Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Grog crunched through the trees, making no effort to quiet his footsteps. After all, what was the point of taking the long, loopy way from Whitestone to Zephra to Westruun, if it wasn't running into a little danger? He kept his ears open as he moved through the wilderness, hoping to hear something even larger and more dangerous than himself crunching around, too.

Instead, he heard a faint, high-pitched sound on the breeze that he couldn't quite place. He couldn't shake the feeling of familiarity, either, but as hard as he listened, he couldn't think what it might be.

He turned toward the noise anyway. Maybe it was important. His friends all acted like the important things were done, now that Vecna was gone and they'd tied up their last loose threads, but surely it had been too long, now, for all the important things to really be over. It had seemed like there were important things one right after the other for too many months for a few years of nothing-important to make any sense.

As he got closer to the noise, it got more familiar. It was some kind of voice screaming. He picked up his pace, running in spurts and stopping periodically to hone in on the noise before running off again.

By the time he was close to the source, it had become clear that the screaming wasn't like an adult screaming so much as it was like one of his little nieces or nephews, and Grog felt like there was something cold running up and down the top of his spine. He slowed down and started walking more carefully, trying not to startle whoever was screaming.

As he stepped into a clearing, he saw the source of the scream.

It was a baby.

The infant had red skin and golden eyes and two tiny little dots of horns, like Zahra and Kash's babies had when they were little, and its limbs were waving very weakly, which didn't seem right. It wasn't wearing a stitch of clothing, which definitely wasn't right.

His forehead wrinkled. "How did you get out here? This isn't a place for a baby."

He crept closer, carefully, checking for danger around them and then studying the baby itself - herself, he realized, once he was close - to make sure there wasn't some kind of trap around her.

There wasn't. There was just a baby. Alone. In the woods.

Grog sat down cross-legged next to the baby, getting closer before he talked again in the hopes that he wouldn't startle her as much that way. "Hello, tiny," he whispered, "How did you get here?"

The baby didn't answer, but her arms waved slightly toward him and the screaming didn't seem any more scared than before.

Moving on instinct, he scooped the baby up into his arms, cradling her carefully and supporting her neck, like Vex had showed him when the twins were new.

She lifted her head to look more intently at him.

"Oh," he said, a little bit louder in his surprise. "You're wet. You need a diaper, don't you? I don't think I have one. But maybe Vex put one in the bag of holding or something. I did take it with me when we all went to the Winter's Crest festival."

He rearranged his grip, transferring the infant to rest more solidly in one arm, then swung the bag off of his shoulder and started reaching into it, hoping to come out with a diaper.

No luck, but the baby had stopped screaming now that she was tucked securely against him, and at least that was something. He reached farther into the bag, like it would help, and the baby started fussing again.

"Alright, I know. I'll have to think of something else."

The baby quieted again, and he decided to keep talking.

"What else have I got? Let me think. I might have some of those old fancy robes left, from a long time ago. We used to use those for lots of things." He closed his eyes, picturing the fancy robes, and reached back into the bag.

"We even had a lot of 'em, when we found 'em," he continued, reaching around and hoping his hand would hit fabric. "Ha! There! I guess you're gonna get to be a fancy baby, huh?"

What he pulled out was only half of a fancy robe, but that was alright. It saved time, sort of, since he was going to have to tear it smaller anyway.

He tried to remember how big Vex and Percy's babies' diapers had been, not that it mattered much when he was trying to rip the fabric down to size with the baby still sheltered in his other arm.

He got it close enough, he thought. Probably. He laid the bigger piece of cloth down on the forest floor, and then put the smaller piece on top of it, and the baby down on that. She seemed happier on a dry surface, and as he cleaned gently around her butt, her kicks seemed happy enough. All that remained was trying to remember what Pike had done when she showed him how diapers worked.

The first problem was that he'd forgotten that he needed one cloth for cleaning the baby and another for a clean diaper. The second was that, even after he picked the baby back up and ripped her a new diaper, his memories of how diapering was supposed to go were fuzzy at best.

After 5 minutes of trying to get the thing on right multiple times while the baby wiggled and started crying again and got her arms and legs in the way a little, he settled for it being just sort of messily tied around her waist, with a little slit ripped through it for her tail. It wouldn't stand up to crawling or rolling over, probably, but at least it was there, which seemed better than the alternative. It was hard to tell one size of tiny baby from another, so maybe she wasn't big enough to crawl around, anyway.

He scooped her back up and put the larger scrap of fancy robe back in the bag, noticing with satisfaction that she quieted again when he picked her up. "Alright. Well, I'll just have to be careful how I hold you until we can find your mum and dad, huh?"

The baby wriggled in his grasp, rolling toward him until she could get her mouth up against his chest.

"Oh! Oh." he said, blushing a little, "No, I can't do that. That's only ladies, like Vex and Zahra. I uh-"

The baby sucked instinctively at his nipple but, getting nothing, started to cry again.

"Yeah, no, I know," he said, "Being hungry is the worst. Let me.... let's just see what I've got in my bag of holding, yeah?"

He had no way of knowing if anything Vex would have left in the bag would still be good, but it didn't matter, because just like there were no diapers in his bag, there were none of those fancy bottles Percy had designed so he could help feed the babies.

"Ok, we'll have to get smart, huh? It's ok, tiny, you don't have to worry. Most people don't think I'm very smart, but I'm getting smarter all the time."

He pulled out his alchemy jug from the bag. Leaning into it, he whispered, "Hey, so I've got this tiefling baby and I need some tiefling milk? Do you do tiefling milk?"

Nothing happened.

"Just milk, then. How about just milk?"

Nothing.

The baby's cries got louder. "Yeah, I know," he said, agreeing seriously, "It's terrible when lunch is late."

He screwed his eyes shut tight, thinking as hard as he could about milk, leaned back into the jug, and said, "Milk" as definitively as he could, trying to sound completely no-nonsense about it.

When he opened his eyes to see the jug filling up, he sighed in relief. "There, see?" he told the baby, "You're gonna be alright."

Babies definitely couldn't drink out of jugs, and he didn't want to lose the milk by trying to pour it in her mouth without one of those fancy bottles, so as the sun crept farther and farther forward in the sky, he sat on the ground in the clearing, moving the milk from the jug into the baby's mouth with the cleanest scrap of fabric he could find in the bag, until she stopped crying and didn't suck so desperately on the cloth when he held it to her mouth. Then he pulled her close again.

"See?" he whispered, "I told you it would be alright." She made a soft noise that was not quite fussing, yawned big and toothless, and fell asleep in his arms.

*****

When he started walking, looping outward in a big spiral, he assumed he'd find her parents - or at least someone - pretty quickly. After all, babies didn't get into the middle of the woods by themselves, unless maybe they were magic babies, but he didn't think even magic babies were that magic.

He started to feel strangely alone, any echo around him ringing hollowly in his ears and making him more and more aware that he and the baby were the only ones out here. That was new. He was used to being alone in the days of travel between his visits to his friends when he made his yearly, wandering circle. He was used to being alone in the woods outside Vasselheim when he took small enough bounties from the Take to do them on his own. But this was - different.

He was afraid he'd crush the baby if he held her too tight, but he hunched his back a little, pulling himself in around her, and that made him feel a little better.

It was almost a relief when she cried again, and he had to stop for a while to feed her.

As it began to get darker, the sun drooping behind the trees and casting long, dusky shadows around the two of them, he whispered to her again, even though she'd fallen asleep. "Oh, tiny, I don't know what to do. I thought your parents would be out here somewhere, but I can't find them. I wonder where your home is."

Actually - that might be it. He might have been looking for the wrong thing. His tribe had always moved around a lot, so he'd thought he was looking for people. But maybe he was looking for a place, and all this looping around was for nothing. Maybe her parents hadn't wandered off, they'd gone home. But if they'd known how to get home, how had they forgotten the baby long enough for someone else to find her instead?

She stirred in his arms, waking up with a whine.

He snorted. Right, then. He was looking for a house. He could look for a house. People built houses in the woods, sometimes. Usually witches or hags or something, but they did it. And maybe witches and hags had babies, too! Though, of course, if they did, he'd have to make sure they were an ok sort of witch or hag before he left the baby with them.

"Alright, tiny," he said to her, "I'm gonna go up this tree and have a little look-see."

He looked up the tree and then down at the baby in his arms. This would be easier if he had the carpet, but Vex and Percy had claimed it away from him once their kids couldn't fit on the broom with them. He could try climbing with Tiny, but that seemed like one of the things the others would say was too dangerous.

Instead, he squatted down on the ground beside the trunk, swung the bag of holding off his free shoulder, and pulled the leftover fancy robe back out, laying it on the ground to make her a place out of the dirt.

"Don't worry," he said, once he'd laid her down on her back, "I'm coming right back. I just have to see where your house is."

The moment he straightened up, she screamed.

He knelt down. She quieted again, reaching her arms out toward him.

"Oh," he said, "You still want me to hold you."

There was a prick of something in his chest. He loved his nieces and nephews, but he'd been holding Tiny for a long time, and usually by now his nieces and nephews would have started grabbing for someone else or trying to wiggle out of his grip. They wouldn't be asking to stay picked up.

He offered her one huge finger, and her little baby hand gripped instantly onto it when he touched her palm.

"I promise I'm coming back, ok?" he said, serious as he'd ever been, "I'm not gonna leave you here and I'm not gonna forget you. Ok? I just need to climb a little and you can't come with me. You're not like a grown up gnome or anything. You're only new."

The baby tried to drag her fist into her mouth even though it was clenched around his finger. He turned the motion into a gentle handshake. "Beep beep," he said with a nod.

When he pulled his finger out of her grip, she started screaming again, but he snorted out stubbornly through his nose again and ignored it, rolling his neck and shoulders as he got ready to climb. He stepped a few feet to the side where he wouldn't fall on her if anything went wrong, and started up the tree.

Once he'd gotten high enough, he could see the clearing where he'd found Tiny, right where he thought it would be. He hadn't gotten lost and missed her parents, then. They really weren't out here.

He could still hear her screaming on the ground below him, and he tried not to think too much about that.

He needed to find a house. Or a town he'd forgotten about. Or anything that looked like people.

He didn't.

The longer he looked, the harder it was to ignore the faint screaming down below, and the more desperate he felt. Eventually, he settled instead for a slight break in the trees a little ways away. It was about as far from here as here was from where he'd found the baby. If there was a house hiding there, it would be the right distance. Maybe. He wasn't sure how far away he should be looking. Nothing seemed obvious, and nothing seemed man-made and nothing stood out as a home for a baby.

The tree break would have to do. Tiny was still crying on the ground, her screams a little weaker and less high-pitched, and that just wasn't going to do.

He hurried back down the tree and scooped her back up again, kissing her forehead as gently as he could. "It's alright," he whispered, softly, "It's alright, I'm back again. I said I was coming back."

Tiny's tail wrapped around his wrist the moment he picked her up, and her hands flailed toward his face. When one hand hit the side of his chin, she grabbed onto his beard. Even though she was still crying, it was a lot quieter, and that had to count for something.

Her fingers tightened in his beard, pulling at his hair as she clenched her fist. He yelped, startling her a little, then gently peeled her fingers away until he could offer her his finger to hold instead.

