Adam had always been an optimist, not the naive kind of optimist that hopes everything is going to be alright all the time, but that kind of optimism that assumed he could make it through anything. Perhaps it was less optimist and more a sense of balance that he believed in. Where there are highs there are lows, where there is evil there is good, and where there is pain there is joy. Light cannot exist without dark Yin and Yang sort of logic. Adam had experienced some terrible lows in life, but he had always been comforted by his optimistic assumption that there had to be some balance, his lowest lows had to be balanced out by his highest highs, and the lower he went his only assumption was that there might be an amazing high waiting for him later.

Up to his point in his life that rule had remained true enough. It had started out small of course, his poor school experience balanced out by a food family, his high school experience turning into his training at the academy. Those joyful years learning to fly and meeting aliens balanced right back out with the Drev war, and the incredible low he had hit with the loss of his leg. Getting his ship, losing his eye, meeting sunny and later falling in love with her. All of this and then the birth of his son which was such a high high he could now see that it required an incredibly low low.

One he wasn't sure he'd be able to come back from.

He didn't want to leave a widow, or a fatherless child.

Two now since his sacrifice had been successful, but what was to stop Kazna from trying again.

He was only aware of the first few minutes following the trident entering his chest, acutely aware of the way it had torn through one of his lungs and, likely fatally, impacted his heart or close enough to it. He had lain there as Sunny stepped over his body, hot blood beginning to pool under his torso. She hadn't looked at him, but neither bothrered nor surprised him.

She was a Drev, having her battle partner fall in combat was not uncommon, and the only response that would have seemed optional to her must have been to attack.

He wouldn't have had it any other way.

And then

Things began to fade and the world around him flickered. When he closed his eyes, his mind sort of... collapsed, some unseen barrier in his head losing its strength and falling away to let him mind drift outward. Perhaps it was the beginning of the slow degradation of his mind, but that thought was only present as a whisper as his consciousness spilled across the open floor, rolling in a slow inevitable wave like the viscus spreading of honey.

It was Krill's mind he touched first, Followed by Mitzen, and Conn, and all the way up until he reached Sunny. Her thoughts were familiar to him, comforting like his favorite song, and with a certain cadence personal only to her. It was a driving rhythm but at the same time very steady.

At this point he was too far gone to really be aware of where he was or what he was doing, but her mind was familiar, comforting, and in an effort to escape a lingering fear and pain, he found himself drawn to her, sinking into her thoughts like warm scalding water.

There were thoughts on the surface, just the flash of battle, more instinct than thought. Just the rhythm that came with combat.

And that was nice too

And there was anger.

And fear,.

He sunk deeper, deeper than he had ever gone before, unaware at ont point that it had been possible searching for something soft or calm. The memory that he found was neither but it was one he could certainly linger upon... because he hadn't seen it before

***

Nearly ten months, ten months and the days seemed to stretch into weeks. WIthout a sun overhead to track the passage of time, Sunny had always felt that Arcadia moved slower, somehow. She leaned against the glass of the window in the spiral tower and watched. Below her on the street people crawled like insects over the slowly growing metropolis.

Behind her, water burbled, and the tree waited as trees always waited in the silence. The place seemed so big now, big and empty with an echo that only reminded her of what was missing. She wasn't alone of course, off to her right, resting on the couch was waffles, curled into a tight ball, her snout resting gently on her paws. When sunny looked at her, the dog's tail beat once or twice in acknowledgement. Sunny had to look away from the sad brown eyes and up into the tree where Jeffrey sat curled around a waiting branch.

When hse looked at him, he made a soft chirping noise, but otherwise remained still

She was restless.

Incredibly restless.

She felt like she needed to move, needed to walk. She thought about heading outside and going on a hike into the dark moorlands beyond the city, but thought better of it. So instead she paced around the floor of the apartment and thought about just how distant this all was from how her life had originally been. Billions of miles and countless man hours of invention away from her moss thatched hut back on anin.

Strange how her life had come to this,.

Strange and now kind of sad.

She sighed again and rubbed her lower hands absently against her thighs which, along with her hips, had been aching all week. Aching and joint pain wasn't something usually ascribed to drev, that was more of a human thing, but here it was. She stepped back from the window, eyes momentarily focusing on her reflection in the dark glass.

She looked the same as she always had, and was eternally grateful that Drev didn't change in the way humans did. She trend to the side trying to imagine the big bulbous lump that would have marked a human woman in the latter stages of pregnancy, but as a Drev the signs were subtle and her torso remained mostly unchanged.

That's what happens when you have more room.

Her inhumanity was the one blessing she could hold onto as, there were a lot of unknowns in this territory that certainly weren't covered. Like the looming chance that the child wouldn't even be viable. There had only ever been one other naturally occurring hybrid birth on Anin, and Krill had been forced to preform an emergency cesarean section on a Finnari mother struggling to contain a human hybrid baby. The baby had been fine of course, but that was a sample size of one.

Sunny had seen the images of course, all of the ultrasounds, and strange technology that let her see her offspring before it was even here. Krill said there was a heartbeat, and it was most certainly moving.

She could feel that well enough.

