"Alright, baby, let's bargain," Claire said aloud as she pulled into the driveway of her childhood home and killed the engine. "If you let me actually eat my mom's enchiladas this time, I promise not to let Jim name you anything stupid." She looked down at her stomach. "Deal?"
She waited for a moment, but felt no movement- not that she had yet, anyway- or anything resembling agreement from the child growing inside of her.
"I'll take that as a yes."
She looked up and spotted her parents through the kitchen window, busy preparing dinner. Her mother glanced up, spotted her car and urgently waved her husband over. Moments later, both of her parents were rushing out the back door to greet her.
"Mija!" Her father reached her first and tugged her into a bone-popping hug, effectively squeezing a surprised grunt out of her.
Claire laughed as she hugged Javier back. "Ay, Papá ! Take it easy! You act like I wasn't here just a few weeks ago."
"I'm allowed to miss my little girl, no matter how long it's been," her father stated, releasing her.
"She's not exactly a little girl anymore, Javier," Ophelia pointed out, pulling her daughter into a significantly gentler embrace as her husband retrieved Claire's bag from the car.
"She will always be my little girl,"Javier said with a defensive sniff. He noted the slight arc of her stomach and added: "Even if she's going to have a child of her own soon."
They entered the kitchen and Claire immediately noticed Enrique, sitting at the table doing homework.
God, when did he get so big?
"Hey, hermanito," she greeted, bounding across the kitchen to give her brother a hug. She tousled his hair, which had darkened significantly since infancy.
"Hi," Enrigue quickly returned the hug before resuming his work.
"How's school going?" Claire asked, scanning the page for any errors she might help out with, but she found none.
"Good," came the short response.
"It's no use, mija," Javier called from his resumed spot at the stove. "He's in the zone. Nothing breaks him out of the zone."
Ophelia stepped toward the table. "Except maybe some of Ophelia Nuñez's famous enchiladas."
She set a plate down in front of her son, who finally pulled his attention from his homework and eyed the food as if the idea of eating hadn't even crossed his mind. Claire was intimately familiar with that mindset from her days of schooling.
"Ah ha," Ophelia said, triumphant. "Now, put this all away, you can get back to it once we've all had dinner like a family again."
She squeezed Claire's shoulder affectionately and her daughter forced a smile.
But one whiff of the enchiladas she used to love so much made Claire's gut clench with nausea, confirming that her baby had no intention of holding to the bargain it had never really agreed to in the first place.
When Claire had officially moved out and Enrique had gotten a little older, he had relocated into her old, much larger bedroom. The tree on her wall had been painted over and anything she hadn't whisked away to New Jersey over the years had been stored.
It didn't even feel like her old room anymore, but, then again, it didn't belong to her now.
Claire had been laying in the guest room- which had once been Enrique's old nursery- when she heard a tap at the window.
She lowered her phone, turned her head and spotted a pair of large yellow eyes watching from the darkness.
"Big eyes!" NotEnrique shot her a toothy grin as she opened the window, arms outstretched in uncensored excitement.
"I was wondering if you were going to show up. I didn't see you at all the last time I was in town." She crossed her arms and feigned indignation, but she couldn't fight the smirk that tugged insistently at the corner of her lips.
It was good to see him again.
"Somethin', er, came up," NotEnrique scratched at his scruff sheepishly. "But I'm 'ere now! And ready to catch up with my sis-"
He suddenly stopped and sniffed the air, having caught wind of something. He regarded her curiously and leaned forward to take a tentative whiff of her sleeve.
"Ugh, blech!" He made a face of disgust and snorted to clear his nose. "What did that blue mutt do to you, sis?!"
"Don't be rude!" She chided, bopping him between the ears.
"Ouch!" The changeling exclaimed dramatically. Claire rolled her eyes, knowing she hadn't hit him nearly hard enough for him to really even feel it, let alone actually hurt him. "I wasn't bein' rude! You just smell… weird. At least more than usual-"
That earned him another harmless bop.
"This is a fine way to greet the brother you never bother to visit," NotEnrique sniffed indignantly, rubbing his forehead.
"I gave you plenty of advance notice when I was here last time. You're the one who never showed," Claire pointed out, but reached out to scratch his scruff by way of apology for the bops she'd dealt.
NotEnrique arched into her touch despite himself, not unlike a cat.