He turned around and slid down onto the ground with his back up against the tree. He knew he needed to keep moving, but it didn't seem so bad to sit and cuddle Tiny for a little bit, first. Not if he was careful with her. His friends who were parents all said, 'careful, careful,' all the time, but he'd gotten lots of practice being careful. And it was only until she stopped crying again.

He leaned his head back against the tree, looking up at the branches and taking a deep breath. He could do this. He'd found a clearing, and he was going to find her parents, and he could do this.

Suddenly, a stream of urine, and maybe poop, ran down his arm, leaking through the poorly secured diaper, and he laughed. "Oh, that's it, is it? You're as bad as Scanlan." She screwed her eyes shut and screamed. "It's alright," he said softly, trying not to be too loud and make the screaming worse, "I'll make you another diaper."

******

When he reached the clearing, it was empty, and night had fallen, and for a moment he just stood there, in the dim moonlight, and stared.

Tiny made a little soft noise in his arms, and he looked down at her. "I don't know what to do next, Tiny. Not when it's all dark like this. I could climb another tree, but I don't think I'd see anything."

She reached up and waved her arms toward his face again, and he took it as a cue to kiss her on the forehead.

"I think we have to make camp for the night," he said after a moment's thought, "And then go looking again in the morning. Maybe your parents are looking, too, and they'll find us if we stay still all night."

Setting up camp was a little tricky with one arm, and he wasn't sure how to keep the baby close to him without worrying about squashing her if he rolled over in his sleep, but eventually, he got a fire started, his bedroll laid out, and the two of them arranged.

It was a long night. He fed the baby before they went to sleep, but then she woke up screaming when she had gas, and again when she had a wet diaper, and again when she was hungry for a second time, and a few other times when he didn't know what was wrong, but rocking her and talking to her eventually calmed her down anyway.

He woke up when the sun came up, only to find her sleeping peacefully, and after a moment's consideration, he laid his head back down and napped beside her until she woke up again, and the sun be damned.

******

It was well and truly morning by the time she woke up again, cried until he figured out she was hungry and fed her, and calmed down enough for them to get moving again.

As he set off toward their original clearing, hoping to get his bearings better by climbing a tree over there where he'd started with her, he couldn't help looking up at the sun and worrying a little bit about how late in the morning it already was. It was going to be lunchtime soon, and they'd only barely gotten started.

If he could get back to Whitestone for one of those fancy bottles, he could feed her much faster, but that was far away, now, and then he definitely wouldn't find her parents, and that wasn't right, either. He'd just have to do his best.

As he walked, he sung bits and pieces of several songs Scanlan had taught him, skipping from one to another as he got to the dirty parts he didn't think were probably right for babies, at least if you listened to Percy. Tiny seemed to like it well enough, keeping mostly quiet in his arms and making happy noises when she made noise.

The journey back to where they'd started was much quicker than the long spiral of the day before, and he started to feel better about the whole thing. Maybe if he got lucky and he could see a house from the trees in the old clearing, they could still find her parents only a little bit after lunch.

He kept his eyes peeled for any sign that someone had passed through here after he had, but until he got to the clearing, he didn't find any. Then he found too many signs.

There had been a few animal tracks through the clearing yesterday, but there were more today, including some very clearly clawed paw marks running through the spot he'd cleared to lay the fancy robe on when he first changed Tiny into a diaper.

He huddled the baby closer to his chest. "Good thing you weren't here, huh?"

Tiny's whole face screwed up, like she was thinking hard about the answer, or maybe like she disagreed, but then she didn't - she dirtied her diaper again and he stepped supersitiously away from the paw marks before he set her down to swap it out for a cleaner one.

He was already getting lower on pieces of fancy robe than he'd expected.

He didn't tell Tiny that.

"You just don't worry about anything. Especially not wild animals. I've got you now."

Whatever she did or didn't think about wild animals, she seemed happy enough again as soon as he'd changed her diaper.

"Alright," he said, "Time to go up and take another look-see."

This time, as he picked out a tree to scout from, he couldn't shake an uncomfortable feeling on the back of his neck. It got so intense he instinctively pulled Tiny closer, and shivered.

"Well, Tiny, I guess I'm gonna have to find a way to get us up the tree together. Let me just have a little think on it."

Vex would just fly on her broom, which wasn't helpful. Pike would probably be able to magically protect the baby or something. Scanlan would use his big purple hand to carry the baby next to him while he climbed. None of those solutions would work.

He'd have to think of something else, instead. Something less magic.

Finally, he remembered Percy and Vex at the Winter's Crest festival in matching harnesses, each of them carrying one of the twins strapped to their chests. Rope seemed too rough for soft baby skin, but the piece of the fancy robe wouldn't have been big enough to tie all the way around his chest, even if he hadn't torn it up for diapers. He needed something else. Something big. What was big in the bag of holding?

All of a sudden, it hit him and he found himself laughing.

"Guess what, Tiny?" he asked, not waiting for an answer, "I still have the old carpet. The really old one. It doesn't fly anymore, and Vex took the one that flies, but the old one's still nice and big and it'll fit all the way around both of us, and I can maybe use the rest of the fancy robe as a little blanket for you, so you don't have to be on the rough part, and Vex can't even yell at me if I have to cut the carpet a little bit smaller, because she has one that flies and I couldn't ride this one even if it did fly."

Halfway through fashioning the baby sling, he had to stop to eat some lunch and feed Tiny again, sniffing the milk before he gave it to her, since it had been in the jug for so long. It still seemed to be good, maybe because the jug was magic, but he was pretty sure it would be better when 24 hours had gone by and he could get her some that was fresh.

The little break didn't seem to hurt his work any. It actually seemed to go a little bit better once he and Tiny were fed. It wasn't long before he had her securely fastened to his chest with a big piece of the carpet and the rest of the fancy robe and a little bit of rope on the outside just to be safe.

He let go of Tiny, keeping one hand carefully underneath her so he could catch her if she fell. She didn't start crying, like she had yesterday when he put her down. Then again, she hadn't cried when he put her down on the fancy robe to work on his carpet sling, so maybe that didn't mean anything.

He bounced up and down on his heels, and when she didn't slip and nothing loosened, he jumped into the air and then back down. Tiny shrieked again, this time clearly delighted. He grinned and went back to little bobs, up and down on his heels. "Oh, you like that, huh? You think that's fun?" She shrieked again, and he reached a hand down to support her, even though the sling seemed to be holding.

"Let's see if you like going up trees," he said, checking that she was secure one more time and then grabbing onto one of the lower branches.

Climbing with Tiny strapped to him wasn't as easy as climbing alone, but he was strong and good at climbing, and he was being careful, and he made it high enough to see without incident.

He found a stable spot near the trunk where he could see out of the canopy of the tree, got himself set, and put an arm back around Tiny as he searched the ground and the forest all around them.

He was almost ready to give up when he finally saw it - a small hut, off in the opposite direction of where he and Tiny had ended up last night.

"Is that your house, Tiny? Did we go the wrong way last night? I guess that's the problem with circles, because if you make a big one it's hard to see the other side of the circle."

Tiny didn't answer, both because her fist was in her mouth and because she was a baby, but Grog felt sure that it was her house, anyway.

"We already missed lunch, 'cause we slept so late, but that's not so far. We'll have you back home in time for tea." He wasn't sure what time tea was supposed to be, but that was a thing people said, and he had seen Cassandra DeRolo and Allura both drink tea in the afternoons, though he usually preferred hanging out with Kima or in Percy's workshop, now that he could use the tools there.

Either way, he felt better about this whole thing. Double-checking the harness to make sure Tiny hadn't slipped and was still as solidly attached to his front as she'd been before, he started climbing back down again.

*******

If it was teatime when they got to the cabin, it certainly didn't look like it. The door was closed, the shutters were shut tight, and there wasn't any sign of smoke or light or anyone moving around inside and making noise.

Putting an arm protectively around Tiny where she was nestled in her sling, he leaned forward and knocked, hard, on the door.

After a few moments of silence, he pounded on it again. "Hello?"

He hadn't planned much beyond getting to the door and knocking. He'd thought that when someone answered, he'd start with "Bidet," to be polite, and then ask whoever had come to the door about the baby, and then play it by ear from there. He definitely hadn't planned for no answer at all.

He thought about knocking a third time, but if they hadn't heard his first two knocks, they had to be either deaf or not there. Either way, there was no point in knocking again.

He tried to pop the door open with his shoulder, but missed the angle because he was trying to shield Tiny in case the wood splintered, and ended up just bruising his own hip against the doorknob. With a huff he tried again, this time breaking straight through both the deadbolt and the hinges and sending the door toppling inward.

He had to bow his head a little bit to get through the doorway, walking slowly into the house on top of the downed door. "Hello?" he called out, "Is anybody here? Don't worry, I'm here to help you." After a moment, he added, "Bidet," in a rush.

No one answered.

It didn't take long to check the little cabin for people. There weren't any.

The room he had stepped into had a little fireplace and a place to sit and a place to eat and a wood burning stove in the corner with a cabinet next to it on one side and a bucket hanging on the wall on the other. The only other room was a little bedroom separated by another door, furnished with nothing but a bed, a cradle, a small table, and another cabinet. Back outside, he found an outhouse and a water pump, both just as abandoned as the house.

"Well, Tiny, they must be out looking for you," he said, uncertain, even as he said it, that it was true. But it had to be, because nothing else made sense. He knew, vaguely, that sometimes people might abandon a baby if it was too weak to survive, but Tiny cried just as strongly and wiggled around just as much as all the other babies he knew, and anyway, he'd never really understood how you could do that to a baby who didn't understand.

He set his chin against the thought. No. There must be somebody, and they must be out looking.

"We'll just wait here for them," he told the baby, "I'm sure they'll come back tonight."

He started poking through the cabinets, finding a little bit of dried meat, an empty kettle, and some battered-looking pans stored away next to the stove, and some extra blankets and diapers in a cabinet in the bedroom.

"Alright," he said, "I guess it's time to be a little less fancy now, Tiny. But that's ok. This isn't a very fancy place."

He carefully unstrapped her from the carrier on his chest and laid her down on the bed to change her diaper to a real one, and not a chunk of old fancy robe.

She'd seemed ok, nestled against his chest, but now that she had space again, she was extra wiggly, her limbs moving in all directions and getting in his way. It made changing her harder, especially when he got halfway through and realized these diapers didn't have a place for her tail, either, and he'd have to cut a hole.

When he started trying again with the fixed diaper, she was still wiggly and uncooperative.

He laughed, "Don't worry, Tiny, you don't have to be fancy. I'm sure your parents will love you anyway." He leaned in, lowering his voice to a whisper, "And actually, fancy people are the worst. They just make you feel stupid and silly, even if they're actually the ones who are stupid and silly."

Her answer wasn't an answer, just a rush of gibberish in the silence, but he still smiled at the sound as he wrestled her gently into the diaper.

Once Tiny's diaper was changed, he wasn’t really sure what to do with himself. He moved her from the bed to the cradle and dragged a chair in from the other room, flinching a little when he got out of her line of sight and she started crying. Then he sat down next to the cradle in the chair and looked in at her as she quieted again.

For a moment, he just stared into her eyes while she stared back, and then he stared a little longer, and she did too, and then somehow he was having a staring contest with a baby, which he wasn't about to let himself lose.

