I spy with my little eye, an entire world that has been bubble-wrapped, and made child-safe, for a gaggle of adorable little ragamuffins. I watch them play. I watch them learn. I kept my eye on them, because what else would I do with the apples of my eye?…Yet, I did so from a distance, because right now, I needed a little break.
I sat at the administrative desk of the Empty-Archive. It’s probably been a while hasn’t it? I can’t remember when I last updated this record. It hasn’t been that long ago. This isn’t another thousand-year, or million-year jump, though it kind of feels that way to me.
It’s only been a few short years. Maybe a few decades. A few years ago, my wives and I decided to finally start having children. Now we have those children and, though I love each and everyone, of those loveable, adorable brats. There is a reason that I’m here. Hiding in my cosmic library, where the natural laws make screaming and shrieking impossible.
The Calloway clan had given rise to a new generation. As expected, Kal gave me the most kids. Briefly going full queen-harvester, building a massive planet-sized nest, and laying several batches of eggs.
Eggs that eventually hatched and produced translucent, creepy-cute, little larva with our faces. Thankfully, the other Empty-Harvesters, Kal’s sisters and Aunts, were ready to throw in, roll up their collective sleeves, and help out. Kal and I could handle things when the larva were small but as soon as they pupated for the first time and started to get mobile, we were all grateful for the backup.
Speaking of eggs, Kian’s three little hatchlings were surprisingly even more of a handful than the several hundred or so that Kal gave me. It's terrible to say it, and I do very much love my kids, but I can understand why about half of the true-dragon breeds simply pass along some bloodline knowledge and fly off.
Dragonlings,... baby dragons. They could be…a lot. Demanding, and destructive, with a potent in-born arrogance. An arrogance that you’d need to nurture for the sake of promoting their future growth and engendering a healthy amount of self-esteem. An arrogance that you’d need to prune, and temper, before they did something stupid like trying to unilaterally war with all the demons and gods, or trying to eat a world with people living on it.
Ah…I can’t help but worry about what’s going to happen when they properly enter their teens. Mortal teenagers can already be cocky, and insufferable, with a deep belief in their own indestructibility. I shudder to think about what dragon teenagers will be like. I’ve tried asking Kian about her own adolescence and she just sort of blushed, and started mumbling to herself, before fleeing from the room. I’ve tried asking Kian’s good friend, maid, and viceroy, Lorelai of the Violet-Scales. The cool black-haired dragoness simply stared at me and told me that those records had been expunged for reason.
Ngh…Yes, I’m going to stop thinking about this now. I’m feeling chills just thinking about it. Let’s just quietly enjoy that they’re still just kids. Thankfully, they’ll still be kids for a good while longer. Being purely immortal, in a suitably safe higher-dimensional environment, my children’s bodies are growing at a significantly different, significantly slower time scale. Aiming for perfection and refinement, rather simply trying to get up and ready to face the world as might have been the case if I was raising the kinds in the mortal realms.
Despite normally being quite laid-back, my wife Yuval had surprisingly turned into a bit of a helicopter parent. She wasn’t smothering exactly, but I could tell from the moment that she held the two twin half-demons she’d given birth to in her hands, we’d both been bumped down a notch in the beautiful Demonlord’s heart. She was now the third-most important thing in her life, and I was now the fourth, and we were both okay with that, because we both knew if either of us had to choose between ourselves and the kids, we’d both die in a second for those two little demons.
In contrast, Ellison was much more laid-back as a mom. Honestly, her pregnancy had been the smoothest, which is a little weird since she had seven kids all at once. They came out as balls of gold and gray light. Sprouted three sets of static-y wings, and then it was only later as they grew a little older that they learned to take on a humanoid form. Then they appeared like somewhat darker, significantly smaller, versions of their mother. All of their features were identical. Making it look quite endearing, as they trailed behind her like goslings behind a mother goose.
I guess angel brats are just kind of different that way. Or more like, do angels even have a bratty phase? They mostly just seemed curious about the word if anything. They listened to whatever Ellison and I taught them regarding basic common-sense and general knowledge about the world. Then Florence, Ellison’s other half, and I would teach them how to use and control their various powers and survive in the worlds beyond our private universe.
It was fun teaching them things, but also a little scary. I got the sense that those kids were an almost perfectly blank canvas, and whatever I painted there would be almost perfectly reflected out onto the world. Thus sometimes I found myself being a bit of a bad influence when it came to those kids. I might have married, and eventually fallen in love with, an angel but I had no intention of raising angels. I wanted my children to live freely and pursue their own desires and goals without being confined by excessive concerns for the fate of the worlds.
Hong Mirae’s two kids were my most normal kids. They were a bit rough and tumble. Even as toddlers, those little half-human, half-ogre, half-”whatever the hell I am”s, were strong and rambunctious. Strong enough that between them and their dragonling siblings I’d had to update the protective enchantments on all the property within our private realm because those kids kept finding new ways to break things. Whether it was by using raw strength, to break down our mansion’s walls, or using their intrinsic power to accidentally shatter the laws of gravity or inertia, I’d learn quite a few new ways to fix broken things because of those kids of mine.
“Daddy, here you are! Found you! Found you!… Okay, now We’ll hide and you seek!” said a light voice.
The voice belonged to one of the three little girls that Jack gave me. My three precious little terrors. They were born into this world as darkness and nebulous gray nothingness, but quickly turned into a trio of wondrous, miraculous, little triplets. They weren’t as explosively rambunctious as Hong Mirae and Kian’s kids, but they’d inherited their mother’s sense of mischief, and they were the kids that tired me out the most. Yet, I couldn’t help but smile at seeing that one of them had managed to find their way through all the defenses I’d set up and find me in my hiding space.
“Alright, my sweets. Daddy will count to a hundred so you better hide yourselves well,” I said.
I was answered by a chorus of excited high-pitched giggles, and a stampede of hundreds of swift-running little feet. It seemed today would be another wonderfully exhausting day of parenthood.
