"Heeeeeere comes the tengu!" Koishi cooed happily, spoon positioned.

Hailey, bless her, despite being three years old, indulged her aunt, and opened her mouth to receive the spoon.

"And another one for you too~" She sang, proffering the spoon to the table's newest occupant.

Utsuho Reiuji, a Hell raven who recently managed to achieve human form, also opened her mouth obediently.

Satori smiled as she wrote her report over breakfast, keeping her mental ear open for any signs of distress from her adopted daughter.

Not that she felt there was any need to. Despite her mindlessness, Koishi was surprisingly good with infants (as well as large childlike ravens). Maybe it was due to the subconscious driven behaviour, or is it just that she interacts better with simple minds?

Hailey had brung many things into Satori's life, some welcome, some less so, but she even surprised herself with how well she took to it. It turns out child rearing is pretty easy all things considered, Hailey was rarely non-content, was quiet and followed instructions, and was adored by the entire palace.

One of the mixed blessings however was that Koishi seemed to come home more often to spend time with her new niece. Not that she was here all the time, she still disappeared for days or weeks at a time. But the time she spent at home had lengthened considerably. Now Satori loved her sister, she loved her more than anything. But her presence never failed to make Satori melancholy. Her closest and only family, reduced to a giggling husk, because she had failed to protect her.

Satori's smile slowly turned to a frown, would that happen to Hailey as well? Human beings are fragile after all, why an Oni could squash a human with a pat on the back if they are not careful, what would happen-

A spoon was suddenly shoved in her mouth, and she nearly choked in shock.

She looked up to her pouting sister.

"Stop thinking too hard, you'll upset the baby." Koishi chided, waving the spoon threateningly.

Satori stared at her sister, and gave a chuckle despite herself. Koishi, surprisingly, was right, no use worrying about this, Hailey would be fine, the palace is perfectly safe, and all the animals love her. No need to worry about it.

Besides, not many Oni ever come up to the palace. They respected her enough, as only a race of the completely truthful could to a creature of truth. But not many liked her, at least on a personal level, and certainly not enough to visit. At least except for-

"YO Satori!" came a call down the hall.

...Yuugi.

With the confidence of someone who owned the place, Yuugi, former Diva of the mountain, and unofficial boss of the former capital, by virtue of being the strongest and loudest, burst into the room.

"Word has it that you've been hiding a baby, how could you?" Yuugi said, grinning. Yuugi was a strange creature in Satori's mind, someone who decided to ignore both her mind reading and, if she is honest with herself (which she always is), her terrible personality, and befriend her regardless. Satori appreciates this, but she would appreciate it a lot more if she wasn't so… Yuugi about it.

Satori sighed and massaged her temple, unless she got her before she started talking, it was impossible to interrupt Yuugi with anything short of physical force, especially for the soft spoken Satori.

"Hello Yuugi, who told you?" Satori said. Before muttering, "Dammit Okuu."

The Hell raven's wings drooped somewhat in confused guilt.

"Hey, don't be so hard on the simpleton, she's almost a baby herself." Yuugi chided.

"True, although it is quite hard to remember, considering…" Satori gestured vaguely in Utsuho's direction.

There was rather a lot of Utsuho, in more ways than one.

The Raven tilted her head, making a pair of those 'ways' wobble.

"Heh, size envy aside…" Yuugi said, ignoring Satori's glare. "Who's the dad, or was that you?" she said, looking around the table, spotting the other Satori. "Oh, hey Koishi."

"Ayo!" Koishi said, before going to spoon more into Haley's mouth.

"she's not mine, we adopted her." Satori said. "Koishi got her from Yama knows where, but apparently from a bad home, lacking anyone else to do so, I decided to keep her. As for why I didn't tell you, it's because you are an Oni, and she is a human."

Yuugi opened her mouth. But Satori beat her to the punch this time. "I'm not scared that you will eat her, I'm scared that you will squash her by accident. I'm nervous to even let Okuu hold her without supervision."

The raven nodded sadly at that.

"Right, ya know what? That's fair." Yuugi conceded, rubbing the back of her neck. "I should probably find a hell fairy to practise on first. Oni babies are made of harder stuff after all."