But being alive inside her and alive on the outside of her were two different things. What if it couldn't breathe normally. The human and Drev respiratory systems were perhaps one of the most different things about them. How the adapted DNA could moderate that was one of her greatest fears.

Which is why Krill had been staying in the apartment just below them in case something were to happen.

She turned in a slow circle as the aching in her hips intensified.

Off to the side waffles lifted her head in some interest, and leaped down from the couch.

Sunny patted her head as she moved closer.

Waffles whined.

Sunny frowned, "I fed you this morning didn't I?"

Waffles backed away from Sunny's hand and whined again circling her sharply.

Sunny looked at her still with some confusion, 'I'm sorry I don't understand." Waffles whined again and Sunny sighed, stretching her lower back which was now beginning to ache along with her hips, "If you don't tell me what you want I can't get it for you. Do you want to go outside/'

Waffles just stared at her.

"You aren't about to throw up are you. That is a moment I never want to experience again, thanks. If you eat weird things you get what is coming to you.

Waffles just whimpered again.

"I don't speak-" she paused and leaned against the window, "Ouch." Her entire back, her hips, and referred pain all the way down to her knees,

This was getting stupid,

"Well if you don't need anything I'm going to find some scalding hot water to soak in." She said mumbling under her breath heading through the door to her room and into the bathroom. She pointedly ignored her reflection in the mirror and walked over to the shower, which she switched on to let warm. Adam always complained she liked to take her showers at Volcanic heat, and it wasn't long before the bathroom was filled with steam and radiating heat.

It must have been the heat that did it, thousands of years of ritual birth on the edge of volcanos. Perhaps it was simply the heat that did it, but the aching in her hips suddenly sharpened, rolled upwards into her abdomen where all of the muscles in her lower body seemed to tighten all at once against her bidding.

She gripped the edge of the counter before the pain passed leaving her with the dull aching again.

Sunny stared at her foggy reflection in the mirror, and then poked her head out into the bedroom where Waffles was lying by the door, "I get it," She said to the dog who lifted her head and whined again.

"Now?" Sunny muttered

Waffles barked.

"Not a false alarm?"

Waffles barked again.

Sunny reached down to pat her through the open door and then retreated back into the heat. She walked over to the tap and turned it up even higher until condensation was beading on her carapace. She didn't have a volcano but this would have to do.

She was oddly disappointed she didn't have a volcano.

Her bathroom was significantly less impressive.

But still it was warm, and the heat was nice even as her body went into spasms again. She could have called Krill, probably should have but something stopped her. Old drev beliefs dying hard.

This was something she wanted to do alone.

She hated the way humans did it, making a spectacle of things.

She didn't want a spectacle.

Another wave of pain came, and she slowly lowered herself to her knees sitting with her head down, silent and waiting as steam washed over her body.

The aching had begun late the day before, so she supposed that meant she had been in inactive labor for a little over 12 hours now and just hadn't noticed it. That could happen to Drev though she wasn't sure it could happen to humans. The waves continued to come, faster and faster, each one more painful than the last. She stayed silent fists clenched, body ridged, all her muscles taught counting up the seconds as each wave of pain hit her. The pain grew worse and she was doubled over, on her hands and knees now breath coming in sharp hissing gasps, but she would not make a sound.

Fearing it would ruin her concentration.

The pain reached a crescendo, and with heat and water rolling down her body. Her vision went red, and then white hot and then red again, and her entire body shook from the force. Then something gave.

Her lower hands were positioned just right to catch it, warm and unpleasantly slimy. The floor around her was spattered with orange blood , but Sunny didn't care. She staggered to her feet holding the tiny body up in the palms of her hands, searching its face for signs of life.

For a horrible moment she thought something was wrong with it, its entire body a sort of livid red covered in orange gore nose screwed up, and something covering its head. It had all together too many limbs and not enough carapace, and she couldn't tell what was wrong with it for the first horrible seconds.

She tried brushing the sticky coating from its body one hand instinctively rubbing at its chest, or at least that's what she thought.

Then it twitched, failed a little.

And screamed.

She was so taken aback she took a step back, but all at once the picture resolved before her.

It was.... Human mostly, and yes it did have too many limbs but that's because it had an extra set of arms.

The thing on its head was hair, and a lot of it plastered in sticky spikes to its head. The more she looked the clearer the picture became. It continued to scream, and Sunny had to admit that....

It wasn't very cute.

She felt immediately horrible for thinking that but.

It was nothing like a Drev baby.

Truth be told it was kind of ugly.

Was it supposed to look like that?

She reached into the shower to turn off the water and, not knowing what to do staggered out into the next room where it was almost ice cold compared to the steamy bathroom.

That didn't seem like a good idea, and she returned to the bathroom to grab a towel in which she wrapped the tiny screaming thing still damp. Waffles followed at her heels as she meandered in a confusion into the next room walking in a circle before she finally figured out what to do. She opened her comm.

"Krill."

"Yes Sunny, what, is that noise/"

"Uh, you better hurry up here. I need you to tell me if its supposed to look like this."

-

As it turns out newborn human babies have all the aesthetic appeal of a corpse worm, so that was at least comforting. Krill was angry she hadn't called him but she let him be angry. At the very least, there was a piece of Adam in the world that was still alive,

Alive and slightly squished, but alive nonetheless.