Her arms, legs, and tail slowed, moving more fitfully and less constantly, but her eyes stayed locked on him, at least as far as he could tell with the whole no-pupil thing she had going on.

"You're getting big, aren't you?" he whispered, "Vex and Percy's babies couldn't make their eyes work right away, but you're good at looking at me."

"Uh-nhh."

He nodded, as if that had been an answer, keeping his eyes on hers through the nod. His eyes were starting to get a little dry, but she hadn't blinked, and he didn't intend to, either.

He could almost see his own reflection in the gold of her eyes. There wasn't much detail, but he was there, a shadowy, warped figure, and when she finally, finally blinked, it was a relief.

He blinked his own eyes, which had started to water as he stared, and in the flash of darkness, he worried that he might be scary. But then both of them had their eyes open again, and she was still looking, and she seemed just as content as she had before, and he pushed his chair back away from the cradle, clearing his throat.

"Alright," he said, "Let's see if I can get the stove going, because I think you're supposed to have warmer milk than it comes out of the jug. But don't worry, I always get it on my fingers when I'm trying to get it on the cloth for you, so I can make sure it's not too hot."

He scooped her back up into his arms again. It was better that way. He knew she was safe, but he didn't have to look into those eyes and wonder if he was scary and why she trusted him so much.

******

By sundown, he was sitting in the one rocking chair in the little house, the arms a little bit tight around his sides since it was made for someone smaller. Tiny was asleep in his arms, and he was rocking to quell his own boredom more than he was to soothe her.

No one was coming. As he stared into the fire, the second one he'd built today, he couldn't avoid the truth of it. Nobody was here. Nobody was coming. There were things here, but there weren't personal things. Not like his rock collections in the bag of holding, or his friends' extra clothes, or any of the other things people kept around them when they lived somewhere.

It was dark out, and people with houses nearby didn't stay out all night, even if they were looking for something.

If somebody had been looking from here, they would definitely have found the clearing by now, and actually, he couldn't prove they hadn't, but he hadn't tried to hide his tracks while he was coming here, and there hadn't been tracks there a few hours ago.

Nobody was coming. Nobody was here.

He held the baby, and rocked, and tried to think.

The jug had made more milk when it was supposed to. It could do it again. Maybe he should go back to Whitestone and get some of those fancy bottles from Percy, so he didn't have to keep dripping the milk back out with his fingers. But then, if he did that now it was just... not figuring out what else to do.

He couldn't shake the feeling that he ought to have a plan. That was what people did when unexpected things happened. They planned. A lot. For a long time. Until everyone was bored and tired and grumpy, and then they usually planned more the next day even though everybody wanted to get moving.

The fire didn't have a plan in it, and neither did he, and Tiny was no help. She was just sleeping, but at least while she stayed that way, he didn't have to tell her that her parents were gone, or that he had no idea what he was doing, anymore.

He let his mind wander, bouncing between half-ideas and sticking on each one only long enough to decide against it.

There were lots of places he could go, but none of them were any more likely to have Tiny's parents than the others, not even the close ones. Even if he found Tiny's parents, they'd probably just lie and say they weren't Tiny's parents, because otherwise they'd have to say they'd left the baby in the woods alone, and then he'd have to beat them up, and then he couldn't leave Tiny with them anyway because they would be too beaten up to look after her.

He could try to find a place to take her, or to send her away to, but his brain kept bouncing right off of that one, noting only that it was deeply dissatisfying, for reasons he couldn't quite work out.

There were also a lot of people he could ask, but he didn't much want to be told what to do, just now. There had to be a way of figuring it out himself. He was the one who had found her. He was the one she trusted. He couldn't let somebody else decide what happened to her, especially if that somebody else also thought of sending her away somewhere. He needed somebody who would have a better idea, and also wouldn't make him do anything he didn't want to do.

Finally, he got out of the chair with a mildly embarrassing grunt of effort and tried to convince himself it was only because the chair was a little bit too short for him. Tiny stirred in his arms with a soft little noise. "Shh," he whispered, "It's alright. We're just gonna go see my buddy Pike. We'll be there in a few days."

He wasn't sure she'd ever woken up. As he laid her down in the cradle again, her body drooped, clearly asleep. He laid down on the floor next to her cradle, just in case. It felt safer that way.

"It's alright," he whispered again, into the darkness, "Pike will know what to do."

******

They left late in the morning, almost so late that it wasn't morning anymore, but as much as he usually wanted to just move, leaving was admitting that he wasn't going to look for Tiny's parents anymore, and whatever that meant, it felt like a big deal.

Tiny, settled safely in a new, softer sling he'd made from a spare blanket from the cabinet, didn't seem to be feeling the weight of it. She was too busy playing with his dragon tooth necklace, pulling at it and trying to drag one of the teeth into her mouth. It wasn't serrated, and it wasn't even that sharp at the point without the force of a dragon's jaw behind it, but he took it away from her anyway.

Chapter Text

Traveling through the woods with Tiny began to feel normal surprisingly quickly. They stopped more often than he would have alone, because she needed diaper changes, or she was getting cranky confined in her sling, or she was hungry, but he didn't mind as much as he'd thought he might.

If nothing else, it was always an excuse to pee, too, and eat a little, and stretch a little. When he found a stream to wash her dirty diapers in, it was an excuse to stretch a lot.

He was getting better and better at diapers, as much from trial and error as anything, and the longer they traveled, the fewer diaper changes started with him mopping a mess off his stomach where her diaper had leaked immediately instead of soaking more gradually through.

Now that they had the blankets from the house, he had a better place to lay her down while he set a fire and made camp. He got used to watching her while he worked, making sure she didn't roll into the fire or off her blanket. He didn't think she would, because he was pretty sure she could only roll from her tummy to her back and not the other way, but he couldn't be sure.

It was strange, always doing two things at once, but it wasn't bad.

Sleeping was still nerve-wracking, as he tried to balance needing to stay close to her to protect her with needing to make sure he didn't roll over and squash her, but that got more familiar, too.

Feeding her was the only thing that was getting worse. It was slow, and a day into their journey, she started crying between dips of milk, like she couldn't wait that long.

The rest of it was good. They made good time, and if he couldn't sneak with her, it wasn't like he'd been the best at sneaking to begin with, anyway. He carried the Dwarven Thrower near to hand, in case he needed it, but he rarely did, and when it was useful, he could throw it from a distance and it always returned.

Sometimes he sang, and sometimes he bobbed up and down a little as he walked along, and sometimes Tiny slept against his chest and he just tried to be as quiet as he could.

But then they came to the edge of the woods, and everything was new and worrying, again.

As he stood at the edge of the tree line, looking out toward the Turst Fields, the old discomfort came back again and he wrapped an arm around the sling, holding Tiny closer.

There weren't a lot of people in the Turst Fields. Not like there were in Westruun or Emon or Vasselheim. There were even people who knew who he was, or would know if he told them enough for them to remember the stories.

That didn't mean they wouldn't wonder what he was doing with a baby, or where he and Tiny had come from. It didn't mean people wouldn't try to tell him he shouldn't have Tiny, or try to make him give her up. Strangers didn't usually try to take things from him, even if they were dangerous (they usually left that to his friends), but a baby-

He took a deep breath, pushing through the moment of nervousness and forcing it down. He wasn't afraid of anything. Especially not a bunch of little bitty farmers. "Don't worry, Tiny. We can go around people, and if we can't, then we'll just remind them who killed all those dragons and stopped Vecna. Nobody's gonna take you anywhere. Not 'til I've decided what to do."

As he set off across the plain, he kept his head up, striding forward with his dragon tooth necklace on backward, out of Tiny's reach, and his hand on the lump of her body in the sling. Traveling would be faster now. There was nothing to work around. He could get to a road, soon, and then he'd go even faster. Pike was only a little way away. Pike would know what to do. Pike would know how he could keep Tiny safe. Pike would know how he could keep Tiny.

"My buddy Pike did all that, too," he told Tiny, "She's a monstah. But she's also my best buddy, and she always knows what to say, and she's really good at healing. She's really smart, and she helped me learn to read, and she's gonna know exactly what to do with you."

He started from the time Pike saved his life and kept telling Tiny about her until his voice started getting a little tired, skipping from one story to another as he remembered other things. It was all out of order, but Tiny seemed happy enough, playing with the fur slung over his shoulder, running her tiny hand along the rough scar on his chest where the phylactery used to be, and leaning her cheek occasionally against his chest to feel the vibrations of his voice and fall asleep there.

She was asleep when they hit the road, but there was no one there to hear him whisper to her that they'd made it, so everything was alright.

After a few hours of walking alone and avoiding small settlements, the road was as comfortable as the woods were. He thought maybe they'd sleep alongside it, instead of finding a place in the tiny towns among the fields.

******

He was wrong. Under the cover of the trees, the storm in the distance hadn't been obvious. Out on the plain, he could watch it blow in, coming closer and closer as a wind kicked up.

When he felt the breeze cooling off, he knew the storm was too close. He needed to find them some shelter.

It grew dark faster than he'd expected, even having watched the storm, and while he'd usually ignore it and push on through the downpour, he had to think about the warm, wriggly little body pressed against his chest. She seemed ok, but he still didn't know why she'd been abandoned, and he didn't know how well she'd fight off getting sick if he let her get drenched out in the rain.

The first crack of thunder came just before the rain, but he broke into a run at the sound of it anyway. Tiny shrieked and giggled over the sound of the wind, but he just barreled onward, keeping his eyes peeled for anything that looked like shelter.

He couldn't run forever, and 10 minutes into the rainstorm, he stopped, slowing to a walk and rearranging to reach into the bag of holding. If he couldn't get them out of the rain, he'd have to keep the rain off her - if he could just remember what he had that was useful for that.

Eventually, he found his helmet, but it was almost as heavy as Tiny was, so he shoved it right back in the bag and held his hand over her head to shield her instead, hunching over her as he kept walking.

Half an hour later, they were both drenched in spite of his best efforts to keep Tiny shielded from the rain, and Tiny was clearly deeply unhappy about it, screaming loudly. Maybe he should have stopped in a town when he noticed the storm coming toward them, but it was too late now, and he wasn't going back for a little farming village as small as the one they'd passed two hours ago.

Five minutes later, he squinted through the rain to read a small sign next to a little path away from the road. Trusting the sling to hold Tiny, he kept one hand over her head and used the other to shield his eyes to make the reading easier.

The handwriting was neat, and the sign said "HILLFOOT DAIRY." He sounded it out for Tiny, and then turned down the little path, hoping that there would be shelter there.

The walk to the little farmhouse with the two big buildings behind it wasn't a long one, but he had to walk directly into the wind, and it made it harder to keep Tiny from the brunt of the storm. She was shaking from the cold now, and it worried him. He kept hunching over, shielding her as best he could. "We're almost there, Tiny. Just a little farther."

When Grog finally reached the door of the house, he hesitated, in spite of the worry.

The door was tiny, smaller than the door to the cabin had been, as small as Wilhand and Pike's door back before he lived there. For a moment, he thought maybe he should just go straight to the barn, but then there was a clap of thunder up above and Tiny's crying shot up in pitch to a screech, her body still shivering against him, and he knocked on the door before he could think better of it.

The halfling who opened the door was middle aged, with a round face, neatly combed greying hair and warm brown eyes. "Oh!" he said, "What have we got here?"

