The baby is crying so much. He is sobbing, red in the face, and wailing and grabbing at the air, full of indescribable wants and discomforts. Alecto stares out at the sea, blankly, one pale hand against the edge of the crib, rocking it slowly and hopelessly. It does nothing. He is exhausted. However, the baby only wails louder the more he's ignored and Alecto’s heart clenches, feeling a sudden burst of too many things all at once: confusion, anger, apathy, affection, worry, terror, guilt.
His other two children were nothing like this, he laments. Then again, Avery and Daphne were born of magic, with the song of the sea in their veins. They were born as selkies, as part of this ancient tribe and species, wise beyond their years, amidst the seafoam and the crashing tides.
But Percy? Percy was human. And just that. Nothing more, nothing less.
There were a lot of firsts with him in fact. Unlike his siblings, Percy took a full 9 months in the womb instead of the usual 3-4 for most selkie pups. He also made Alecto so violently ill while pregnant with him, causing him to throw up every morning since he first started to show, straight into the marigolds outside the house. The constant kicking and turning of the stubborn infant also made Alecto woozy and useless for hours while simultaneously giving him an absolutely crazed craving for almonds at all times.
When Percy was finally born, it took nearly a full day of agony and once he was finally out, Alecto immediately knew there was something missing, something wrong: he had no sealskin. He was just a wriggling, screaming, messy, pink skinned little boy, completely naked and plain. No magic, no blessings. He had only one form, one body, locked to the land. Alecto had stared, unbelievingly, hair damp and stuck to his face, all color having left his cheeks in shock.
Immediately, tragically, Alecto was struck with this thought as the infant was placed in his numb arms: that isn’t my child. It can’t be. And the sour taste of such a terrible idea, that he would even consider that to be true, hammered an open wound into his very heart.
(It must have been his fault, Alecto thinks, irrationally, and daily. How could his magic have skipped his new son but not the others? How could his body not have known what to do after all this time? How -)
When he hears the front door open in the middle of his musing, he finally realizes what time it is and he starts. His husband is back home and there is, for the first time in a long time, no dinner waiting for him, no delicately clean home: just a tired, mournful wife and an unhappy baby he didn’t know how to connect to that was howling. Alecto panics, scooping up the miserable infant into his arms and desperately tries to soothe him to no avail while he rushes into the kitchen, frantically trying to think of what to do. A mixture of shame and terror fly over his face. How could he have forgotten?
Percy is shrieking in his ear and Alecto is pleading quietly in his mind for a moment’s peace so that he could think. The laundry hadn’t been done either, he realizes, now that he was taking full inventory of the home around him, and the floors were still dirty from when Avery chased his sister in from outside, dragging mud from his boots all over the ground. And oh, there had been a jacket he was mending for Joshua, for the coming autumn, that he still hasn’t touched and now there was so very little time left -
(He remembers when he first came on land and was taught by the women in the Blackburn family what a man expects of his wife. He remembers doing it all wrong at first, how annoyed Nathanial had been - “What even do you do all day here, then?” He had sighed, shoving Alecto aside to get himself a drink and annoyed at having to do so - and how Alecto had eventually found a rhythm of tasks and activities and duties that he was then determined to never faltered from.
But that was so very long ago.)
“I’m so sorry,” are the first words out of his mouth when he sees his husband walk in, wondering if he’s disappointed - god forbid, angry - at all for having to come home after a hard day’s work (and he does, he works so hard to provide for them) to an empty table and a weepy wife and nothing but problems. He wants to go over and help Joshua with his things, help get him settled, but he’s frozen in place, his hands feeling both empty and full at the same time.
[it's just love nobody dies]
His other two children were nothing like this, he laments. Then again, Avery and Daphne were born of magic, with the song of the sea in their veins. They were born as selkies, as part of this ancient tribe and species, wise beyond their years, amidst the seafoam and the crashing tides.
But Percy? Percy was human. And just that. Nothing more, nothing less.
There were a lot of firsts with him in fact. Unlike his siblings, Percy took a full 9 months in the womb instead of the usual 3-4 for most selkie pups. He also made Alecto so violently ill while pregnant with him, causing him to throw up every morning since he first started to show, straight into the marigolds outside the house. The constant kicking and turning of the stubborn infant also made Alecto woozy and useless for hours while simultaneously giving him an absolutely crazed craving for almonds at all times.
When Percy was finally born, it took nearly a full day of agony and once he was finally out, Alecto immediately knew there was something missing, something wrong: he had no sealskin. He was just a wriggling, screaming, messy, pink skinned little boy, completely naked and plain. No magic, no blessings. He had only one form, one body, locked to the land. Alecto had stared, unbelievingly, hair damp and stuck to his face, all color having left his cheeks in shock.
Immediately, tragically, Alecto was struck with this thought as the infant was placed in his numb arms: that isn’t my child. It can’t be. And the sour taste of such a terrible idea, that he would even consider that to be true, hammered an open wound into his very heart.
(It must have been his fault, Alecto thinks, irrationally, and daily. How could his magic have skipped his new son but not the others? How could his body not have known what to do after all this time? How -)
When he hears the front door open in the middle of his musing, he finally realizes what time it is and he starts. His husband is back home and there is, for the first time in a long time, no dinner waiting for him, no delicately clean home: just a tired, mournful wife and an unhappy baby he didn’t know how to connect to that was howling. Alecto panics, scooping up the miserable infant into his arms and desperately tries to soothe him to no avail while he rushes into the kitchen, frantically trying to think of what to do. A mixture of shame and terror fly over his face. How could he have forgotten?
Percy is shrieking in his ear and Alecto is pleading quietly in his mind for a moment’s peace so that he could think. The laundry hadn’t been done either, he realizes, now that he was taking full inventory of the home around him, and the floors were still dirty from when Avery chased his sister in from outside, dragging mud from his boots all over the ground. And oh, there had been a jacket he was mending for Joshua, for the coming autumn, that he still hasn’t touched and now there was so very little time left -
(He remembers when he first came on land and was taught by the women in the Blackburn family what a man expects of his wife. He remembers doing it all wrong at first, how annoyed Nathanial had been - “What even do you do all day here, then?” He had sighed, shoving Alecto aside to get himself a drink and annoyed at having to do so - and how Alecto had eventually found a rhythm of tasks and activities and duties that he was then determined to never faltered from.
But that was so very long ago.)
“I’m so sorry,” are the first words out of his mouth when he sees his husband walk in, wondering if he’s disappointed - god forbid, angry - at all for having to come home after a hard day’s work (and he does, he works so hard to provide for them) to an empty table and a weepy wife and nothing but problems. He wants to go over and help Joshua with his things, help get him settled, but he’s frozen in place, his hands feeling both empty and full at the same time.