A sharp woman's voice cut across both of our concentrations. The sorcerer's gaze jerked up, color flooding his cheeks. A woman holding a small infant to her chest strode out from the shady doorway of the manor, a beleaguered looking woman in a black tunic chasing her with a shawl draped between her hands. The woman in black was holding it out, gesturing at the woman with the child, who ignored her. Rick's gaze flicked between the shawl-bearer and the baby-bearer, and when he spoke it was with the same out-of-control annoyance he'd shown his son.

"Bea? What are you doing out of the house?"

"Walking around to see our new city is a perfectly acceptable activity."

The woman was gorgeous, a splash of cool water in the desert of despair I was currently burning alive in. Her arms, flexed with padded muscles, indicated a life of activity before she started her life of maternity. A modest but well-tailored skirt hung off of her ample hips, pooling on the ground. One of her breasts was out of her lacy white top, obscured by the black haired infant feeding there. The breast was the reason for the sorcerer's red face. A poor woman's chest was a common enough sight, especially with infants, but an Arcanacrat hardly ever acted in such a way.

"While... exposed?"

The woman, Bea, loosened the arm that had been supporting the small baby and gestured toward the town. Some of the women in line had been feeding babies as well, though I hadn't even looked twice because of the commonness of it among ungifted. The sorcerer was protesting, ranting about dignity and decorum and the delicate responsibilities of a proper woman in the Enchanted caste, but she cut him off.

"There's no one important around for miles, finally. You've had delegates and guests in and out all month. It's been exhausting playing hostess. Especially to that obnoxious Charmster, ex-lover or no she's so tiresome Ricky... and anyway, I wanted to be in the sun on this lovely day. Who is going to judge us, the ungifted? Why is that man crawling around in coin?"

I winced as my Giant baby snatched a bunch of the skirt's fabric in her fist. She tugged, causing Bea to look down. Bea's face didn't squish in offense, but blossomed with curiosity.

"Is that... a tiny Giant?" She asked. Turning demurely away from us, she disengaged the small baby and tugged her shirt back up. The infant in her arms began to whine, working its way up to a full-fledged bawl. "Don't tell me you want to adopt another child. This little one here is fussy enough for triplets." She bounced the tiny baby in her arms, who fussed as its dark hair was stirred by the breeze. Even as she protested, she didn't pull her skirt away from the Giant's hands.

"What?" Ricky blurted, as confused as I was.

"I don't even know where I would start with feeding a Moon Giant. They're cannibals aren't they? Well I mean, they eat humans and elves. That hasn't been legal since the War, so it'd have to settle for pork. And how to properly civilize it? Suppose we'd have to hire a special nanny, a Wishid maybe..."

Rick scoffed in disdain.

"Feed? Bea, go back inside. This is between me and this Assistant."

She flashed her teeth at the baby Giant. My Giant flashed her gums back, eyes crinkling up. She tugged at the skirt again, attempting to climb this interesting stranger but lacking dexterity to do so. The baby Giant cooed, and for the first time, the sorcerer baby stopped whining. It turned its soft head and acknowledged the other infant.

"What a sweet smile," Bea admired.

"We're not—" Rick began, but he didn't get far.

"Still, I will not be swayed, Ricky. The Giants in the capitol Mystique Zoologic are most pugnacious... although they were captured as adults so perhaps it is a matter of nurturing. Still, no matter how well I do, if we find ourselves at cross roads... and.... If my powers flicker out I'll meet a far worse fate at the hands of a Moon Giant child than when whinny little Nini here tosses his rattle at me." She poked the infant in her arms in the nose.

"It's not a child; it's a monster. Bea, I know Avalons have generous hearts but this is truly excessively. Really." Rick protested.

"It's a baby. It hasn't cannibalized anyone," I said.

Bea soothed the child in her arms with her clean but unadorned hands, stroking its dark hair. The sorcerer baby was straining its small arms toward the ground, whether to the bed of sparkling coin or to the still cooing Giant baby was impossible to tell.

"So it is safe?" She asked me, ignoring Rick.

"Uh, she bites me sometimes, but I think she's trying to find... well.. you know... milk?"

"Look, look sweet child." She crouched down. Keeping her hands on the hips of Nini, she tested the heat of the stone walkway with a pinkie, before setting him down. My Giant baby dwarfed the normal one, but the Giant was shy. She gazed down with her orange eyes and her chin lowered. One glowing hand haltingly moving toward the pink child.