"Bidet," Grog said, falling back on politeness because he wasn't sure what else to say. "I, um - me and the baby got caught outside in the rain and she isn't supposed to be in the rain. Is there any place you have where we could go until the storm passes?"

The halfling rose up onto his toes, craning his neck toward the baby, and Grog instinctively pulled her closer.

"My," he said, still smiling, "You're a big one, aren't you?"

"Don't worry," Grog answered, "I'm not here to cause trouble or anything. I only make trouble when somebody needs trouble. Or when somebody else already started trouble, and then I make more. But Tiny's not any trouble at all, when she's dry."

Tiny, still crying, didn't sound like she wasn't any trouble, but maybe the halfling was too short to hear how loud the crying was, around the storm.

The halfling laughed, patting him reassuringly on the thigh, because that was where he could reach easily. "Don't worry, son. We're cow folk. We're not afraid of any creature just 'cause it's big. Why don't you come on in? I'm Lyle Hillfoot. My friends call me 'Ly,' but don't worry. I always tell the truth."

Grog had to bend over in half to get through the door, only to find that the ceiling wasn't much higher. He ended up in an awkward half-bent crouch, but at least he had practice walking that way from before they'd made the gnomes' house bigger. He just didn't usually do it cradling a baby.

"Oh," Lyle said, getting a good glimpse of Tiny for the first time. "A tiefling, huh? Well no wonder you couldn't find a place to stay. Not to worry. We're not afraid of horns around here, either."

The halfling chuckled to himself, but Grog couldn't work out what had been funny.

The small entryway, half lined with coats and hats on neat hooks, opened out into a cozy sitting room, empty at the moment. The small fireplace held a roaring fire, and the halfling's short, squashy furniture was set around it.

"Hmm," Lyle said, hands on his hips as he studied the room and then turned to look at Grog's awkward squat. Grog knew he must look like Scanlan about to take a dump somewhere that would make the rest of the team yell at him, but he couldn't straighten up, so he just smiled awkwardly instead.

"Well, I guess you'll just have to take a seat on the floor by the fire, eh?" the halfling said, "Puts you closer to the warmth, anyway." Then he looked up toward the ceiling and shouted toward a set of narrow stairs in the corner. "Vinnie! Bring some blankets when you come down! And some towels!"

Still in the end of the entry hall, Grog stood awkwardly behind Lyle, unable to get around him, because he hadn't moved from his spot just inside the room since he stopped to study the size of it.

There was a vague, muffled noise of acknowledgement from upstairs, and Lyle turned toward Grog and smiled. "My daughter, Lavinia. My wife and the younger daughter took the cart into town to take in the latest cheese shipment for the general store and the tavern, and my sons are out milking the cows, but they'll be in soon enough."

"Oh," Grog said, "Ok."

By the time Lavinia made it downstairs, Lyle had realized he was in the way and moved, urging Grog forward with a hand on his hunched shoulder, and Grog had settled down next to the fire and started undoing the straps on Tiny's sling to let her out.

Vinnie looked about the same age Keyleth had been when she finished her Aramente, and she took after her father, with the same round face, tan skin, and brown hair, though hers didn't have the grey. The biggest difference were her eyes, green instead of brown, and twinkling good-humoredly. "Papa, what have you - oh," she said, "That's what. Hello."

"Bidet," Grog answered.

"Bi-det?" she replied, tentatively. "Did you get caught in the storm?"

She dumped an armful of towels and blankets onto the chair nearest him, picking up some kind of knitting project off the top of the pile and half tossing it onto the next chair over.

"Yeah," he said, "We're going to Westruun to see my buddy Pike, but I thought we could get a little farther down the road, and the storm was faster than I thought."

Tiny was a little bit quieter now that they were inside and nearer the warmth of the fire, but she was still clearly miserable, contributing to the conversation with a wail as she kicked her legs out into their new space. At least she wasn't shivering so hard now that they'd been indoors for a few minutes. "I know," he told her, fondly, "It was terrible. But we're gonna get dry now."

Vinnie handed him a towel as he started to reach for the pile, and he took it, rubbing it against his face first to make sure it was soft. "Here we go," he said to Tiny, "Nice and soft and dry."

He heard the sound of a door slamming open at the other end of the little house before Tiny was half dry, and then two halfling boys were tumbling through the other door into the room together, all tangled up as they fought to get through the door first.

The older of the two was almost full-grown, with patchy sideburns just barely growing in, and the younger was at that in-between age where apparently even halflings were all gangly lines and sharp angles from getting taller too fast for the rest to keep up. Both were wearing waxed-canvas ponchos that dripped rainwater onto the wooden floor.

"Papa!" the younger boy was shouting, "Anders bet me a copper I couldn't milk my half of the barn as fast as he could, but I did and now he won't give me - oh."

The younger boy's brown eyes were wide, but Anders looked unbothered, shoving past his brother into the room. "'Oh,'" he parroted, "Real smooth, Reed. Who are you?"

Vinnie swiped ineffectively at Anders and he dodged out of the way. "Don't be rude! He and his baby got stuck out in the rain."

"Dry off, boys," Lyle said, "And go put your ponchos in the kitchen instead of dripping in here. I'm sure you both did a great job."

Grog watched them all, trying to keep up, but then Tiny started fussing again, and he tried not to feel too bad about having gotten confused. "I know," he whispered, quieter this time now that there were so many eyes on him, "I've got you."

Lyle shooed both boys back through the door they'd come in, asking questions about milk and cheese and vats that Grog didn't really understand.

Vinnie patted him on the shoulder, the one with the damp fur over it. "They don't mean anything by it. They just always get a little high-spirited when Mama's gone to town, and then they forget to be polite."

"That's ok," he said, focusing on Tiny, "I forget sometimes, too."

He finished drying her off and then got a clean diaper out of the bag of holding and changed her, blushing a little under Vinnie's watchful eye when he realized he'd forgotten to make a hole for her tail again. He'd mostly been using the diapers he'd used before and washed, so that he wouldn't have to worry about tail holes, but he hadn't even checked to see which kind he'd grabbed.

When he grabbed an old dagger out of his bag to cut the diaper, Vinnie stopped him.

"Wait. We have sewing scissors. The wavy kind where the fabric won't fray."

The scissors were stored in a small desk in the corner, and she returned quickly with them, before realizing that the finger holes were much too small for him and stopping short. "Oh. Maybe I'd better do it," she said.

"Alright," he said. "It just needs to be a little hole." He held his fingers apart to indicate the distance to cut. "Her tail has to fit, but it also shouldn't leak."

She nodded, focusing intently. She was just handing the diaper back to him when the two boys came back into the room, still jostling each other. They reached for the pile of towels and Vinnie neatly snatched one off the top before her brothers could grab it.

"Here," she said, smiling at Grog, "I'll hold onto this one for you, when you're done. They can share. They've only got wet hair, after all."

The boys groaned.

Grog nodded, not quite meeting Vinnie's eyes. "Thanks."

The boys started wrestling, Anders quickly winning and staying seated atop his brother while he dried his hair and tried to keep the ends of the towel away from Reed.

Grog was reminded briefly of the twins, but of course, the twins had been the same size. It hardly seemed fair with one brother bigger than the other. He didn't say so. Not all fights were fair, after all. You just had to do your best.

Once Tiny was dry and had quieted down, he pulled a dry blanket off the top of the stack, laid it on the floor, and moved her onto it so that he could lay the wet cloth of the sling out closer to the fire. It steamed on the warm brick of the hearth, and he looked at it with satisfaction.

Then he dried off, too, feeling awkward as he slid out of his fur pauldron and rubbed his chest down.

Vinnie was still watching him inquisitively, seated in the chair where she'd thrown her knitting. Her legs were slung over the arm of the chair and her knitting project was sitting in her lap, her fingers resting, unmoving, on the yarn. A newly dry Anders had joined her, sitting on the other arm of the chair while Reed sat a few feet away, where his brother had left him, pouting and drying his own hair.

Before he could dry all the way off, Tiny started crying again, and Grog put his towel down to pick her up. His back was still damp, but the fire would dry it soon enough.

Lyle came into the room at the sound, his eyebrows furrowed, but seemed to relax when he realized Grog already had the baby.

He wanted to ask Tiny what was wrong, but he felt silly doing it with the eyes on him, and the words died on his tongue. Instead, he pulled her close and rocked her a little bit, and when it didn't help, shifted her to one arm so that he could get to the bag of holding for the jug.

"She's probably just a little hungry," he said, vaguely, to the room.

"Oh!" Lyle said, "That's no problem. We've got plenty of milk. And I think we've still got a feeding bottle around from when the kids were little. Mostly, we just had them in case Nora got sick, but I'm sure we didn't throw all of them out."

Grog paused. He'd already started getting the jug out, but fresh milk would be better. "Yeah," he said, reaching back into the bag for his coin purse instead, "How much does it cost?"

Lyle laughed. "I'm not going to charge you for feeding a hungry baby! And anyway, we don't really sell milk, we're really cheese makers. I know closer to the cities, people sell both, but it just doesn't keep long enough out here."

Grog nodded. Vex would like these halflings. She liked people who gave you free things. And he thought if she was going to give away free things, they'd be things like milk for children.

"Anders, go get this fine gentleman some milk, if you would."

Anders groaned. "Can't Vinnie do it? I already went out."

"She could," Lyle answered, as cheerful as ever, "But I asked you."

Anders got up off the arm of the chair with a roll of his eyes, but followed directions, slouching back into the kitchen with his father right behind him. Grog heard the kitchen door close behind him with a bang as he went outside

Reed took Anders's place next to their sister, leaning over to whisper in Vinnie's ear just barely loud enough for Grog to hear. "Is something wrong with the baby? It looks like a demon!"

Vinnie twisted his ear and he yelped. Her answering whisper was definitely loud enough to hear. "Don't be rude! She's just a tiefling! We saw one once, before, you were just too little to remember."

From the kitchen, Lyle shouted, "Be nice to your brother!" without having seen the ear twist at all.

Reed ducked sideways, out of his sister's grip, before he asked another question, this one aimed directly for Grog. "How come your baby's a tiefling if you're not a tiefling? Is your wife a tiefling?"

"I don't have a wife," Grog said, trying not to look too disgusted by the idea. "But I don't know why she's a tiefling. She just is."

The boy nodded, but he didn't look completely convinced.

Grog looked down at Tiny. The sentence 'I found her' was right at the tip of his tongue, but Grog couldn't quite make himself say it. He'd thought about it too long in the rocking chair at the cabin.

Someone, surely, was going to tell him that he couldn't just keep a baby. Someone, surely, was going to tell him to send her away somewhere or give her to somebody else. Maybe if that someone was Pike and he knew that the somewhere or someone would be good and he'd be allowed to keep Tiny until he was sure of it, then he could do it, but right now - right now he couldn't let anyone tell him to give her up. Right now, he couldn't let anyone tell him she didn't belong with him.

"It doesn't really matter, though," he said, looking back up to meet the boy's eyes. "She needs me."

Reed nodded, more seriously this time. "Like that baby fox I found last summer. He needed me, until he was big enough to live on his own in the wild."

Vinnie laughed. She reached out, stretching so far she almost knocked the chair over, so that she could ruffle his hair affectionately. "Not exactly, Pipsqueak."

