"Bacon and eggs," I announce.
"What?" Daniel asks.
"For Halloween. I think they should be bacon and eggs."
Daniel scrunches up his nose.
"Luke and Leah from Star wars?" I suggest.
"Teal'c would love that," Daniel observes.
"Thing One and Thing Two. It's literary?" I suggest.
"So we're doing this whole Halloween thing?" he asks.
"Yeah, they are little kids," I say, wondering if this is some sort of a cultural thing that makes him want to keep his kids away from this holiday.
"Exactly. They are too young to remember it. They can't even eat the candy. I don't really get the point."
"When they are this young, it's not really about them. It's about a bunch of people telling you how cute your kids are."
"I know how cute they are."
"Okay, then I'll take them around."
"Abydos has Halloween," he mutters, "I mean… obviously not exactly. There was a harvest festival which involved going door-to-door begging for food."
"In costume?"
"In traditional outfits," he admits.
"That look like…?" I prompt.
"White, drapey…" he starts.
"So ghosts?" I suggest.
He raises his eyebrows.
"We dress the kids up as ghosts, eh? Then it's more Abydos than American."
He nods.
"You're going to take the ghosts around with me?" I ask.
"I'm not sure you can carry both of our little ghosties at once," he admits.
-0-
"Oh, you are the cutest little family," the old woman gushes.
"Thank you," I say.
Daniel glares at me. I shrug. When we are out of ear shot he says, "You didn't correct her."
"Hey, I corrected the last four people that thought we were a couple. I figured we could roll with it this time."
He rolls his eyes.
"Okay, I'm not up for making people feel awkward for their assumptions all night. Do you want to make this just a daddy-kid time? You can carry both of the ghosts yourself. Maybe you can let Mattie walk. Of course, that's going to mean that you could only make it to half as many houses."
"Less than that, you're not taking into account that fact that she would tire out quick," he points out.
"Exactly."
"Okay, we'll stop explaining to people that we're not a couple. Just try to look older, or something."
"Next year, I'll be a witch with drawn-on wrinkles."
"Thank you, that's all I'm saying," he teases.
-0-
Daniel is in a really good mood. He sings for a long time to the babies in Abydonian. That's not weird, he sings to them all the time. Usually he does it when he is trying to get them to go to sleep. He doesn't want to get them to sleep though. He's sort of dancing around the room with them.
When the babies babble to him in English, he repeats it in Abydonian.
It's not exactly a correction, but it's also not anything that Daniel has ever done before.
"You don't want them speaking English?" I ask. Half the sentence is in Abydonian. That's the best I can manage. I could understand a decent amount of the language, but I can't do so great with speaking it.
"I do. I just think they'd better learn more Abydonian," he says.
"You're going to take them home when you can in a couple of months?" I ask.
He bites his lip, "I just have a little more hope that I might be able to get their mom back."
"Really? Way to bury the lead!" I exclaim.
"It's not for sure. We met some people who know how to do a surgery to save her. We'd have to get her first, and contacting these people might be hard."
"Still," I say.
"Still," he says firmly.
"Maybe you should teach me the language, and I could talk to it with them more," I offer.
"You already know more Abydonian than anyone else on…" he freezes. I give him a look which dares him to finish the sentence, "Outside of Cheyenne Mountain."
"You have quite the problem with prepositions, for a linguist," I point out.
"Well, English isn't my native language," he shrugs.
I know it is a distraction, but I take the bait anyway. "Really? I thought you only learned Abydonian that year you were with Sha're."
He nods, "Arabic," His brow furrows, "Well, I suppose Greek was my first language, but I was so young that… Arabic feels native to me."
"So… Abydonian is written in hieroglyphics?" I ask.
He nods.
"I didn't know there were any modern languages written in hieroglyphics."
Pause. "Well, you're not a linguist."
"Do you have like an Abydonian/English dictionary, or something?"
"I'm writing one, yeah," Daniel says.
"Wait, you're writing a book and I never knew?" I say in shock.
"It's not like it's going to have a very wide audience if it's ever finished. It's not like it's even going to be getting published."
"I'd like to read it," I say.
"I'll bring you a photocopy, and help you learn to pronounce it, but…" he pauses, "You're busy with school."
"I took a more sane semester this time. It's kind of boring," I offer with a shrug. He gives me a skeptical face, "Daniel, this is a big part of you. I want to have it, and I want to help your kiddos have it, too."
He nods. I wonder though. He's all excited, because Sha're might be coming home. I want to be excited about it. I should be excited about it. She's their mother. Only, I've loved them longer. I've even known Daniel for longer than she did, at this point. They are my family as certainly they are hers, even if we aren't related by blood or marriage.
If they just leave me for her…
I'm going to be all alone again.