"I was busy! Listen, we've already gone over this." He hopped down from the window to inspect the impersonal knick knacks on the nightstand. "You shouldn't dwell on the past, kid-" he eyed her stomach warily. "Er, I guess not 'kid' anymore, eh?"
Claire shook her head and moved to sit on the edge of the bed.
"You flesh things grow up so fast," NotEnrique gave an uncharacteristically somber sigh. "Your brother too- your real brother. Just sproutin' like a weed, he is." He hopped over to sit beside her on the bed.
"You're my real brother, too," Claire assured, ruffling his ears.
"Bah!" NotEnrique grumbled as he shoved her hand away and pinned his ears back. He made a spectacle of "fixing" his unkempt mane.
Claire felt her phone vibrate; a message from Jim.
It was an image of Blinky, passed out at the table in his library, surrounded by prenatal books, and simply captioned: "Blinkous the Midwife has had a hard night.
"We were supposed to work on the forge some more but I can't bring myself to wake him up." He added a second later.
"Let him sleep. Your father deserves it." Claire responded, smiling indulgently.
NotEnrique plucked absently at the comforter beneath him, his disgruntled grumbling catching the attention of his adoptive sister.
"Can I help you?" She quirked a brow in his direction.
"Bah, it's nothin'," he mumbled. "Thinkin' 'bout stuff, I guess."
"What kind of stuff?" She asked.
NotEnrique scratched his neck, suddenly sheepish. "Eh, you humans, you just keep… gettin' older. Like the tyke in the other room; I feel like every time I look away he's gettin' bigger and smarter. He's already sharp as hell when he used to be too stupid to even talk.
"And then you ," he looked up at her, ears drooped. "I barely seen ya since you left and when you came back you weren't a kid anymore; you were suddenly all grown. And now-" he glanced down at her abdomen, "-you're gonna have a little tyke of your own and I'm gonna see you even less."
He looked so dejected, so thoroughly upset by this train of thought it made Claire's heart ache.
She had no shortage of fondness for this little changeling. Ironic, considering how often they'd initially fought when the twists of fate had tossed them together and told them to "play nice."
"You can come with me to Trollmarket," Claire offered, scooting across the bed to sit closer to him. "I can always bring you back when my next appointment rolls around, if you wanted me to."
He seemed to give this some thought, but ended up sighing and shaking his head. "Nah, Trollmarket's more of a one changelin' kinda town. Besides, there'd be no one to protect the kid. Or your parents, either, I guess. But I think I still make them a little uneasy. They get all squirmy if I hang around for too long." He picked thoughtfully at one of his ears.
He perked up suddenly, eyes bright. "But the kid likes me. We're like that-" he entwined two of his claws, "-and I've given him lots of quality worldly advice, if I do say so myself," he added with a smug grin, polishing his claws against the coarse fur growing over his shoulder.
"Nothing that would make you a bad influence, I hope." Claire warned.
"Of course not!" NotEnrique waved a talon dismissively. "He's too smart for any of that stuff, anyways."
"Well, he is our brother, after all." Claire said, pulling him into her lap for an embrace, despite his squirming.
"Pfft . You say that we're the good ones; I'm a changelin' and you got knocked up by your half-troll boy-toy." He scrunched up his nose, catching her scent once again. He broke away from her, frantically rubbing his face. "Ugh, why'd you let him do that to you?"
"...Well, I wasn't exactly against what was happening at the time," came Claire's frank response.
NotEnrique balked and pressed his talons over his ears. "Oi! Don't tell me that! That's disgustin'!"
"Oh, that's too far." She crossed her arms. "All the gross stuff you've told me and that's going too far."
"Yes!" The small troll glowered up at her. "You're my sister! I don't want to hear it!"
"Would it make it better if I told you I'm the one who initiated-"
"Stop!" NotEnrique shrieked, slapping his claws over her mouth and stifling her mad cackling at his expense.
"I feel obligated to never touch you again after reading some of this stuff. I am so sorry for what I have done to you."
Claire rolled her eyes and tapped out her response to Jim's text: "It takes two, Jim."
"That doesn't make me any less sorry." Accompanying his reply was a photo of the particularly graphic image he'd taken from one of Blinky's books.
"Already seen it. What you should see is this poster I've been stuck staring at for the past twenty minutes."
