Toriel was shaken, hands still full of Boss Monster magic fire, when the child fully appeared to her sight, tiny and fragile. And when she took them out of their basket and placed them in her arms for the first time, it was her soul that she felt gasping. And finally, when the child looked up at her with their round and innocent face, she merely heard again the faint bleat of the baby monster that had once looked at her in the same way.

She hugged them close, holding back tears of both sadness and guilty joy. The child let out a gasping laugh.

When she saw the basket, she noticed a small piece of paper inside. It held only one name: "Frisk". So this was their name. There was nothing else. No explanation, no information, nothing. At first glance, she only gave the child a few months, but she was sure of nothing. After all, the only baby she had raised was Asriel, and being a monster, he was already bigger when he was just born.

That didn't matter, after all. Even if they were a human child, she could take care of them. She had to. Keeping Frisk close to her, she picked up the basket and, a content smile on her face, proceeded to cross the ruins in order to get home. The child looked at their surroundings with a curiosity that made her smile. They babbled a little bit, and got excited at the sight of the few monsters they met. Sometimes, they reached out towards a pile of leaves or a portion of wall, as if imagining something Toriel couldn't see.

The cries started barely a half hour after she found them.

She had arrived only minutes ago and, after laying her new child in the living room's armchair for them to warm themselves, was making some soup for them. At first, she had only heard a whine, then a wail. Worried, she was putting down her vegetables when a long shrill scream made her jump.

She let go of everything and ran to the living room. Frisk, laying on the armchair, was crying their vocal cords broken, their small body bent in half, curled up on itself. Toriel felt her blood turn into ice and quickly cradled them into her arms. "There, there, everything will be alright, my child. What's happening to you?" she whispered.

As only answer, the baby's body was shaken by a few spasms that freaked her out before it rejected a small amount of vomit on the already terribly dirty onesie. Though it was more bile than vomit - that poor thing had obviously not eaten anything for quite a long time. Frisk hiccupped two or three times before starting to cry again.

Toriel tried not to panic. She took them to the bathroom to get their clothes off of them (which allowed her to notice she was taking care of a little girl), and wash her face. As she didn't have any baby clothes, she tucked her in a clean blanket and started to cradle her softly, walked back in forth in the hallway, sung a lullaby, tried to make her eat. No good. Frisk kept crying like a fallen soul life had treated with too much cruelty.

A terrible thought started to crawl into the tortured mother mind that was Toriel's. Could it be that Frisk had eaten some buttercups that were in the cave? Starved like she was, it wouldn't have been surprising. Even though she hadn't gotten out of the basket, nothing kept her from extending her arm and catching one, which was already enough! What should she do? She had thrown up but seeing how she was crying, it was obvious she was still in pain. And with an empty stomach, the flower's juice would circulate much faster.

Toriel started to fear for the small being's life. She wasn't a doctor, even less a doctor for humans. And monster food's benefits would be of no use if the child kept refusing to eat. The only thing to do was to go buy a cure, an emetic or something. There was no such thing in the ruins and the closest place that would sell such a thing was in Snowdin.

There was the dilemma: she couldn't take a human child this far into the cave, especially a human child whose cries were so loud they could alert the entire underground. The royal guard patrolled and she couldn't imagine what Asgore would do, now that he was only one human soul away from breaking the barrier. But she couldn't leave this poor creature alone in her pain and without anyone to watch her either. Her instinct and her mother experience forbid it. With a young child, anything could happen if you dared leave.

As she kept cradling the restless child, she thought and had to face the facts: she could either take the chance or lose another poor innocent soul. She waited for exhaustion to calm Frisk's wails and the little girl soon fell into a troubled sleep. She then wrapped herself into a large black cape, the one she used to go unnoticed when she went out to buy some food, and propped the child beneath it, close to her.

Every step she took in the house's basement, towards the ruins door, she barely changed her mind and turned away, but the few jolts Frisk endured in her sleep were enough to keep her determined. Determined to save at least this child she already loved as if she was hers.

Frisk whined when she arrived at the door, which made her stop, but fortunately she didn't cry. So Toriel, gathering her courage, precipitately pushed the door.

And as unexpected as it seems, she barely hit something.

"Wow, hey, uh, well that's new…"