"Yuugi, I am quite convinced that you could drop a sleeping Oni infant off a cliff without even waking them up." Satori said dryly. "...And that wasn't a suggestion Yuugi, don't even think about it."

Yuugi put her hands up defensively. "Just a thought."

"Yuugi…" Satori said warningly as the Oni approached Haileys high chair.

"I'm just gonna say hi, don't worry, I won't touch her." Yuugi said placatingly. "Wow, she's pretty pale."

Satori frowned, but was not about to accuse an Oni of lying. "There is no sunlight down here, she has to eat a lot of fish just to make up for vitamin D deficiencies."

"Hello there, what's your name?" Yuugi said, crouching down to the baby's level, and smiling her trademark sunshine smile.

Hailey just looked at her, before glancing at Satori.

"Her name is Komeiji Hailey, we decided to keep her given name." Satori said.

Yuugi looked over at her, almost pouting, before looking back at the baby. "My name is Yuugi, Yuu-gi."

Hailey just kind of tilted her head.

Now frowning, Yuugi turned to Satori again, the question clear on her mind.

"She hasn't really talked since I got her… is that unusual?" Satori said, with a growing sense of unease. "She turned three last month…" she said, answering Yuugi's next question.

"Satori, at least with Oni kids… they usually start speaking at eighteen months, maybe twelve. And I'm pretty sure human kids are the same." Yuugi said, rubbing the back of her neck again. "Don't Satori babies?"

"Satori don't really speak to each other, we communicate telepathically. Satori don't usually start speaking out loud until their early teens…" Satori said.

"Well, not to knock your parenting or anything… But Humans can't read minds. She isn't going to be able to communicate with anyone but you… Does she even cry?"

"Not in so many words." Satori mumbles, she knows where Yuugi is going with this, but she is too embarrassed to interrupt.

"Let me guess, you respond to her needs before she even has a chance to vocalise anything?" Yuugi said, crossing her arms.

Satori's cheeks slowly turn red. It's not often Satori is on the backfoot in a conversation. She doesn't like it.

Yuugi sighed. "Ya know, it's not often you hear this, but Satori… you are too good at parenting. You are gonna completely ruin this kid."

"What should I do?" Satori said meekly.

"I don't know what you are gonna do. But I'm gonna find that Fairy, you look like you need more help than you think." Yuugi said, walking to the door. "I guess, just try and get her to talk. Not sure what else you can do. Cya."

"See you later." Mumbled Satori. As the Oni left the room.

She looked at Hailey, who tilted her head.

'It's not too late… I can fix this… right?' Satori thought, feeling a lot less confident about her parenting.

Chapter notes:

Sorry for the brevity of this chapter, I know its very short, but it just felt like a more natural way to stop, maybe I'll give you three later today to make up for it.

But yeah… Oops. Satori made a simple error in interspecies parenting that is going to complicate Hailey's life in a way that conveniently makes a much more interesting story :3.

But yeah, the idea for a mute Hailey was just something that came to me when I thought about a potential consequence of being parented by a Satori, and it was too fun not to implement.

A little secret, Satori being an over attentive, over protective parent is going to be a running theme in this story. Besides the whole being mute thing, Hailey's life gonna be on easy mode.

Fun fact, in the first draft of this chapter Okuu wasn't in this chapter. But after some people who were interested in this chapter mentioned her, I realised that Okuu had not appeared in any of the chapters I had written for this story so far, so I corrected this by introducing her here, this is why she doesn't really do much or say anything in this chapter.

On a related note, you might notice that Okuu is, according to Yuugi and Satori, a newly personified youkai, and probably as you might extrapolate, not yet the nuclear raven we are all used to. This is simply because HP takes place in the 90s, and Windows canon games are implied to start in the early 2000s, meaning that we won't be getting nuclear Okuu until post cannon (as a side note, this is why in every other of my Touhou/HP crossovers Reimu and Marisa are kids).

However, in this instance, I am planning on bending a few of my rules, because I want the events of Subterranean Animalism to happen during this story. Basically the method Koishi used to get to England and kidnap a baby also causes a small amount of time displacement, meaning that the parts that are in Old hell are technically taking place a few years in the future compared to the parts in England. For absolutely no reason other than this single petty reason. I only told you this now so I don't have to explain the time disparity in this story compared to my others, it's likely that the characters in the story won't even notice.