"Bea, don't!"

"Ricky, if we're going to adopt another child then we need to see if they get along," she snapped, and then softened her tone after seeing a wounded expression on her baby's face. "There, there. It's all right. Say hello, Nini."

The baby Giant's small hand touched the human baby's toes. Nini recoiled his foot, clumsily tugging back the limb. The baby Giant tried again, this time patting the ground in front of the sorcerer's baby. Behind me, Rick had stopped breathing. Then, Nini reached forward and met the baby Giant's hand. Their fingers were incapable of curling together, but they patted each other. The human baby giggled. My own Giant baby cooed, and as they smiled at each other, it created an echo, each baby's smile feeding the other baby's smile until they were both grinning from each to ear.

"How sweet," Bea said, hand still on either side of her child in case a quick retreat was needed but shoulders slumped in relief. "I told you we needed him around other babies. Look at how happy he is. He's been lonely, Ricky."

"That's not a baby, it's a monster."

"Of course it's a baby, don't be an icicle Ricky. Look at it. It's adorable."

Bea lifted one hand and stretched, her sleeve making a curtain that hid her child. Ricky tensed behind me. Her lovely hands found my Giant baby, and the palm of her hand cupped the left cheek. "You're not so bad, are you, sweetie?"

A coo. The silhouette of the child behind the sleeve moved, crawling closer to the Moon Giant, until it was beside her. Bea leaned forward, and the sleeve draped over them, merging them into one silhouette, the two now indistinguishable.

Ricky rose up and shoved his wife back to standing, revealing the two infants. The human one had rested his soft head against the arm of the Moon Giant, his cheek smooshed so only one half of his small mouth could smile. They were happy, Nini not intimidated by the other's size at all. To a baby, everything that moves was Giant, so that made sense. And my Giant baby, she was gentle, no predator drive kicking in as I worried it would. Awe overtook me as she moved her arm, and clumsily curled it around the shoulders of the human child.

Bea was still recovering her balance from being pushed. Ricky swept in like a bird of prey, his fingers latching around Nini's armpits and jerking him up suddenly. Nini wailed, and my Giant baby feebly lunged for him, falling and hitting her chin on the cobbled stone of the street.

"You've lost your mind, Bea."

"I lost my mind? Don't you ever touch me like that again. And, look what you've done, he's crying! You're hurting him. He's sensitive; you should be more careful. It's his first friend ever and you're being a brute about it." Bea shot a sympathetic look at the Moon Giant, who now had fat tears running down her face.

"It's a monster," Rick asserted.

"Even so, why are you fierce with me? I was only considering your preposition that we adopt her as well. Making the most of it. Don't be so cross. I could have started screaming about how you're offering excessive coin as the adoption fee when we need every bit to cover unexpected construction expenses, but instead I looked on the bright side and reasoned and—"

"He wasn't adopting her," I said, my voice growing bold. Between two Enchanted, I did not want to end up hexed or cursed or worse. But seeing the angry edge of the sorcerer, I also did not want to provide them with a chance to hurt the child. Bea had shown me it wasn't my own distortions that made the Giant baby seem sweet and cute. She was. She was a baby. Any icicle could see that. "He was buying her for Enchanted components. As property. But I'm not going to let him. I declined to sell."

I scooped up the Giant child into my arms. Distracted with each other, neither stopped me. Bea was shouting now, the thing she had taken such pride in not doing earlier.

"That's illegal!"

"Don't tell the whole town—!"

"How could you? She's sentient! I look the other way for most of your works. I understand sorcerers have privileges and a natural arcane curiosity. Even when I find something distasteful, I do not interfere. But Ricky—"

"Quiet—"

"You can't personally own a Moon Giant, or a Boeren, or a cave elf, or any other sentient creature! They're not frigid cattle!"

"No one was going to know!"

"I would! I'm an Avalon. I'd lose my powers for conspiring in something so wicked as dismembering such a sweet baby for parts, monster or no monster! Even if my consent isn't an issue, which it should have been unless you'd like me to run off with the children and leave you heirless again, you don't even have the city finished yet. You're already baiting Arcana Enforcement? Are you wanting your tongue cut out and our city seized?"

"He's getting away—"

"Let him!"