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Language:
English
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Published:
2021-08-26
Words:
444
Chapters:
1/1
Comments:
6
Kudos:
112
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In which future will we trust?

Summary:

The world is changing, faster than anyone can hold on: their greatest monster may think these Eliksni are his people, but that doesn't make him one of theirs... yet.
Maybe kinship comes with gestures of trust.

...Alternately: "My working doc was 'saint cuddles a baby elixni.txt'"

Notes:

There's so little capitalizing on the bittersweet!dad-vibes of Saint-14 finding out he's a bedtime story monster. More, I say! More

Work Text:

Eido crouched down to Saint-14 where the Exo sat between two of the Eliksni's cots. Cross-legged on the floor, knees smirched with the dirt even the best efforts of the inhabitants hadn't been able to keep away, he seemed much more man than legend, but she still moved warily, with great care.

"You will need to be careful - their sides are very soft at this age. Hold them cupped against you, do not squeeze," she said, gently laying what she carried in his arms with one pair of hands as she adjusted his pose with her other. Saint nodded slightly, solemn.

Only once he took a moment to look away from her to contemplate the precious gift cradled in the crook of his arm did the reality crash upon him. Gently, gentle as can be, he brought his free hand up to support the back of the hatchling's head; with the lightest brush of one thumb, he touched its tiny cheek.

It occurred to him, in a cold twist of fear, how fragile the little one was. His hand dwarfed it, made real its smallness; skin like paper, skull like eggshell.

He understood why Eido was afraid.

He found he was afraid too.

Ebbing in like the sound of a heartbeat, a vision overwhelmed him: a newborn human, skin still wet with newness and face half-hidden in the elbow of a well-muscled arm. Light, the peach of soft dawn, shining through the curtains of some unseen window; the world irrelevant when the soft whorls of a massive-seeming thumb brushed so delicately over one small ear. Then, like a pang of grief, the fragment was gone; but this little one was not.

Eido spoke from over his shoulder. "Now here, the food - " He accepted the dish gingerly, balancing it in his lap. The infant Eliksni blinked up at him curiously.

The cubed foodstuff proved soft to the touch; he tried not to smash them to paste as he fished out a single piece.

"Here you are, littlest one!" he said, wiggling the cube before its blue, blue eyes.

It made a soft peep, then opened its mouth and started cheeping an excited strain of noise like a baby bird. Saint was stricken by the resemblance - the diamond shape, the colorful little pattern at the back of the throat, the hollow-boned lightness. As he fed cubes in at the hatchling's request - to brief remissions in peeping as they swallowed - he rocked them back and forth, humming the faintest memory of a lullaby.

(Unavoidably, he imagined a nest, a family. A home: two birds and their nestlings, safe and together and - Exo cannot cry.)

(Saint cannot cry.)