Six months later...

Darkstalker

The wind is cold on my scales as we make our way up the mountain, wind whipping through the foliage.

It's not the kind of night you would imagine leaving your dragonet to get ready to hatch in.

But we're going to do it tonight.

Clearsight grimaces as the raindrops pelt her snout. It's so stormy we can't even fly, so we have to walk to the top of the mountain.

"Are you sure about this?" I ask her hesitantly. "Is it safe? What if she gets hurt?"

Every night for months now, our daughter has stayed curled up in her makeshift nest, wrapped up in blankets, always under our watchful eyes. It feels strange to just leave her somewhere; even if there are dragons who run the NightWing tribe's lunar hatching peak, making sure all the eggs are always warm and safe.

It kind of makes me want to throw protective spells everywhere and somehow figure out a way to never leave my daughter's side.

As if she read my mind--or predicted it, anyway--Clearsight says, "If you want you can cast some spells around her. To make sure she's safe. But the eggs here are really well looked after."

"Are you sure?" I anxiously dig my talons into the mountainside.

She smiles amusedly. "Yeah. I'm sure. I can see the future, remember? It's gonna be all right."

"But she's not going to hatch under any of the moons--we know that, it's almost impossible. So what's the point?"

"I don't know." Clearsight winces, brushing some rain off her snout with her talon. "It's just what NightWings do."

"But--"

Clearsight sighs. "Don't worry, Darkstalker. She'll be all right. She's a fighter."

We banter back and forth for a while about that.

And then—after what feels like an endless walk up the mountainside, we're there. Really there. There are a couple of other NightWing eggs parked here, but none of them look like Shadowhunter's. (Shadowhunter's egg is mostly black, but with blue shading around the edges, and a couple white dots scattered around it.)

Clearsight's parents would probably say it's another sign our child is "deformed" or something.

I think it's beautiful.

***

I grin, throwing my wings around Clearsight and pulling her close to my chest.

"I can't believe this is happening."

"I know. Me neither."

Clearsight pauses, glancing out the window, for a second, worry splitting through her brows. For all she tells me not to worry, she's been dragonet-proofing the house for weeks. She even got rid of all our goblets and glasses and replaced them with nonbreakable, relatively harmless wooden cups. She's been obsessively decorating one of the guest rooms we decided would work for our daughter a solid month ago. (That I can't blame her for; I've enchanted the ceiling to look like the night sky, and magicked the window a little bigger than it was before so she could open it and listen to the roar of the river outside our door at night. Something told me she'd like that. I want to do something with the walls, too, but I'm not sure what yet.) Clearsight wants to replace all of our ceramic bowls with something less "dangerous" too. She'll probably start going after the fireplace next. Oh yeah, and she already has enough picture scrolls and toys for a small tribe of dragonets.

"You're going to be a good mom," I say, trying to sound reassuring. "I know you will be."

"My parents think she's going to be 'malformed,'" Clearsight says sadly, rolling her eyes. "Because... of our powers. And... you know. You being half-IceWing. Which is stupid, right? Half of the NightWing tribe probably has little bits of SandWing and SeaWing and IceWing blood already, it's not like dragons from other tribes haven't had dragonets together before. I really get mad at them sometimes."

"I'm sure they'll get over it."

Clearsight gives the floor a dubious look. "Your mom is so nice about it. You're lucky to have her. She... she's going to be a good grandmother. My parents will probably only see our dragonets twice a year."

We're silent for a while.

The storm hasn't stopped, not even a little. The wind feels like it's trying to blow the entire house down. Drafts slip in from under the doors, sending little sheets of paper fluttering around the room like a snowstorm. (Not that I've ever seen one; the Night Kingdom is too warm to get snow. But how I imagine a snowstorm.)

Clearsight stands up, suddenly. "I need to show you something."
"What?"

"The futures. I was looking at them yesterday We need to come up with a plan for how we're going to deal with this animus power."

***

I didn't realize how much time Clearsight had spent worrying about this. Planning for it. She has a complete timeline set up for the first seven years of Shadowhunter's life. Some of it was obviously done with the navigator--but there's a solid chunk of it that's not. Just handwritten notes, connected vaguely to each other as she tries to make sense of the chaos in her head.

How long has she been doing this?

I always thought that for the most part, she only did work-related stuff in this office.

She spreads out a scroll on the table, frowning and rubbing her temples. "Okay. You ready for this?" A small smile teases across her lips.

"Of course. Always."

Clearsight rolls her eyes, and starts to guide me across the timelines, connecting cramped notes I can barely read but she can apparently interpret with ease.

One year old.

Two years old.

Three years old.

I've seen it in my head before--I look ahead at the futures of our daughter in my head all the time--but somehow it feels so much more real on paper.

"Okay." Clearsight takes a deep breath. "She can't know about her animus magic before one year old. I mean, she can't. Can you promise me that--that you won't tell her anything, no matter how hard she asks about it, until her first birthday?"

"She... asks that early?"

"Her dad's an animus. Any baby dragonet with her temperament would ask the same question. It's nothing personal."

I can see a lot of holes in that plan--Shadowhunter yells at her inanimate objects a lot. There are some futures where she finds out about her power as early as six months. For some reason, I don't wait to point that out to Clearsight though.

"How long did it take you to do all of this?"

"A while," Clearsight says absently. "Navigator helped, but it's been in the works for a long time. I mean, gotta have a plan, right?"

"It's amazing." She has notes on everything from potential health issues to problems at school, charted out and noted so we're ready when it happens. If it happens. So hopefully, we can do our utmost to prevent it from happening.

"After that... things are rough. But we need to approach it with respect. Her biggest issue is being in control of things. It's her power. That means we let her have mostly free reign, with a lot of safrety controls to make sure she doesn't expose herself, basically--"

"I'm gonna make her a scroll though, right? When the time comes?"

"When the time comes." Clearsight takes a deep breath. "Yes."

We spend hours in that room. Poring over timelines, planning and discussing.

It's a good feeling.

***

Clearsight sighs. "That's probably enough for today. I'm tired. I... I would say that you can help me put these away, but I'm pretty sure you'd mess up my organizational system anyway." She sighs, starting to put the scrolls away, and then suddenly--she turns around and meets my eyes.

We're both silent for a moment. I don't have to read Clearsight's mind to know what she's going to say next.

"Darkstalker... Can you make me a promise?"

"What?"

"Don't hide what happened to your father from her. It's... it's important. Please. And I really think you should talk to someone about this. There are--there are doctors out there, who help you deal with... grief. And death in general. I know there are, Mother tried to get me to see one at one point when I was a really little--well, not the grief-specific dragons obviously, one for worry and anxiety and fear and stuff, but I know they exist. It helped a little, you know."

"Clearsight. I'm okay. I promise." I press my talon against hers.

"No! You're not. You are not okay, Darkstalker. I'm sorry. I love you so much, and you are not okay. And I just wish you could be happier, okay?"

"I'll be fine."

Clearsight looks down at the ground for a long time.

"It's over." I wrap a wing around her. "Clearsight, listen to me. It doesn't have to affect us."

"Really?" She shrugs off my wing angrily, taking a step away from me. "Because it is. And it will. Denying it isn't going to help with that. Getting help will."

"I DON'T NEED HELP."

We stare at each other for a long time, talons trembling.

Finally, Clearsight says, "Yes. You do. And I think you know that just as well as I do."

She gives me one last glance before storming off out of sight.