She whispered, “We have to pack for you too, you know. I’m guessing we might be going to Bermuda, since your daddy read that whole book in the middle of the night.”
The baby looked deep into her eyes and patted her face.
***
Mommy carried him into his room. He thought things were going well until she set him on the thick, soft rug in the middle of the floor.
No, that wasn’t what he wanted. That was very much not what he wanted.
He was tired again, and his mouth hurt, and he was hungry all the time. Hungry for what, he didn’t know. Hungry, hungry.
So he scowled and concentrated mightily on something that he wanted.
And the world shifted.
He felt better. Quite a bit better, actually. His new mouth didn’t hurt at all, but he was still very hungry.
Mommy kept talking as she moved around his room. She pulled diapers out of drawers, set them on the changing table and turned to the closet. “…I want to take you to the beach and play in the sand with you, except I don’t know that we should. Are you too young to play in sand, or to go into salt water? Peanut, you are such a statistical outlier, half the time I have no idea what we should do with you.”
She turned away from the closet, her arms full of clothes. When she looked at him, she shrieked and dropped everything.
It startled him so badly he felt a burst of anxiety. He turned around to scoot backward toward her as fast as he could, but something flopped along his back, and his arms and legs weren’t quite working the way they should. He stopped, confused, and stared down at himself.
Slender white forelegs stretched to the floor. He raised a front paw, staring at the strange talons. His back felt odd too, and he looked over his shoulder, flexing sleek, graceful wings. A tail trailed the floor behind him. He reached for it with one forepaw, tugged the end and his butt wagged. The tail was attached to him.
Mommy knelt in front of him and cupped his face. He looked up into her eyes. She had grown teary, and yet she was smiling. “You are the cleverest baby ever. You’re so beautiful, and exactly how I first dreamed of you.”
Pleasure washed over him, and he smiled at her.
Her eyes went very round. She beamed at him. “That’s quite a mouthful of toofers you’ve got there, too.”
She gathered him up in her arms. He tucked his snout into the crook of her neck, and it was so good, almost everything he wanted, except…
He was so hungry.
He fussed and whined, and she sat on the floor and rocked him, while she dug her cell phone out of her pocket and moved her thumb rapidly over the keypad. “Dragos, you have to come home right now.”
Daddy’s sharp voice came over the phone. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong exactly, but Liam has changed and he’s upset.”
“What do you mean, he’s changed?”
The pace of Mommy’s rocking picked up, but she spoke softly. “I mean he’s in his dragon form, and I can’t tell you how beautiful he is. He’s also upset for some reason. Maybe it scared him? And you’re missing all of it. You need to come see this.”
“I’ll be right there.”
Mommy set the phone aside as Liam whined and plucked at her shirt. “Are you hungry?” she asked gently. He nodded. “I can’t nurse you when you’re like this, sweetheart, not with all of those razor-sharp teeth.”
That was the saddest thing he had ever heard in his whole life. He lifted his head and looked at her, grief stricken.
“Oh, Peanut, I’m so sorry. Please don’t look at me that way.” They considered each other desperately. Mommy’s expression turned firm. He folded his wings back and clung to her as she rolled to her feet and carried him to the kitchen.
She opened the fridge door and pulled out a pan that had the something he was craving. It smelled oh so good. His stomach rumbled and he arched toward it, reaching with both front paws.
“Hold on—let me get the plastic wrap off first.”
As she slid to the floor, he struggled to get to the appetizing smell. She snatched off the plastic wrap, set the pan on the kitchen tile, and he fell on the leftover sirloin roast. Eyes closed, his whole body tense, he focused on gorging on the meat.
Running footsteps sounded in the background, but it was only Daddy, so he ignored it. A moment later, Daddy said in a quiet voice, “Well, damn. Look at that. Hello, little man.”
A large, gentle hand came down on Liam’s back, between his wings, and contentment filled him.
“I didn’t know what else to do.” She gestured to the pan. “He acted like he was starving, and he has all those teeth. Then I remembered what you said about how he was going to need a lot of meat.”
“He gave you clues about what he needed, and you followed your instincts,” said Daddy. “You did exactly what you should have done.”
Liam finished off the roast. The hungriness had gone away, and his belly felt comfortably stretched and full. Sleepiness descended. Eyes drooping, he looked over his shoulder. Daddy and Mommy knelt on either side of him, both smiling.