She sat up, the paper covering the exam table crinkling loudly as she moved, and raised her phone to take a photo of the poster in question. She yelped, caught off guard by Mary popping up at her side and resting her chin atop her shoulder.
"Ooooh, are we sending selfies to Jimmy-Jam?"
Darci was at her other side in an instant, jostling the pair of them in her eagerness. "Not without me, you're not!"
The trio busted out into a fit of giggles, managing to compose themselves just long enough to strike a pose for the selfie in question. Claire sent the photo to Jim and then to her best friends, at their insistence.
"That doesn't seem so bad," Jim responded a few minutes later. "Who's the cute one in the middle?"
"Careful. I heard she has a boyfriend," Claire typed, lovesick grin on her face. "He sounds pretty tough."
"Nah, I can probably take him."
"C-bomb," Mary suddenly, catching Claire's attention. She looked up from her phone and fixed her gaze on Mary, who was examining diagrams and figurines around the room with a disgusted fascination. "I have a question for you."
"Oh boy," Claire and Darci said in unison, exchanging a glance.
"An anatomy question, specifically." Mary clarified.
"I don't think I'm licensed for that, Mary," Claire responded flatly, wary of where she would take this topic.
"A half-troll anatomy question, even more specifically."
And that's where she suspected this might be going.
"Mary, I don't think anyone-" Claire spotted Darci leaning forward expectantly. Her jaw dropped in surprise. "Darci!"
"Hey, you can't blame us for being a little curious, Claire," Darci held her hands up defensively.
"I'm not talking about this." Claire said, crossing her arms in annoyance.
"I mean, it doesn't have to be a super graphic answer-" Darci began.
"But we are open to super graphic answers," Mary butted in, quickly, perversely curious.
"-We were just wondering, you know," Darci rolled her wrist meaningfully, "how things may or may not be a little… different -"
"No."
"If I gave you pen and paper," Mary began, preemptively digging around in her purse, "would you draw -"
"No!"
"Hello, hello!" The door swung open and in stepped a stout woman, inspecting the clipboard in her hand; Dr. Mason.
"Oh thank god," Claire breathed, relieved for the interruption.
"Miss Nuñez! Wonderful to see you again, uh," the doctor gave a quick scan of the room. "No, uh, no father this time?"
Jim had not once been able to accompany Claire for these appointments, but that never stopped from asking about him. She was, not so secretly, deeply enthralled with the world of trolls and had been eager to meet with this first-of-his-kind half troll Barbara had told her about when enlisting her help.
"His, er, line of work doesn't really let him travel very far," Claire explained with an apologetic wince. "Not right now, anyway."
Dr. Mason nodded in understanding, not quite managing to hide the disappointment in her eyes. She shook it off quickly, however, and hit Claire with one of her infamously infectious grins.
"Well, let's see that baby, then!"
"I still can't believe you're going to be the first one of us with kids," Mary mused, shaking her head in disbelief as the doctor prepped Claire for the sonogram.
"Yeah," Darci agreed. "I always thought it would be Mary- ow!"
Following her appointment with , Barbara had invited Claire and her friends over for dinner. Mary had backed out of the invitation to go out on a date so it was just Claire and Darci- and Toby, apparently. He was already sitting at the dining table when they arrived, phone to his ear.
Barbara was in the kitchen, fanning the smoke alarm and shooting them an apologetic grimace.
Toby met Claire's gaze and pointed to his phone. "Pizza" he mouthed by way of explanation.
Holding his phone between his shoulder and his cheek, he stood to pull out Darci's chair for her.
"Something meaty with extra meat," Claire whispered loudly, breezing passed the table to meet Barbara in the kitchen.
Toby shot her a thumbs up.
Barbara was scraping the charred remains of what would have been their dinner into the garbage. She beamed at Claire as she approached and extended an arm toward her. Claire met her in a side hug.
"How are you liking Dr. Mason?" Barbara asked after exchanging pleasant greetings.
"I like her a lot actually," Claire said, reaching out the take the now emptied pan from her and clean it off in the sink. "She's super nice."
"She's the best in the business too," Barbara assured and wiped her hands on a nearby cloth. "Her mother's the one who helped deliver Jim, actually."
"Keeping it in the family." Claire joked, toweling off the pan and setting it aside to dry.
