketvia just grunted a little and nodded her shaggy head in acknowledgement.

"Here to meet your daughter, I presume?" he asked, eyes twinkling with merry amusement. How could he be amused, when Chiya was so tense? Despite the obvious rhetorical nature of the question, she nodded fervently. Schroeder chuckled, and stepped aside. "Well, then, I am pleased to introduce to you, Callidei Diemicana-Pariyani."

"Pariyani?" Chiya repeated blankly. As a round, fluffy little dragon kit, not even three feet high, stepped out of a doorway Chiya couldn't see, looked around with wide, bright red eyes, and then toddled towards the doctor and two stunned dragonesses, Chiya realized with a shock that Doctor Schroeder hadn't just picked any random creature from his biopool to be her children's "father", he'd picked Ketvia's. She was white, all right, but her pigmentation was brilliant red, her wings were furry up to the first digit of the tine, and instead of a horn, she had a ridge of upstanding kitten-fuzz that would eventually turn into a thick mane of fur, tufts to her ears, and fluffy sideburns-- just like a Fire's.

"Callidei, these are your parents," Schroeder added for the child's benefit. "Come say hello: Chiya, in particular, has been quite anxious to meet you!"

The crossbreed obediently toddled forward a few more steps, right up to Chiya's tightly clenched forepaws, and sat herself right down there. She looked up... and up... and up... until she met Chiya's nearly-tearful, half-terrified expression. There was a moment of silence, then Callidei broke into a huge grin and exclaimed, with the slightly-off pronunciation of a toddler, "Wow! I didn' know dragins're so big!"

Ketvia burst into a fit of coughing, a poor mask for her obvious urge to start laughing. Schroeder merely continued to beam serenely, and Chiya was at a loss. "I-- well, yes, we are rather big, I suppose."

"You'll, ahem, grow up just as big, I expect," Ketvia managed, flashing the kit a toothy grin. "If not bigger."

"Really?" Callidei exclaimed eagerly. "Will I be's hairy as you?"

This time Ketvia didn't bother concealing her bark of laughter. "Who knows? You do have some of my genes in you, and I'm about as hairy as they come!"

Callidei answered with a giggle.

Chiya was dismayed. Devastated, even. This was not how she had imagined, hoped, this meeting would proceed! True, at least the child wasn't bitter or angry-- but-- but she'd been right, her first child didn't even care that she was her mother! Didn't even seem to notice! She stifled a horrified sniffle, eyes burning.

"An will I be preddy's her, too?" Callidei asked, pointing up at Chiya's chest with the first tine of one wing just as one one fat, hot tear started tracing a path down her muzzle.

"Oh, I dunno 'bout that," Ketvia chuckled, turning her attention back to her partner, "It's hard to be as pretty as Chiya, even when... she's... crying." Ketvia turned back her ears, surprised. "Chiya?" Chiya hastily brushed at her muzzle with one fist, but more tears joined the first few, and she couldn't stop them. Ketvia opened her wing around her, suddenly more than a little worried. "Chiya, honey, are you all right? What's wrong?"

"Oh, no!" Callidei cried, sounding distressed, and started patting Chiya's foreleg, as high as she could reach, in a childlike attempt at comforting. "Don' cry! Don' cry, is okay! Is okay, preddy dragin lady, don' cry!"

That didn't help matters any: the tears only came faster at the very un-motherly designation of "pretty dragon lady". Ketvia would have groaned, if she hadn't had enough on her paws without worrying about making the kit upset, too. "But-- I'm-- your-- mother!" Chiya wept, one word at a time making it out between sniffles. "I'm-- not-- just some-- dragon-- lady!"

"Mommy-lady?" Callidei tried.

It was a step in the right direction, anyway. "Hows about just 'Mommy'?" Ketvia suggested.

"Oh, okay," Callidei nodded earnestly, looking almost in sympathetic tears, herself, and tried again: "Mommy?"

With a sob, Chiya swept the tiny dragonet up against her furry cheek; Callidei made a little squeak of surprise but, to Ketvia's intense relief, didn't struggle or cry out. Instead, she settled there and stroked Chiya's fur, whimpering her litany of, "Is okay, don' cry, Mommy, is okay, don' cry, Mommy," while Chiya simply did just that.

"I, uh, think we'll need a minute," Ketvia told the previously-silent Schroeder, who nodded solemnly and backed back into the laboratory, leaving Ketvia and Callidei to try and comfort Chiya. At least she could only cry for so long before she ran out of steam, and was soon reduced to hiccoughs and sniffles.

"There, feeling a little better?" Ketvia asked warmly, using her own furry finger to wipe away a few trailing tears.

Chiya didn't answer, moving the still-distressed, ear-drooping, salt-damp Callidei from her cheek to sit on her open palms. "Is it all right?" she asked her tearfully. "That-- that I'm you're mother?"

Confused by the question, the poor kit looked back at her a little blankly. After a pause, while she tried to think of the right answer, she finally came up with a tentative sounding, "Yes?"

"Chiya, she doesn't hate you," Ketvia assured her quickly when another tear at the equivocal answer threatened another breakdown. She didn't want to have to deal with two of them bawling, because she was sure that if Chiya descended into tears again, Callidei would follow, this time.

"Nono, don' hate you!" Callidei echoed, looking extremely wide-eyed, as if that were a horrible thought.

"Do you-- do you like me? Just a little?" Chiya asked pitifully.

"Sure!" Callidei blinked. "You's preddy! An you's the firs' dragin I ever met!"

When Chiya started to smile, just a little, Ketvia started to relax. Just a little. And if that Schroeder doesn't let her talk to her next batch kids, I'll just have to chew on him until he changes his mind, Ketvia told herself firmly, Because I'm going to go mad if I have to go through this with every single demon-forsaken pup!

Still... it made Kevtia smile, just a little, watching Chiya smooth Callidei fur again, apologizing for falling apart, eliciting a shaky purr from her daughter's throat. Their daughter's fur. They had a daughter. The two of them.

What a rush that was.

Chapter Five

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