Grog turned his head sideways a little. "She is kind of the color of a fox. Just a little more red and less orange."

"She's kind of pretty," Reed said, "Once you get used to looking at her."

Grog nodded. "I think so, too."

"I bet she's even prettier when she's not crying."

Vinnie giggled at that, too. "You're so dumb, Reed. But Papa's working on it. She'll stop crying when she's not so hungry."

*******

The Hillfoots did not still have an old baby bottle, but they did have a leather glove that had lost its mate, and Lyle said he didn't mind putting a hole in so it could stand in for a bottle.

Even better, once Grog was settled by the fire and it was clear that Tiny was perfectly happy to suck her milk out of a small hole in one finger of the glove, Lyle shooed his kids away from where they all sat staring at Grog and the baby and sent them off to work on their schoolwork or Vinnie's knitting project, so that he didn't feel so observed.

The pressure got higher on him again at dinner, as he sat awkwardly on the floor in the doorway, eating soup and keeping an eye on Tiny in the sitting room, where she'd fallen asleep as soon as she was full.

It didn't stay high for long. Lyle steered the conversations back to the boys' days at school over and over again, and Grog couldn't help thinking of Scanlan. Scanlan wasn't always so good at noticing how other people felt, but he sure was good at shoving a conversation sideways, where he wanted it to go.

Grog complimented Lyle on the soup and answered easy questions about where he was coming from (the halflings knew about Whitestone but had never been) and where he was going (they'd never been to Westruun before, either, but they were glad to hear he was going home to his friends.)

He told them about Pike and Wilhand and how Pike saved his life and they both missed Wilhand, but anyway Pike was married now and Scanlan was great, and they had a big house with some big rooms and some little rooms that they could all share together, because Wilhand had thought of him when he was rebuilding after the dragons, and anyway, Scanlan had a lot of money now for things like building houses and sending his daughter to school.

The boys whispered a little, when he started talking about his family, but he wasn't sure about what, and they stopped when Vinnie stepped on Anders's foot.

Lyle kept asking him questions, and they talked about Scanlan being a crime boss, and Pike being his family, and houses, and the Hillfoots getting lucky, back when the dragon and the goliaths came, because they only had to rebuild half a barn. Every time they came close to talking about the actual dragons, Lyle steered the conversation back away from that, too. It was nice.

By the time he was curled up on the sitting room floor, his feet sticking out of the bottom of the blanket he'd gotten from the cabin because it was at least bigger than the halfling blankets, he'd made up his mind. He was going home to Pike, but then he was going to do something nice for these people.

Maybe Pike would know what that should be, too.

******

He woke up when the rain stopped and sat up to look into the little crib the Hillfoots really had kept in storage from when their children were young. It felt a little strange having to get up into a crouch to see Tiny, but she was sleeping peacefully, so that was alright.

He laid back down in the space they'd cleared for him by shoving all the furniture back up against the walls. He'd told Lyle he could do it himself, but the little man had insisted on helping him carry the crib into the house from the storage room by the barn, and he'd been surprised how strong he was.

Knowing Lyle was stronger than he looked had made him feel better about letting the halflings move the rest of the furniture while he sat on the floor and tried to calm Tiny down after, as Anders had put it, she 'flipped her shit' when he left the room. Vinnie had told Anders off for cursing, but had looked relieved as Grog took Tiny back, out of her arms.

He'd been planning to leave when the rain stopped, but he'd also been planning for the rain to stop long before everyone was asleep in their beds.

It would be rude to leave now. And besides that, Tiny seemed to be sleeping better than she did outside, and the Hillfoots' wood floor was one of the more comfortable floors he'd slept on, and not just the parts where the rug fit under him.

The few times Tiny woke him up to be fed, he thought about how much faster it was going now that he could pour milk into the glove a little at a time instead of dipping it over with the cloth, and how reassuring it was to know that if he ran out of milk or it started going funny, the Hillfoots would probably just give him more. 

******

Even if he'd wanted to sneak out in the morning, he wouldn't have made it. The family woke up early, Lyle laying a hand on his shoulder as he walked past and telling him not to worry and to go back to sleep.

He got up anyway, more rested than he'd been since the day he found Tiny, because she'd slept so much better than usual. He didn't know anything about cows, other than that he'd looked like one once, and he wasn't much good at making the kind of breakfast sit-down house people liked, but he could start moving the furniture back where it had been last night.

The Hillfoots had tiptoed through the room, so they wouldn't wake the baby, and he figured they wouldn't mind him working slowly to move the furniture as quietly as possible.

By the time breakfast was ready, the sun was poking up over the horizon and Tiny had woken up anyway, but at least the delay meant that there was already new milk there for her.

Lyle insisted on feeding Tiny while Grog ate, because he'd been snacking while he and Vinnie cooked, and after just a moment's hesitation, Grog transferred her carefully over into the halfling's arms. She looked like a much bigger baby with Lyle holding her, but she seemed not to mind, looking up intently at his sideburned face and his greying hair.

The man sang softly as he fed the baby, interspersing it with a weird conversation in a high-pitched voice. He called her 'little one' and muttered to her and Vinnie teased him a little and told him to scoot over farther from the stove so she could make more bacon.

Grog ate fast, both boys watching him with vague wonder.

Part of him wanted to take Tiny back, but when he finished his first plate of breakfast and Reed immediately handed him more toast, reaching over from the table toward Grog's seat on the floor so far that he almost fell out of his chair, he tried to relax instead.

Breakfast was a nice, thorough affair, more thorough than breakfast in Scanlan's mansion was, now that Kaylie had gotten ahold of it. By the time he hefted himself up to his feet, back to the old familiar low-ceiling squat, he felt five pounds heavier. He belched happily, and then apologized hastily when Vinnie threw him a look he was more used to her aiming at her brothers.

Both boys laughed, and Anders let out a loud belch of his own.

"Now, boys," Lyle said, "That's enough. What would your mother say?"

His eyes twinkled, and all of a sudden, he let out a belch even louder than Grog's. "If you're going to burp, you should do it right!"

Anders looked stunned, but Reed was laughing so hard he was back at risk of toppling out of his chair.

Tiny had been startled, and neither Lyle's apology nor Vinnie's attempt to take her from her father, with an affectionate eye roll and a vaguely disparaging, "Papa," calmed her down.

Grog made his way over and scooped Tiny carefully out of Vinnie's arms.

She took Tiny's hand gently, while Grog was still hunched far enough over for her to reach. "We know," she said, "You like your Papa best."

Grog froze. "What?"

Vinnie patted him on the arm. "I was talking to the baby. She loves you a lot."

Instinctively, he pulled Tiny closer, his brain still not fully catching up. "Oh," he answered, "Right."

He wasn't sure it was right. He wasn't sure of anything, all of a sudden.

His mind was still reeling when Lyle cleared his throat again. "I figured you and the little one would be off today, now that the storm's gone, but you're welcome to stay to meet Nora and Jilly when they get home. They shouldn't be too long. Nora never does like to stay at an inn too long.

"She doesn't even usually let us stay in an inn," Anders added, "Only when it's too stormy to go home, like yesterday." Under his breath, he added, "Jilly has all the luck."

Reed snorted. "You don't even like inns, anyway. You just wanna sound like a cool town kid who goes to taverns."

He ducked out of the way as his brother swung toward him, not very hard. "Yeah, well at least I'm not too chicken to go down into the tavern part at all," Anders retorted.

Before Vinnie could intervene, her father stepped up to her and kissed her on the side of the head. "You don't have to mum them just because your mother isn't here," he said quietly, "They're alright. And I don't think our guest much minds."

"I should go," Grog said, his mind finally catching up to the original question. "Tiny and I still have a long way to go before we get to Westruun. And it's better walking in the day, 'cause I get nervous I won't see stuff with her at night. She's only little, so I've gotta protect her."

"Well," Lyle said, "We'll pack you some extra provisions anyway. Finest cheese between Whitestone and Westruun, we are! That's what the folks say in Turst, anyway."

Grog smiled. "I'll tell my friends they should come here for cheese. I bet Whitestone uses a lot of cheese."

Lyle grinned, patting him on the shoulder. "I knew you were a good egg."

"Yeah," Grog agreed, "Some eggs would be nice, too, if you have extra."

Lyle chuckled. "I'll wrap them up careful, so they don't break."

Once Lyle started packing him things, everything got to be a bit of a whirl, too much of a whirl to work through that thing Vinnie had said, and Grog let himself get lost in it.

Vinnie suddenly remembered that not all of Tiny's diapers had tail holes, and asked him to hand her any whole ones that were left to fix up while her father was bustling about. Somehow, he found himself sitting on a very short sofa, with his knees up around his ears and Tiny sitting propped on his stomach, leaning back against his thighs, while everyone else moved around him and he tried his best to stay out of the way and keep his feet from tripping them.

He left with a sack of provisions, a small knitted hat Vinnie had made for someone else, but that fitted snugly on Tiny's head as long as he didn't catch it on her little baby horns, and a large-for-the-halflings roll of waxed canvas to shelter Tiny under if it rained again on the road.

He also left with his brain still spinning, and the moment he made it back to the road and out of sight of the house, he sighed in relief.

"They were very nice, weren't they, Tiny?" he asked, "But I kept thinking they were going to ask me questions I couldn't answer."

Tiny's hand was gripping the front of his pauldron, as if nothing had changed at all from before.

"But maybe that's why I think they're so nice. They didn't have to ask."

Tiny made a soft, answering coo.

"I don't ask you any questions you can't answer, do I, Tiny? I just ask and then answer them myself. But when you get big, I promise I won't ask you all the hard questions then, either. Not unless you're ready to answer them."

This time, he didn't get an answer, but he didn't like the feeling of waiting for one, and he didn't like the feeling of having too much to think about and too much to feel.

The road was empty, and he hopped awkwardly forward, jumping from one foot to the next instead of walking, and making little "Hup!" noises as he did it to make Tiny laugh.

By the time he'd finally gotten enough giggles out of her to feel better, his legs were a little sore from the weird motion, and he was a hair more out of breath than usual. But he felt good, and the sun was shining.

Only a few more days. A few more days, and he could ask Pike questions until he started having answers. She wouldn't mind.

Chapter Text

Grog had known, vaguely, that the road from the woods around the Alabaster Sierras to Westruun was a fairly long one. But he'd never been much good at remembering to count days, and it had never felt too long.

It felt longer now, watching for things that could hurt Tiny instead of for things that could be dinner, and stopping to feed her or change her diaper or wash diapers in a stream or retrieve her new hat when she pulled it off her head and dropped it.

People on the road mostly gave him a wide berth, but he was pleased to find that things were mostly alright on the occasions when they didn't.

A merchant caravan passed them with the cart driver glaring the whole way, but the merchant's young son in the back of the final wagon gave them a cheery wave.

A small town held an even smaller inn where they let him and Tiny sleep for free when he picked up a drunken traveler who'd been harassing the barmaid by the scruff of the neck and carried him outside that way, ignoring his protests.

The only bandits who thought it was a good idea to sneak up on a sleeping goliath with a baby were easy enough to put down, though with Tiny lying vulnerable on the ground beside him, he was too angry too fast to think of pulling his punches - or his hammer blows.

Between his enlarged fists and the Thrower, the bandits were dead in seconds, and then things actually got bad.

