Not Now
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There was a zealous spate of hugging; then Sineult, Fern, and Onyx retreated to their chairs, leaving Lupin to sniffle himself out and pull things together in his husband's arms. He hadn't meant to be so emotional and ruin the moment, but neither did he want to think yet about where the little male he carried was going. The death of his father had been hard enough, and his father had at least lived a part of life in happiness. Unless he had some sort of miracle, one of the cubs growing inside him would never even take a breath.

Wiping his eyes on Hemlock's shirt front, he mused distantly that he spent more time hating his lineage than enjoying or even liking it, with the impending loss of first his cub and then the possibility of having any more beating madly like the wings of a tiny caged bird in his head. It was hard not to be jealous at times like these. Sineult was going to have his second; Jessamine had had five. Even Jade, though he'd only given birth once, had two cubs to take care of and love, with a fine chance of more later on in his life. Lupin wouldn't have wished anything different for any of them, yet he couldn't help wishing that he might have had some of that too.

But there wasn't anything that could be done about it. He swallowed, wiped away the last of his tears, and straightened up. Fern was watching him, a pinch of worry settled in above the bridge of his snubby nose, so Lupin smiled at him to offer reassurance.

"I'm okay. At least I'll never want for cubs to help with, and I'll have you to help me with... Scammony." Lupin paused pensively there, rolling the sound of the new name on his tongue and finally deciding, "I like that. You pick good names, Fern. What do you think, Mem?"

"I think it sounds fine," Hemlock agreed solicitously as the door leading back into the other room swung open with a slow creak. Jessamine stuck his head through.

"Everything all right in here?"

Lupin, Hemlock and Onyx all nodded in unison. Hemlock elaborated. "We're okay now. Lupin and I have something we want to tell everyone, do you have a minute?"

Smiling a little distractedly, their elder shook his head, apologies hovering in his face. "Not now. Jade just came up the driveway with the twins, and Beryl's got a fever. Do you think you could all stay in here until I see what's wrong with him?"

Lupin felt his eyes widen. "Why, is it bad?"

"No, I don't think so. Probably just something small, but we shouldn't take the chance, so could you? I can come back and tell all of you how he's doing when I'm done taking a look at him, and in the meantime you could finish up those cookies, okay, Fern? It might make him feel better. Lupin, Mem, get some hot water going and make me up some tea; I'd like to flush whatever it is out if I can. He's not too happy, it was hot enough already."

"Oh," Hemlock said, grimacing. They could all sympathise with that. "We'll get it ready right now. Do you want some cold water, too?"

"No," Jessamine declined with a quick smile. "I'm just going to pop him in the bathtub." He disappeared around the door and out of sight, leaving a roomful of slightly worried relatives behind him.

"I hope it's not anything too bad," Onyx said softly, ruffling Sineult's yellow hair. Fern bounced up on his chair at once to get on with the cookies, and Hemlock ran water from the tap, one of the few modern conveniences that Jessamine would tolerate, to start boiling on the stove in the corner.

Sineult shook his head. "Ber'll be okay. 'S got Amber lookin' after 'im, an' i' won' help us t' worry. Mem, which herbs d' y' need?" He got up out of his chair to bounce into the pantry with his husband trailing him, and almost immediately there was a sound of brown paper rustling. Lupin shared a fond grin with his own mate.

"Peppermint should do for the moment," Mem called back, dumping the pitcherful of water he'd collected into a pot. The stove's knobs clicked briefly under his hands, and it wasn't long before the liquid began a low hum, bubbles escaping up the sides of the little cast-iron container. More rustling in the half-dark of the pantry, then an exclamation of triumph and Sineult's head poked in again. His hand followed, dangling a brown bag into the light for easier label-reading; after a second of doing just that, he nodded, pausing only to drag Onyx out of the darkness behind him before bouncing back across the kitchen to Hemlock's side.

"Here 't is! C'me on, Onyx, le's put 't in! D' you need anythin', Fern?"

"Jus' a pan," his son decided, examining the bowlful of red dough at length. "I think 's done..."

Almost out of nowhere, a panicked shriek reverberated through the room. All eyes, even Fern's, turned toward the kitchen door. Another followed it, and another; then the sounds faded away into the more natural sound of loud crying, which in its turn faded and was gone. The house felt suddenly very silent.

"Mem?" Lupin ventured into the shocked quiet. He felt he would burst if someone didn't say something, even if only to comment with fear like his own, but his husband didn't make him test it. Hemlock drew his brows together sharply and grimaced.

"Calm down, everyone. He probably just doesn't want a bath. Sineult, Lupin, can you finish up the tea for me? Onyx, you've got to help Fern finish up the cookies before they dry out." He gave the room a faint copy of his usual smile, and no one smiled back. He sighed.

