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This was clearly the big one He didn’t want to say John couldn’t look at me and talk at the sa in the water “Aboutabout eighty-five?”
He didn’t look a day out of college
“Let ot to be kiddingchances?
I hadn’t noticed before I knoe had sex and everything, but I’m not really into feet that way I checked under his ared huial skull-fins the color of the jellyfish on the beach
“Mystery solved,” I purred in his ear “You’re one of us Half one of us, anyway Welcoets real stupid here”
• • •
And indeed it did get real stupid, real fast
I shouldn’t have gotten knocked up It’s so easy when you’re doing it with other fish! If it’s not ood tiot a lot of uess the rules are different Probably what happened to his poortopside for a bit of blow and strange and all of a sudden—BAM Egged up soo from zero to mum in about six weeks, so I juststuck around I couldn’t faceon stage screa ol’ baby belly It is the opposite of punk rock
The best part of giving birth was the look on John Heron’s face I don’t knohat he saw in his sex-ed fil in the ocean in broad daylight while she pushes out an aquahy and tries to hide what’s happening froht the daddy’s job was to se a couple of diapers, not to wait until nightfall to drag the egg onto the sand and secrete a nutritive acid from his eyes to dissolve the shell I don’t think I ever loved hiain as unk hissing and popping on the eggshell, laughing at the total bugfuck absurdity of as happening to hi had half-littering yolk I felt tiny fingers clutch my hand
Look, I have never been anything but hardcore since I said rabbed onto me for the first ti ever hurt soand held him in my arms He didn’t cry He held on to my hair in his fists
Of course, he wasn’t him yet Atlanteans are born her as a huarten, most of us still have clear patches all over I counted diah crystal skin
“It’ll be a boy in about a year,” I whispered to John
We both stared at our child I was amazed any creature could be so perfect and beautiful John was alass Christmas ornament of the baby Jesus
We naus John insisted, after his foster father I only gave in because everything else about Angus was all me You’d never know he had any mammal in theBut ere alone I called hireed Atlantean name for the secret prince of the sea Because I still hadn’t told John who I was WhoBayou for sous was born, we had to go ho a baby’s bottle full of ru boy needs salt water
This is the part you’ve been waiting for I knohat stories fill the seats, and it’s not the one about the punk rock alligator princess getting knocked up That’s what happens before the real story Or offstage during an act break Babies just sort of happen to heroes at random moments, like a new superpower, and then they’re off to the real exciteus and I happened to each other Lucky accidents All the way down, his gentle little voice spoke in h, air-shredded whiskey-whisperso beautifully, like he’d never walked in his life, wondering if he could hear us But I guess he was too human for that