He wasn't sure what to do with 4 dead bodies. He and Tiny definitely couldn't just go back to sleep in the middle of them, or anyone who came along would try to take her away from him.

Even worse, Tiny was screaming now, and he was too big, and he was afraid to touch her, and he wouldn't be his own size again for minutes and minutes.

His heart pounded. "It's ok, Tiny," he said, trying to stay quiet. His voice boomed in his bigger-than-usual chest, and it didn't help.

"It's ok, it's ok!" he said, dropping down to an actual whisper.

He knelt down next to her, careful to give her space and tried to offer his finger to her to hold, but even as she clutched at it, she kept crying.

Everything in him wanted to scoop her up, but the idea was terrifying now that she was so small.

"It's ok, it's ok, it's ok," he whispered, as much to himself as to Tiny.

She kept crying, and his own breaths came out too fast.

After a moment, he took off his dragon tooth necklace, dangling it down into her reach. He'd gotten into the habit of wearing it backward, where she couldn't reach it, but maybe if he just let her grab at it - she always seemed to want it and -

She missed the first grab, but snagged it on the second, clutching tight and pulling surprisingly hard. She couldn't drag it closer, but he could feel that she wanted to. He could feel that she was trying. And when he lowered it toward her, just a second delayed, she made a noise that wasn't quite crying anymore, and quieted a little.

His breath eased a little bit as he watched her, as fascinated as ever with the teeth, pulling at it to get them toward her mouth and being stopped just short, as always.

It was still nerve-wracking waiting for the spell to end, even with her happy and things normal. As good as it had been to remove the danger quickly, he couldn't help but feel like he was the danger, now. He was dexterous, and he knew he could be gentle, and he still didn't know what he'd do if she needed a diaper change in the next few minutes.

What if she started spitting up and needed him to pat her back?

What if she tried to put something dirty in her mouth and needed him to stop her?

What if she cried again and he still couldn't trust himself to pick her up?

When his size dropped back, his heart was still racing, but at least he could breathe deeply again.

He plunked down on his ass, sitting instead of kneeling, and scooped Tiny up, tucking his face down to rest his forehead gently against hers. "Hey, Tiny," he breathed, "You're alright. We're alright."

She reached up and grabbed his beard in her tiny baby hand. They stayed like that for three more heaving breaths, then Grog closed his eyes, peeled her fingers carefully out of his beard, and straightened up again.

"Alright. We're alright, but we still have to figure out what to do about all these bodies. Vax would probably burn them, but somebody would notice the light."

He looked around them at the bodies.

"What do you think, Tiny? Do they look like bandits or murder victims?"

Then he hit on it. It didn't matter with one they looked like. He could label which ones they were.

Keeping Tiny cradled in his left arm, he used his right to haul the bodies into a large pile, wishing he'd thought to do it while he was still big. They weren't overly large men, though, more dependent on stealth and numbers and surprise than they were on strength, and it didn't take him too long to move them.

Lighting a lantern to write by was a little bit more awkward and fiddly, but he still wasn't ready to put Tiny down, so he made do with one hand.

Vex hadn't forgotten to take her extra diapers out of the bag of holding, but Percy hadn't collected quite all of his parchment and pens that had made it in there, and Grog spread what he could find carefully out on the ground next to the lantern.

"Alright, Tiny," he said, "They've got to be nice big letters, so the guard or whoever can read them straight off. But I'm never very good at that. I always run out of room before I think I will."

She didn't answer. "I'll just have to try my best," he said, "And anyway, Pike says as long as you put a dash between the two pieces of the word, people still know what you mean."

Drawing his brows together, he focused on making neat, large letters on one of the scraps of parchment

Sure enough, he ran out of room partway through the word "Bandits," but that was alright. Then he realized he should probably have explained more, but didn't have the space. He squashed one word in at the top and then flipped the paper over to add more

After a few minutes of adjustments, he put his pen down and looked again. 

DED

BANDI-

TS SO-

RY.

That side would go up.

Then if whoever found it turned the note over, it would say:

THEY

ATAKT

ME US.

It would have to do. At least the letters were nice and big and readable. Most of them.

He laid the note on top of the top bandit in the pile and, after a moment's thought, pinned it to the man's threadbare jacket with one of the crossbow bolts he found on another bandit farther down.

The bandit with the crossbow was lucky he'd just been holding it threateningly. He was lucky he hadn't shot at Tiny. He was lucky he hadn't shot Tiny. Grog had been sleeping next to the Thrower, and the hammer had crushed the crossbow man's head in one blow, and the man was still lucky he hadn't shot at Tiny.

His work with the bodies complete, Grog leaned down and kissed Tiny on the forehead. She tried to grab his beard again, but he pulled out of the way just a little too fast and then, when she started crying, relented and tucked his head back down within her range again.

"This is very silly, Tiny," he whispered, "We should be traveling again."

Tiny pulled at his beard and shrieked, but it was a happy shriek.

"You should be asleep. It's night time."

She kicked in his grasp, fingers still locked into his beard and pulling a little bit.

He leaned down to blow a raspberry on her tummy and she let go, arms waving as she laughed even harder.

"Let's go," he answered, half wondering to himself where he'd seen that before.

Their stuff was all packed up again and they were another mile down the road before he remembered. Percy. Percy had blown raspberries on his kids' tummies to make them laugh.

"I guess I'm a lot like Percy tonight, Tiny," he said, "But don't worry, I won't try to tell you what to do too much. Just a little."

Tiny babbled, and he babbled back, wondering how far they should go from the bodies before it would be safe to camp again.

He wasn't tired. Not after all that adrenaline.

When Tiny drifted off in his arms, he decided to just keep going until his arms got tired of holding her. He'd packed the sling away for now, and he was sure eventually he'd want to put her down.

She woke several times, but went back to sleep in the jostling motion as he kept walking.

They slept in a little copse of trees, just before sun-up. The horizon was already glowing in the east, but Tiny was asleep as he laid her down on her blanket, and he wasn't far behind, his body sheltering hers as he turned his back to the road and curled around her.

******

The next very tiny town, too small for him ever to have stopped there before, had a tiefling in it.

Grog stopped in his tracks.

She was wiry and muscular and wearing a long leather apron, and when she disappeared into a small building, he followed.

It was a smithy, and she turned as soon as he entered, raising one eyebrow.

"May I help you?"

"Oh!" he said. He had to cover. "Yeah." He had to think fast. He looked frantically around him. This was definitely a blacksmith's shop, and she was definitely the smith, and there were definitely no weapons around them, only farming equipment. "I'm looking for-" his eyes darted around a second time. "Horseshoes! They're supposed to be lucky."

"Are you?" Her dark eyes glittered with amusement.

"Yeah," he answered. She had dark hair, so dark it was nearly black, tall, spiraling horns and dark reddish-brown skin, more brown than red, and he wondered for a moment whether Tiny would grow up to look more like her or like Zahra.

"And is there a particular reason you need luck?" she asked.

"Oh," he said, "Yeah. Well, me and Tiny, we seem to have the most mixed-up luck. Sometimes it's good, like her not dying in the woods and us not getting killed by bandits and us finding shelter in the rain, but other times it's not good, like not finding her parents and getting stuck in the rain and attacked by bandits to begin with."

The blacksmith stepped closer. "Tiny?"

Grog rearranged, undoing part of the sling so Tiny and the other tiefling could look at each other.

"Ah," the woman said.

Tiny reached for her and Grog felt a spike of something in his chest, but then the woman pulled back a little bit, half instinctively, and he was too busy keeping Tiny from pulling herself out of his arms and then bobbing up and down to keep her from crying to really think about the something.

"Oh, no, Tiny," he said, "That's not your mama." He turned to the tiefling. "You're not her mama, are you?"

She laughed, a surprisingly melodic sound from a woman as sweaty and soot-smeared as she was. "I'm definitely not."

"See," he said to Tiny, "I told you."

When Tiny still seemed fixated on the lady, Grog pulled his dragon tooth necklace out yet again, keeping it just far enough away for her to grab it but not eat it. Even with the necklace, it took him a moment to distract her, longer than he wanted.

When he looked back up, the woman seemed a little uncomfortable. She smiled at him, but this one didn't seem real. "Anyway," she said, "Let's see about that horseshoe. I assume if it's for luck, you only need one. Or is it one for you and one for - her?"

"Oh!" He didn't know. He hadn't thought that far. He had to decide quick, so she didn't suspect he was making it up on the spot. "Just for her, I think. She's the unlucky one. Maybe. Anyway, she's the one that needs protecting. I'm ok."

"Uh-huh," she said. He couldn't read her tone of voice. It was something, anyway, and he wasn't sure if he was reminded most of Vex or Percy or Zahra, but it was maybe all three of them. At least the glint in her eye was back.

"You want just a regular horseshoe?" she asked, "Or d'you want me to make you something special?"

"Something special?" he echoed.

She laughed, and it sounded at least more real than her smile had been a moment ago. "I don't know. It's your luck token. A tiny one for your tiny baby?"

He thought for a minute. "Not too tiny. She puts things in her mouth a lot. I don't want her to choke. She's not big enough for eating things yet, I don't think."

"That's ok. Horseshoes aren't for eating anyway."

Grog snorted fondly. "Well, that won't stop her from trying."

"A stubborn one, huh?"

"Yeah," he answered, "Kind of like me."

She moved behind the forge. "Yeah, me too."

"My buddy Pike says it's ok to be stubborn as long as you're stubborn for the right reasons. Or for the right things."

"What's the right reason?"

"I dunno. I usually just ask Pike."

"And where's Pike now?"

"Westruun. Me and Tiny'll be there in a few days, and then Pike can figure out what to do with us."

That was too much. More than he should have let slip. But she had asked about Pike. Maybe she knew Pike, secretly. Pike knew lots of people who worked on things, because Pike had done lots of building projects.

The smith studied him again. "Alright," she said, after a long moment. "S'long as it's just for luck and not going on anything, it shouldn't take me long. Fewer details to get just right if it doesn't have to fit an actual, real horse."

"Ok," he said.

She started to work right away, bending over the bellows to heat the forge back up, and he realized she must be coming back in from some kind of a break, maybe lunch.

"It won't be magic or anything," she said over her shoulder, "But I'll do my best to make it lucky, anyway."

He nodded. "Ok."

He wasn't sure what to do with himself. He knew how to make horseshoes, but he was pretty sure it was rude to do it himself in her shop. Especially because he'd only asked for one so that she wouldn't feel weird.

Besides that, he told himself, he couldn't both help and keep Tiny occupied at the same time.

When the metal was hot, she turned back around to the anvil and her eyebrow shot up when she saw him on the other side of it. "It's gonna be a while," she said, "You guys should uh - we don't really have a tavern, but Ellie Kerfoot makes pretty good ale, and she'll sell it out of her kitchen for a few copper a pint."

Grog grinned.

"Yeah, you looked like the type. Go down the road four houses, and then go around the side to the door with the broom over it. Tell her Val sent you and I said it was alright."

Four was a mostly manageable number, and he found the house without too much trouble. The broom hanging out from the side of the house, at least, was pretty hard to miss.

For a moment, he wondered if it could fly, like Vex's, but even if it could, he wasn't sure he trusted himself to fly with Tiny.

