“What are you staring at, Wanda?”
Jared’s question wasn’t anxious, because I was smiling softly at the surprising scene.
“Something I’ve never seen in all my lives. I’m staring at… hope.”
Jared came to stand behind me, peeking out over my shoulder. “What do you mean?” His eyes swept across the buildings and the road, not pausing on the playing family.
I caught his chin and pointed his face in the right direction. He didn’t so much as flinch at my unexpected touch, and that gave me a strange jolt of warmth in the pit of my stomach. “Look,” I said.
“What am I looking at?”
“The only hope for survival I’ve ever seen for a host species.”
“Where?” he demanded, bewildered.
I was aware of Ian close behind us now, listening silently.
“See?” I pointed at the laughing mother. “See how she loves her human child?”
At that moment, the woman snatched her son from the swing and squeezed him in a tight embrace, covering his face with kisses. He cooed and flailed—just a baby. Not the miniature adult he would have been if he carried one of my kind.
Jared gasped. “The baby is human? How? Why? For how long?”
I shrugged. “I’ve never seen this before—I don’t know. She has not given him up for a host. I can’t imagine that she would be… forced. Motherhood is all but worshipped among my kind. If she is unwilling…” I shook my head. “I have no idea how that will be handled. This doesn’t happen elsewhere. The emotions of these bodies are so much stronger than logic.”
I glanced up at Jared and Ian. They were both staring openmouthed at the interspecies family in the park.
“No,” I murmured to myself. “No one would force the parents if they wanted the child. And just look at them.”
The father had his arms around both the mother and the child now. He looked down at his host body’s biological son with staggering tenderness in his eyes.
“Aside from ourselves, this is the first planet we’ve discovered with live births. Yours certainly isn’t the easiest or most prolific system. I wonder if that’s the difference… or if it’s the helplessness of your young. Everywhere else, reproduction is through some form of eggs or seeds. Many parents never even meet their young. I wonder…” I trailed off, my thoughts full of speculation.
The mother lifted her face to her partner, and he kissed her lips. The human child crowed with delight.
“Hmm. Perhaps, someday, some of my kind and some of yours will live in peace. Wouldn’t that be… strange?”
Neither man could tear his eyes from the miracle in front of them.
The family was leaving. The mother dusted the sand off her jeans while the father took the boy. Then, holding hands that they swung between them, the souls strolled toward the apartments with their human child.
Ian swallowed loudly.
We didn’t speak for the rest of the evening, all of us made thoughtful by what we’d seen. We went to sleep early, so we could rise early and get back to work.
I slept alone, in the bed farthest from the door. This made me uncomfortable. The two big men did not fit easily on the other bed; Ian tended to sprawl when he was deeply asleep, and Jared was not above throwing punches when that happened. Both of them would be more comfortable if I shared. I slept in a small ball now; maybe it was the too-open spaces I moved in all day that had me constricting in on myself at night, or maybe I was just so used to curling up to sleep in the tiny space behind the passenger seat on the van’s floor that I’d forgotten how to sleep straight.
But I knew why no one asked me to share. The first night the men had unhappily realized the necessity of a hotel shower for me, I’d heard Ian and Jared talking about me over the whir of the bathroom fan.
“. . . not fair to ask her to choose,” Ian was saying. He kept his voice low, but the fan was not loud enough to drown it out. The hotel room was very small.
“Why not? It’s fairer to tell her where she’s going to sleep? Don’t you think it’s more polite —”
“For someone else. But Wanda will agonize over this. She’ll be trying so hard to please us both, she’ll make herself miserable.”
“Jealous again?”
“Not this time. I just know how she thinks.”
There was a silence. Ian was right. He did know how I thought. He’d probably already foreseen that given the slightest hint that Jared would prefer it, I would choose to sleep beside Jared, and then keep myself awake worrying that I’d made Jared unhappy by being there and that I’d hurt Ian’s feelings in the bargain.
“Fine,” Jared snapped. “But if you try cuddling up to me tonight… so help me, O’Shea.”
Ian chuckled. “Not to sound overly arrogant, but to be perfectly honest, Jared, were I so inclined, I think I could do better.”
Despite feeling a little guilty about wasting so much needed space, I probably did sleep better alone.
We didn’t have to go to a hotel again. The days started to pass more quickly, as if even the seconds were trying to run home. I could feel a strange western pull on my body. We were all eager to get back to our dark, crowded haven.
Even Jared got careless.
It was late, no sunlight left lingering behind the western mountains. Behind us, Ian and Kyle were taking turns driving the big moving truck loaded with our spoils, just as Jared and I took turns with the van. They had to drive the heavy vehicle more carefully than Jared did the van. The headlights had faded slowly into the distance, until they disappeared around a wide curve in the road.