Barbara's shoulder bounced in a nonchalant shrug and Claire couldn't help but notice how the gesture, which she was so familiar with seeing preformed by Jim, really helped to hammer in the familial ties between the two. "Not intentionally, but, you know."
They made their way back into the main room and Toby raised his phone. "Super meaty pizza is on it's way. In 45 minutes or less, specifically. And," he swiped the bottle of wine he had brought for dinner from the table and jabbed his finger challengingly in Claire's direction. "I'm totally drinking in front of you."
Claire stuck out her tongue at him, but didn't protest. She didn't care all that much, truthfully, and he knew it; just because she couldn't drink didn't mean she was bothered if the others did.
"So," Barbara began, not able to contain her curiosity anymore. "Did you find out what you're having?"
Toby came back into the dining room, setting wine glasses down in front of Barbara and Darci and unceremoniously dropping a glass of water in front of Claire. "Yeah, how much money did we win?"
"Still don't know anything about the gender," Claire said, biting back a smirk as she slapped the sonogram photo onto the table, "of either of them."
The shocked expressions on Barbara and Toby's faces was enough to leave her and Darci collapsing into fits of laughter.
"No way," Toby cried, looking over Barbara's shoulder as she lifted the photo for closer inspection. "You mean we have a chance to win double?"
"Or lose double," Darci cautioned.
"No way we're gonna lose," Toby said dismissively, making his way around the table pouring drinks. "Claire voted same as we did- I'm putting my faith in a mother's intuition."
"Did you tell Jim yet?" Barbara asked, eyes bright behind her glasses. The uncensored joy on her face was infectious enough to leave everyone grinning from ear to ear.
"No, not yet," Claire took a sip of her water. She smiled mischievously. "I kind of want to be there to see his face when I do."
"Nice," Toby commented approvingly.
"No way there are two kids in there!" NotEnrique exclaimed, eyeing Claire's narrow waist in disbelief. "I didn't believe you when you said there was one, now you're trying to feed me some bushigal about there bein' two?"
Claire laughed, presenting the sonogram photo to the changeling. "See for yourself!"
He snatched it from her, narrow eyes roaming the monochrome image. "This don't make a lick of sense."
Claire rolled her eyes and leaned over his shoulder to draw outlines with her finger: "This is the first one; see, this is their head and body. And then this, is the second one."
NotEnrique studied the outlined figures for several moments, eyes softening as he finally registered what he was seeing. "Big eyes… you're… you're actually gonna have kids..."
Claire quirked a brow. "Did you think I was lying before?"
"No, not lyin'," NotEnrique said. "Just… didn't seem real before now." He clutched the photo to his small chest and looked up at her. "Is this for keeps?"
"Well, no, you can't keep that one, but I am making copies before I leave tomorrow. I can get one made for you if you want." Claire offered.
NotEnrique nodded, turning away. "I'd like that."
"...Are you crying?"
"No!" The small changeling snarled and scrubbed at his eyes. "Changelin's don't cry!"
"Aw, you are crying!" Claire scooped him into her arms. "You do care!"
"Get your smelly face away from me!" NotEnrique growled, trying to wriggle out of her grasp as she leaned down to plant a kiss on his cheek.
He managed to break free and bolted out into the hallway, the sonogram photo fluttering to the guest room floor behind him. Claire's fit of laughter followed him out.
Her phone buzzed and, wiping tears from her eyes, she checked the message she had received.
"Forge is done," read Jim's text, punctuated by a thumbs up. "But I think we might have gone overboard with training." Accompanying his message was a photo of the crew of large trolls who had been working on the forge all this time, sprawled out, sore and miserable, throughout the training grounds. Blinky stood among them, one pair of arms crossed over his chest and the other with hands on his hips, his expression utterly unamused by this turn of events.
"How did the appointment go?"
Claire hesitated, chewing her lip in thought before responding: "Good. But should talk about it in person."
"Something bad?" She could almost visualize her beloved's worried expression.
But she just had to be there to see his face when she gave him the news.
"No, just would rather talk about it face to face." Came Claire's response.
"Did you find anything out about the baby's gender?"
Claire rolled her eyes. He would. "Face to face, Jim."
"Fiiiiiiine."
She was settling down for bed and had reached over to set her charging phone back onto the night stand when it vibrated in her palm.
She tilted her phone up to read the text that flashed across the top of the screen: "Love you."