Star Side

Epilogue

 Amber sat on a thick fur blanket, all lavender pudge and big gold eyes, and stared unblinking at Levi. Levi stared back with an arm rested on his bent knee, hanging his coffee by his fingertips.

I watched him for a moment with Cauline on my hip before asking what in the world he was doing.

"The first one to blink loses," he said.

I snorted and set down Cauline on the edge of the blanket, where she proceeded to gum on her fingers and stare at her sister. Their brother, Shorack, was preoccupied with pulling himself up on the stone ledges of the empty conference room usually used for important royal meetings, but which had become our unofficial playroom when we had non-royal visitors. His little tail stuck out straight like a kitten's from his puffy diaper and his little pink lips were slightly parted in concentration. He alone, out of the three babies, had natural human coloring, besides the purple of his hands and feet and hair. His eyes had faded to a brown-gold and, according to Naomi and Levi, looked the most like me.

Amber blinked.

"Hah." Levi smirked.

I rolled my eyes. "Good job, Levi. You beat a baby at a staring contest."

"She was asking for it."

Amber burbled and started to suck on her bottom lip.

"Nu uh," Levi tapped her chin hard enough to pull the lip out. "No suck." He grabbed the teething toy nearby and tickled said lip with it. "Num num."

Amber wrinkled her nose in distaste at having something shoved into her mouth, but then chomped on the cool, squishy toy with gladness.

"Good girl," Levi crooned.

I chuckled, even as I handed a teething toy to Cauline to save her poor fingers, which were as bruised as Amber's bottom lip from their attempts to teeth on themselves. The teething toys themselves were a stroke of brilliance on mine, Naomi's, and Levi's part. They were basically cooling biogel packs used in the cooling system on the life pods. They had extra thick skins meant to survive increased temperatures and grew colder the more heat they were exposed too. Just right for sore baby gums trying to break a tooth. They also had the added bonus of being nontoxic, if the babies somehow tore through the thick plastic, which was highly unlikely.

All the aliens took it as one of the many evidences that divine beings were phenomenally inventive and out of this world intelligent, baring the fact that none of the us had invented the biogel.

Watching Shorack waddle his fluffy butt along the seats was Naomi, who'd become all stars and warm grandma the moment she'd met them. A lifetime of wishing for children came in full and I never knew Naomi could look so content and happy. Though, occasionally, something sad would cross over her eyes and I knew she was thinking of Joshua.

"You're never going to look big and bad again," I told Levi.

"There's nothing more big and bad than a man with a kid," he said. "Like a bear with cubs. You just don't screw with them."

"Does that make you mama bear?"

"More like uncle bear. Damn, these little freaks shouldn't be so cute. There's got to be a law against that somewhere."

"Don't call my kids freaks."

"It's an endearment."

Cauline rolled onto her back with a flop to get a look behind her, still chewing on the biogel pack. Amber looked over to see what the movement was for and caught sight of her sister's wiggling toes. She meant to grab them, but forgot to let go of her teething toy in the process and ended up smacking them with slobbery biogel pack instead, making Cauline jump a little and stare.