"I'd better go see if Da needs any help." Sliding out the door, the darkheaded Kindred went down the hall toward the bath; Lupin could hear his soft step creaking on the old boards. For another long minute, no one else moved.

"Come on, Fern, let's finish your cookies," Onyx murmured abruptly, but there was no more enthusiasm in either his movements or his son's as they set about tearing the dough into small portions and rolling them into balls. Sineult, in uncharacteristic silence, got up and started rummaging through the cabinets for pans, and finally Lupin found the strength in his muscles to walk across to the spice shelf where it hung on the wall above the stove and offer him the little bottle of baking oil to go with it. His heartbeat felt very loud.

Down the hall there began what sounded like a scuffle, but it only lasted less than a minute, and by the time the cookies were all laid out on their pans and waiting for the oven to finish heating up there was no sound from the bathroom at all. It was eerie, and it was making Lupin nervous. He'd been in a house like this before; the talk of cubs had brought it all closer to his mind, and now with the strange silence that had fallen, Beryl sick, everything and everyone he'd gotten to know clouded in worry, it was the only thing he could think about and the last thing he wanted this house to turn into. One of his hands crept comfortingly up to lie over his stomach while he thought, the other gripping the edge of the table nervously.

Not now; not when things had been going so well.

He had only been six, but even things from when he'd been ten didn't come back to him as clearly as that year. He'd never had a big family for a Kindred, but it had been big enough and he had been close to each and every one, from the eldest, his Talé Drypis and his husband Tansy, down to his tiny cousin Butterfly, who had been just born. It was a thing a cub remembered, starting out with a family and ending just those few years with nothing but a silent house.

Of all the things there were in life, there was only one thing that Lupin hated beyond recall, and though some might call it peace, others tranquility, to Lupin it was only silence. Peace was having friends around you, tranquility a cup of hot tea with the person you loved; but silence was the absence of anything and everything you had ever cared about. They could have their stolen minutes of it: he had known what silence really was, and he never wanted to hear it again.

What dragged in the air now was much too close. He wished Hemlock would come back.

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Jessamine let Spruce's mate carry the small cub-bearer into the house, mostly because Beryl had fallen asleep in the car and gotten cranky from being woken, but also because he'd learned not long ago that things just weren't the same as they had been. A Kindred didn't age fast, but Jessamine was well beyond what any human might consider youth, and like humans the Kindred aging process was a long slow thing. Besides, he had given birth to five cubs in his lifetime, and for a cub-bearer in modern days that was a great accomplishment.

He thought about that while Jade got his cub up and about, ready to face a bout of poking/prodding from Jessamine's much-feared healer side. Sineult, if things went the way they were going and Onyx didn't mind filling his house to bursting, would be the first cub-bearer in ages to give birth to more than six cubs during the span of his life, and if all of them lived, his family would be likely to blot all others out in a few generations. There were so few houses left now. The Danons, the Rantes. The Bronans had died out with the last of Lupin's relatives, and for a while, Jessamine had been sure that Jade and his brother would be the last of the Curan household, but of course now that didn't seem likely. Sineult appeared to be predisposed to bearing twins, which usually came in pairs of cub-bearer and male, which would mean at least three males, probably more...

"So," he began finally, when the tired, unhappy whimpering of his grandcub had died into equally unhappy quiet. Bringing up a ready smile, he crouched down in front of Beryl and the solemn face of his twin. "Your da tells me you're not feeling too good. I've got a way to cool you down and make you feel better, but you're going to have to get out of those clothes and bear with me, okay? I know you don't like washing very much. Amber can go in with you, if he would?" Jessamine inclined a querying nod towards the brother in question, who nodded expressionlessly and went on holding his twin's hand.

Beryl whimpered again. "Don' wanna baf."

"You need one," Jade said softly, ruffling his offspring's damp, tousled black hair. "Come on, we'll get you undressed." Taking the older twin by the hand, he followed Jessamine into the bathroom next to the little clinic, where together they went about stripping Beryl's sweaty clothes from him and running cool water for the bath. Amber sat down on the lid of the toilet and was still, but his eyes followed every movement. There was a little line on his forehead.

The clothes gone and the water run, there was nothing to do but dip him in. "Come on," Jessamine said, trying to be encouraging as he lifted Beryl up over the tub and started to lower him in.

Beryl screamed then, and the noise made the hair on the back of Jessamine's neck tingle. It wasn't a frightening sound on its own right, but it was one that the cub shouldn't have need to make until he was much older; it was the sound of a Changed Kindred, a Kindred both afraid and angry, who was feeling something he had never felt before. Jade's breath hitched. His eyes met Jessamine's for a second as they both leaned in to steady the flailing, crying cub, and it was when the elder cub-bearer saw the same realisation reflected back at him that something in his heart started to be truly afraid.

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