A/N:
Word count: 515.
Written for Estoma's challenge at Caesar's Palace called Alphabet Game 2.0. The prompt given was Halcyon. Also written for Caesar's Palace's Challenges by the Dozen. This fic is inspired by "Baby Mine" from Dumbo.
Quiet now, better not wake the babies, the ocean waves whisper into each other's ears as they slip into and trade bodies. They are nearly still now, brushing against the birds sitting on the sea, a mother and her three children, and bouncing them like a rocking chair.
The water licks their faces and they taste like demigod, though the mother smells not of one god but two. She stinks of death and metal, but also of life. Fish, woodland animals, creatures of the sky all reside in her, and when she pulls their powers forth, they fill her more than calling the dead ever would.
Once a woman, this halcyon is the daughter of Frank Zhang, decorated war hero from the last Giant war, and a mother who even though she had not lost her lover to the sea, had lost too much else, and threw herself into it.
Her bird brain ponders what her childhood could have been; her mother and a father who both understood how hard it was to live without a parent, so why did they not know how hard it would be without even one? Her chest swells with pride when she thinks of how she made it, slipping through the streets acting as the raccoon who went through the trash, and with disappointment when she remembers why she had to do it.
They weren't happy after the war. Never were. For one, there wasn't anything to do anymore. She thought they had hero complexes; they would probably insist that they just wanted to do the right thing. Morpheus was able to stop some of their dreams, but their thoughts were always pounding on the door, and sometimes they forced their way in.
She imagines that her parents would be remembered of fondly once they composed a ballad to retell their accomplishments. She wonders if they will remember her, a girl who was a broken product sent back to the store but who never quite made it. She hopes the poets don't.
She hopes they remember the woman who taped herself up using the scraps she found on the street, and the fire she had in her own blood. She hopes they remember her as a symbol of the generation after, a group of ordinary descendants from half-gods who sometimes were forced to be heroes, even if they only were meant to save themselves.
She managed to grow up, get an education, and find someone who held the key to a special locked room in her heart.
Her children are small still, at three, four, and six, but they have already harnessed their shapeshifting abilities. Or, mostly, anyway. But she isn't going to complain about a feather (or a neck of feathers) that are out of place. They're strong, and their hers, and she's determined to do it right.
As she looks at her children closing their eyes and drifting to peace, she whispers something that sounds awfully like, I gave my life for him, but I would live for you.