He knocked on the door, and a short, stout woman opened the door. He couldn't tell, at first glance, whether she was human or halfling, but her round face was split into a big smile, so he didn't think too much about it.

"I'm looking for ale?" he asked, "Val sent me and said it was alright."

Ellie laughed. "Val, huh? You don't look like the type waiting on a new plowshare. Your horse throw a shoe or something? Come on in!"

He followed after her, taking a seat at a smallish wooden table when she indicated the chair. Everything was bigger here than it had been with the Hillfoots, which was a relief.

She poured him a large mug of ale and he started digging in his bag for coppers. "I don't have a horse," he said, "She's just making a lucky horseshoe for Tiny before anything else bad happens."

Ellie took the handful of coppers he gave her and looked down with faint surprise. "Oh! You'll be sitting for a while then, you think?" Before he had a chance to answer, she was moving around to get a look at Tiny. "Oh, my, look at you! How sweet!"

Tiny's eyes shifted over to lock onto Ellie's face. The woman waved at her over Grog's shoulder. "Hello!"

"She, uh - she seems to like everybody today. Don't you, Tiny?"

The baby didn't answer, but Mrs. Kerfoot didn't seem to mind. She leaned over farther, draping her weight across Grog's shoulder, and tickled Tiny's chin, making the baby giggle.

"Oh!" Grog said, "I'll uh - I'll let her out of the sling if that's - if she won't be too much trouble. She doesn't crawl yet, but she rolls around a little bit, and she wiggles pretty good."

Ellie made an exaggerated look of surprise. "Oh my!" she said, her voice pitched higher than it had been when she talked to him, "What a big girl you are! Yes, you are! Rolling around already!"

"Is that ok?" he asked, "That she rolls. She only rolls halfway."

Ellie laughed, putting a hand back on his shoulder. "Of course it is, dear. Babies need their exercise too, don't they?"

"She does get awfully grumpy if she's squashed up too long. But other times she likes it, being close to me."

She squeezed his shoulder. "I'm sure she does."

He untied a few things and lifted Tiny up out of her sling, then paused for a moment, just holding her. "I'm, uh -"

He wasn't sure where to put her. The table seemed so high up, but - but nothing. He grabbed his ale in his free hand and then slid off his chair and onto the floor, where he could put Tiny down on her stomach to wiggle around. "We'll just be down here. Is that better, Tiny?" He thought for a moment about making his voice high-pitched like everyone else seemed to when they talked to her, but it just seemed - silly.

Ellie stepped over him, crossing back to the other side of the kitchen. "What a darling child. Are you family of Val's, then?"

Grog shook his head. "Oh, no. My family's in Westruun. Pike and Wilhand Trickfoot. Or, I guess just Pike now. But she got married! So Pike and Scanlan."

Ellie raised an eyebrow. "Pike Trickfoot? And is that Scanlan - Shorthalt?"

"Yeah! Do you know them?"

Ellie shook her head, looking at him more intently. "I just know of them. And what's your name, dear?"

Something was weird about the way she asked the question, but he couldn't work out what it was. "Oh! I'm Grog." He thought he should say something else, but it took him a half-second too long to remember what. "Bidet!"

"Bi-det? It's nice to meet you, Grog."

"It's nice to meet you too," he answered, taking a drink from his mug before he had to think of anything else to say. "This is good. Thank you."

She smiled. "Thank you! I'm - I'm sure you've had better, traveling the world."

He shrugged. "Maybe. But this is good, too."

"And is Tiny - um -"

"Tiny needed help," he said, "And now I've got her, and she's safe."

He'd been thinking about that, these last few days on the road. He'd expected everyone to ask him where he'd gotten a baby from, and mostly they hadn't, just letting him go on his way, but he'd thought of an answer anyway, and when Ellie's face softened into another smile, he breathed a sigh of relief. It had been good enough.

"Well, if anyone can keep her safe, I suppose it's you."

"Yeah," he agreed, "I'm gonna try not to kill any more bandits for her, though, even if they are a threat. It was just, I hadn't woken up enough to think yet, and I had to make sure they didn't hurt her and I probably only meant to knock them out but-"

"You found a baby getting attacked by bandits?"

"No," he said, caught by surprise, "No, I found her, and then I couldn't find anyone else, and then we decided we'd better go see Pike, and then we both got attacked by bandits. And I thought, 'Oh no, she can't protect herself, she's only a baby,' so I had to fight for both of us, and I got a little - they're gone now. And she's alright."

This part of the story had not been in the plan, and he steeled himself to grab the baby and run if she called the guard or anything. If the town even had a guard.

Ellie shuddered. "Well, I'm glad you're both alright, I suppose. I have always heard there are bandits on the road. That's why I never go out myself." She laughed. "Well, no it isn't. Mr. Kerfoot isn't much of a traveler, and I like my kitchen and my ale and my company. But I've never much liked the thought of bandits, either."

"Most people don't," he observed.

"That's true."

They settled into silence, both watching Tiny wiggling around on the floor, apparently content enough. Grog drank his ale, and when the mug was almost empty, Ellie got him some more, and then returned to her brewing set-up to meddle around with things.

He was starting to get fidgety when Tiny started crying again and he picked her up. It was - oddly nice. Now that he didn't have things to do, there were so many times when he didn't have anything to do, but now that he had Tiny - well, there was never nothing for long.

Her diaper was wet, and he'd gotten halfway through changing her on the floor before Ellie made a half-stifled noise and it occurred to him that maybe the kitchen floor wasn't a place people wanted baby poop.

"It's ok," he said, "She's only wet. Gotta get her all dried off."

Ellie watched him, and he tried not to think too much about the feeling of her eyes boring into him. Anyway, he'd gotten even faster since Vinnie Hillfoot fixed the diapers up special to account for Tiny's tail, and he ducked his head down and focused.

When he was done, he rolled Tiny back over onto her tummy so she could push up and wiggle around.

Instead, she rolled over onto her back again, a concentrated effort that took some time, but made it easier for her to reach down and grab her own feet. "Good job," he told her. "You get those feet."

Ellie was still watching, one hand on her hip.

"Are you really the Grog Strongjaw that killed all those dragons?" she asked.

He looked up. "Yeah. Do you wanna see the scales?"

She blinked, taken aback, then shook her head. "No, it's - I believe you. You are a lot like you are in the stories I hear, but you're just - you're not what I expected, either."

"Oh," he said, trying to work out what she'd meant by that, "Did you listen to Tary?"

"I'm - not familiar with that name."

"Me neither," he said quickly, "Anyway, I'm not what a lot of people expect. My friend Percy says I'm a real eczema sometimes."

Ellie laughed. "You sure are."

They settled in to watch the baby until Grog really did get fidgety. He helped her move around some of her heavier brewing equipment while they both watched Tiny out of the corner of their eyes, and then they settled back down again, now that he'd gotten some of his energy out.

It was still a relief when there was a knock on the door and it turned out to be Val.

"Hey, Ellie," she said, her face just visible through the door, over Mrs. Kerfoot's head. She brushed the back of her wrist across her forehead, wiping away a little sweat and shoving some sweaty tendrils of dark hair back out of her eyes. Not much had fallen out of her braid, but Grog could tell she'd been working hard.

"Oh, hello, Val! You here for some ale, or just to see our guest?"

Val laughed. "The second one, I'm afraid."

Ellie waved her in, but when she turned, she was smiling, so she must not have minded too much.

Val charged in with her head up and her shoulders back. "I'm almost done," she said, "But I need to know the baby's name. If she's going to have a lucky symbol of her own, it ought to have her name on it."

Grog stared at her, his brain frantically trying to catch up to the question.

"I mean, you called her Tiny before," Val said, after he'd taken a moment too long, "But that seems like a nickname. Or like it's short for something."

"I don't know," he answered, "I just called her Tiny when I saw her the first time, 'cause she's so little and then that's what I'd been calling her so now I-"

Ellie interrupted, this time. "It's alright, Grog, it's a perfectly good thing to call her! She just probably ought to have a name name, too."

"Oh," he said. Then after a moment, he turned back to Val. "Where'd you get your name?"

She blushed, and her chin stiffened. "I picked it myself. It's short for 'Valor.'"

"I always thought it was short for 'Valerie,'" Ellie said.

Val looked vaguely uncomfortable, something about the angle of her tail telling him she wasn't quite as relaxed as the sideways grin indicated. "Yeah, I figured you would. Or 'Valora.' But I - Anyway, where did you get your name, 'Grog'?"

Grog shrugged. "Dunno. My dad liked drinking. What were you called before you picked your name?" Grog asked.

"Melech," she answered, with vague distaste, "I never really liked it."

He frowned. "What if Tiny doesn't like her name?"

Val shifted, still looking a little uncomfortable. She glanced briefly at Ellie, but then glanced away again before it could be too obvious that she was looking. She seemed torn. Then she spoke anyway. "Why don't we talk about it on the way back to my shop? You can at least pick what I should write on the shoe."

Ellie made a face that reminded him of Pike, like she thought something was up but wasn't saying it. If Val noticed, she didn't react, just waved him forward over her shoulder as she turned to leave. "Come on. I've got other work today, so I shouldn't let the forge get too cold."

For a moment, Grog glanced between the two women, but then Ellie put a hand on his elbow. "It's alright, dear. Val's not the most patient person in town. I'll still be here if you want some more ale on your way out."

He nodded, collected Tiny from the floor, settled her down in her sling, and went back over to the blacksmith's shop, a couple of minutes behind Val.

If she asked, he was going to say it was because Tiny made him slower, not because Ellie had insisted on hugging him goodbye even though they'd only just met, and he'd found himself sort of enjoying it.

Val was behind the anvil again, but she wasn't working on anything when he walked in. She was just looking down at the tiny cooling horseshoe on her anvil.

She looked up at the sound of the door opening. "So look," she started, blunt and sudden. "There's two kinds of tiefling names. Well, no, there's more than that, but there's two kinds that are specific to tieflings that you ought to know about. The ones we don't share with other people."

"Oh," he answered, not sure what to make of that just yet.

Her tail lashed behind her, only half visible behind the anvil, and he realized she was uncomfortable.

"Sometimes, I think maybe I ought to go back to an Infernal name, but one that fits me better, because I don't want to be-" He kept eye contact with her, but she still seemed to realize he wasn't getting it.

She sighed. "Let me go back a step. People get names lots of ways. You get named after your family, or people your parents know, or names they like the sound of, or whatever. Tieflings get those names, or we get names from Infernal, if our families are tieflings, too, or-"

She paused. "I got dumped on the doorstep of an orphanage and they gave me an Infernal name they found in a book, and I wasn't like anybody else, and when I was 15, I met this tiefling girl who said all the cool kids picked their own names to like, express their dreams or whatever."

"Her name was 'Fame' and she said she was gonna be a big star and everybody was gonna know her, and that obviously hasn't happened, but I didn't know that then. I wanted to be - well, I wasn't sure all the way, but I knew she was cool and beautiful and didn't pick on me, and when I ran away with her I started calling myself 'Valor.' I was gonna be as brave as her, and I was gonna be in all her songs and stories, and I was gonna wield swords instead of make them."

She laughed. "Now I don't even make them. I don't know that a name means anything, or that anybody needs the pressure of having to be just one thing, because what if you don't, but I know it was better being Valor than Melech, back when I didn't think much of myself, and I know it's better being Val than Valor now that I do feel alright about myself, just being me."

