Hey guys!
So, I've decided to skip six months in this story, just to move things along and get some other plot points started. Anyway, here we go!
DA
Chapter 25- Lewis's POV
"Are you ready?" I ask my wife. Cleo nods at me, looking bittersweet and determined. We walk out of our bathroom, letting the faucet run and fill the tub, to go find get Isla.
It's been six months since Cleo gave birth to our little, perfect, wonderful baby girl. Before her birth, I'd been spending weeks trying to create a non-mermaid inducing baby wipe, and, luckily, I'd come up with one just before she was born. It was Cleo's idea, mostly- that a newborn couldn't handle the transformation. And we've been cleaning her only with those, never getting her wet.
Until today, that is.
I squeeze Cleo's hand and she smiles at me, and finally we walk into the nursery that we so valiantly decorated months before. It's ocean-themed: sea blue walls with fish decals and underwater plants, a sandy shag rug, a little bookshelf that I've painted to look like a reef. Cleo even found a lamp with rotating plastic waves over a blue bulb to look like under-the-sea shadows at a flea market.
As we stand in the doorway, I can hear Isla's heavy baby breathing as she naps in her crib, and wait for a moment. Sure enough, within five minutes of us entering, Isla begins to squirm and cry out in little, sleepy squeaks. That child runs like clockwork.
"Hi," I coo, walking over to her, "hi sweetie. Good morning. Did you have a nice nap?" I scoop my daughter up out of her crib and hold her six-month old body to my chest, letting her head rest on my shoulder. Wearing only a diaper, her little body seems chubbier than ever and I scoot her up a little higher and begin to hum in her ear.
Bringing Isla over to Cleo, I hand her off gently but quickly; I feel that it's necessary to explain that I'm basically a pro by this point in the game. Isla begins to use her voice now (no words yet, but little sounds and chirps) a sure sign she's waking up. "Aw," Cleo says to her, holding her at arm's length, "somebody's tired. Well then, sleepyhead, we're gonna go take a bath now."
Isla looks at Cleo in interest. A bath? We've never done that before.
"Yeah," I chime in. "We're gonna go play in the tub!"
Whenever Isla hears the word "play" she perks up, and this case is no different. Immediately our little girl giggles and claps her tiny hands. "Yeah?" Cleo laughs. "You like that?"
Taking Isla, I follow Cleo into the bathroom nervously. What if she's a mermaid?
But then again, what if she isn't?
We finally walk into the room, where the tub is about half full by now, just enough for a baby. "Okay," I say, undressing her slowly. "Here we go."
I take a minute to look at my squirmy little baby, who is, right now, trying to escape my grasp and crawl around on our fluffy bathmat. Her hair, which our pediatrician says is growing at a rapid rate, falls down to her shoulders in little, sleep-ridden golden curls. Her fair skin is also mine, but her hazel-green eyes are all Cleo. She has little freckles across the bridge of her nose and rosy red cheeks. I kiss her downy head one last time and promise myself that no matter what happens once we put her in that water, nothing about my image of her will change.
Cleo nudges me and I hand Isla over. My wife then proceeds to lean into our daughter's ear and whisper something. Isla looks and her and Cleo kisses her cheek, and then lowers her gently into the tub.
One, two three.
I take Cleo's hand.
Four, five, six.
Isla is splashing around playfully in the water.
Seven, eight, nine.
Suddenly, she gets a funny look on her face.
Ten.
Just like that, it's as if our baby becomes water. She is in that state for only a second, however, before reappearing in front of us, splashing around in the tub again.
But this time she is sporting a tiny green tail.