Grog looked down at Tiny. "So I shouldn't name her Melech or Valor."

Val laughed. "Probably not. But what I mean is, you shouldn't - you ought to name her so she knows somebody wants her. You ought to name her like she means something, so she doesn't have to guess at it later. If she gets named after a dream you have for her, that's not the worst, I guess. But she can't just be Tiny forever, 'cause one day she won't be and she ought to at least be something of her own."

Grog's eyebrows furrowed, trying to follow all that. "But she does mean something."

Val didn't answer, and her face looked like lots of feelings at once, and he tried not to look too hard.

"I don't know how to name her for that, though," he added. "What does she mean?"

Val rolled her eyes. "How should I know? I'm just a blacksmith looking for a name to put on a horseshoe."

Grog looked down at Tiny. "What if I let her pick?"

"Then you'll be standing in my shop for a long time."

"What if I come back when she has a name?"

Val shrugged. "You could. I'll be here. Not everybody likes me, but I'm useful, and Ellie keeps me up on all the gossip, and they need a good farrier even more than they need all the other stuff I make. Seems like a long way to go, though."

"What if only part of her name was Tiny? Then if she doesn't like being called Tiny she can pick the other part."

"What would the other part be?"

"I dunno. What's 'Tiny' short for?"

Val thought for a moment. "Christine?"

Grog grunted dismissively. "Then she'd be 'Teeny' and she's not that little."

"Tinsley?"

He grunted again.

"Yeah, I know," Val said, "Then she'd be 'Tinny.'"

Grog stared into Tiny's face, like the answer would be there. She looked back, distracted from playing with the strap on his pauldron as soon as he made eye contact with her.

"Leaves out Satin and Satine, too," Val said absently.

They both thought for another moment.

"Eglantine?"

He made a face.

"Clementine," she suggested, a little more confident, "I think I heard that once. Some princess or something."

That didn't feel right, either. They settled into silence again, the fire in the forge crackling quietly behind her.

He debated sitting down against the wall of the shop, so he could get a better look at Tiny's face. But then, in a flash, he didn't have to. A smile spread slowly across his face even before he looked up.

"Valentine," he said, "Then if she wants, she can be Val, like you."

Her face was confusing again, lots of things at once. "You can't name your baby after me. We just met."

He looked down at Tiny again. "It's ok. It still doesn't mean you're her mother."

"I didn't say it did!"

He looked up with a grin. "And anyway, I like you. You're stubborn like us. If she turns out like you, that's not so bad."

Val looked down, not quite meeting his eyes. "A small town blacksmith making plowshares?"

"You said I should name her so she knows she means something."

"Yeah?"

"You know you mean something, and that's why you're just Val. You said."

"Yeah, but-"

"Come look at her. She's a Valentine. A Val-and-a-Tiny. Or, really a 'Val-or-Tiny,' but that's not a real name."

Val looked hesitant for a moment, but then she moved anyway, drawing closer as Grog rearranged to give her a better look at the baby.

Her voice was quieter than he'd heard it since they met. "What do you think, baby? What do you think of this silly man naming you after the only tiefling he knows?"

"You're not the only tiefling I know. I know Zahra and her cousin Lillith, and her kids that look like her but people always say they look like Kash anyway."

Val looked up, brows furrowed. "Then why me?"

"You like being you."

"Yeah, but-"

"I want her to like being her. And if she wants to be called something else, I want her to tell me. " He looked down at Tiny, studying her face as she gripped the fur across his shoulder and twisted to stare at Val. "And anyway, I can't name her after Pike, 'cause that would be confusing. There would be two Pikes, and then I'd get all mixed up."

"What would Pike think of you naming her Valentine?"

He thought for a minute. "She'd like it. Me and her have little names, but Vax and Vex and Percy have big names and just use the little ones. But they can use their big names to sound fancy. Like 'Phillip.' I think Pike would like that she could be fancy if she wanted. Me and Pike never thought we'd be fancy. We're still not usually fancy, but sometimes people talk like we are. I don't like it, but I think Pike does sometimes, just a little bit."

He looked back up at Val. "Anyway, it sounds like a good, stubborn name. It sounds strong. Tiny's already stubborn and strong, and if she grows up stubborn and strong, she'll turn out ok, too. Like you."

Val shoved him lightly in the shoulder. "Nobody as big as you should be this sappy about a stranger."

"I'm not sappy," he said defensively.

"Valentine's not even gonna fit on a horseshoe," she said, "So I don't know why you picked it."

"You can just put a line in the middle," he answered, "And then the rest on the other side. Pike says that's what you do when you run out of space on accident. You put a line and go on to the next space down. But you try not to run out of space."

Val closed her eyes and groaned. "You're a pain in the ass."

Grog smiled. "I'll buy you some ale once it's done. On top of the price."

"Get the good stuff Ellie keeps back for herself. The stuff she hides in the cabinets so nobody knows about it."

"Deal."

"Deal."

She looked at him, then down at Valentine, then shoved him in the shoulder again, a little harder this time. "Now get out of my shop. I have work to do. And not just heating and engraving your little luck charm. I'll come meet you at Ellie's when it's done."

She glanced over to the door, which was hanging open a crack. "Actually, it's getting late, so I don't know where you're going to stay tonight, since Ellie's place isn't exactly an inn, but that's your own fault for picking such a dumb, long name."

His eyebrows constricted again, and she sighed. "I don't actually think it's dumb. I'm just mad 'cause you did something nice and I can't be mad about it."

She gave his shoulder a third shove, "Now get out, or I'm charging you extra money for my extra time!"

He went.

Ellie was charmed by Tiny's new name.

He rolled it around on his tongue for a bit, sing-songing it at Tiny as he bounced her up and down, while Ellie went back to brewing and ignored them both.

Val came back in the middle of his thousandth "Valentine, Valentine, Valen-, Valen- Tiny," and cut him off in the middle.

The horseshoe said VALE- on one side, just like he'd said, and NTINE on the other. The branches on the second E were a little shorter than they'd been on the first, to make room for the Ns, but that was alright.

He ran his thumbs over the lettering, wondering if he'd really picked right. Something in Val's face was still - something. But then she smiled, and he smiled back, and he didn't feel quite so bad telling both ladies that he and Tiny ought to get back on the road, since there wasn't an inn or anything.

He walked out of town with his chin up, the sun creeping low toward the horizon, and tried not to doubt himself too much as the light bounced off the tiny horseshoe Tiny was waving around, hitting him occasionally on the chin with the hard metal.

When they settled down to camp again, a few miles down the road, he called her Valentine again as he took the shoe carefully away from her so that she couldn't hit herself with it as she wiggled around outside of her sling.

Even away from the town, it felt alright.

Chapter Text

Westruun was bustling when they arrived. Tiny craned her neck to look around, twisting so hard he worried that she'd wiggle herself right out of the sling.

"It's ok, Tiny," he said, "This is home. We can come look whenever we want."

She looked back at his face as he talked, but once he was quiet again, he could only keep her interest for half a minute before she was trying to look around again.

He looked around, too. They were still in the residential district, and things were only going to get more interesting from here.

"Alright," he said, "We'll stop for a minute."

He found a little alleyway between two homes, little more than an alcove, really, and tucked himself out of the way of the street.

As soon as Tiny was out of the sling and he could hold her facing the other way, she seemed calmer, looking around without having to twist so much.

He was glad he knew where he was going, because even with Tiny just wiggling instead of trying to twist completely sideways, it took half his concentration to keep her secure.

Tiny was most interested in the people around them, and Grog tried not to worry too much about the way all the people looked back.

He'd decided before they got here that he was going to the house first. Sometimes Pike was off meeting with important people in the middle of town, or other clerics at the House of the Everlight. If anyone was going to tell him he couldn't have a baby, it would probably be someone important, or a cleric, or both, and he didn't really want to go find Pike either place.

"You're gonna like Pike so much," he told Tiny, "She's the best."

He'd told her before that Pike would know what to do about her, but now - now that wasn't even the question, really. He and Tiny had made it this far, and they'd finally gotten home, and he wasn't about to let anything get messed up.

"She's gonna love you," he said, as much to convince himself as Tiny. "She's gonna love you and she's gonna know how we can make sure we can stay together, and then somebody might try to argue with me, but nobody can argue with Pike and win, 'cause she's so smart. Not even Scanlan. Scanlan's the best at people, but when Pike and him argue, she always wins."

Tiny seemed to be paying him less mind than usual, still absorbed in looking at the people around them on the road. There were more and more people as they drew closer to the center of town, and he smiled as he watched her watch them.

"You're gonna have so many friends once you're settled in, Tiny. Don't worry. Me and Pike mostly just had each other, but there's some other houses around the market and we're gonna find you a friend. And maybe Pike and Scanlan will have a baby and you can have a little cousin."

Once they made it to the area around the market, he started looking out for other babies on their way back to the house, only to find that the handful of mothers he came across weren't looking at him and Tiny the same way he was looking at them.

It was a little bit of a relief to make it to the house, though it was dampened a bit by the fact that the house was empty.

They were all mostly used to Wilhand being gone. He'd been gone for a while. It was still sad for that first half-second coming through the door.

Grog rooted through the bag of holding for his keys and opened the door, stepping through with Tiny in one arm. In one motion, he dumped both bag and keys onto the floor in a heap and closed the door behind them.

The front room was small, but not quite as small as it had once been. Other than the higher ceiling, though, it looked mostly the same as it had when he was brought here the first time.

The furniture was a little older and a little more ragged, with nicks and dings from when it had been used to barricade the door, but the rug was hardly different at all, carefully repaired after everything. A few pieces of furniture had broken completely and had to be replaced, but Wilhand had liked what he liked, and he'd remade them nearly identical.

There were a few more knickknacks on the mantel, but the shrine to Sarenrae was the same, and the new mantel looked just like the old one, and the bricks of the fireplace were the same, and the empty hearth sent a spike of something through his chest.

He stood still, crouching slightly under the now-medium-height ceiling, taking in the room.

"This is it, Tiny," he said, his voice quieter than usual, "This is home."

Tiny said nothing, but without other people to watch, she twisted back around to look at him, instead.

"It'll be better once I get the fire lit," he said, "Then it'll be like the first time I woke up here. Only the ceiling's higher since we had to rebuild it after the second floor got busted up. It's not as high as my room, though, because we put the second floor back, too, in this part of the house, just like it used to be, only we didn't build it over my room. I bet you could go up there, with Pike and Scanlan. But I'd rather you stayed down here with me."

After a moment's hesitation, he settled Tiny down on the rug and squatted down beside her to set a fire in the fireplace.

Once the fire was set, he was at a loss again. Usually, when he was home, he was practicing his reading and looking for projects and helping out with odd jobs around town to keep from getting bored. But the only projects he'd had before he left on his trip were done now, and the only books he had were about werewolves, which seemed like they would be scary for a little thing like Tiny.

Tiny had made herself at home on the old rug, pushing herself partway up to look at the fire.

"There," he said, "See, I told you it was better."

After a moment of watching her, he crawled around to the biggest available chunk of floor space and laid down on the rug, too, his feet sticking off the end.

"Do you know what, Tiny?" he said, "I laid here on the floor just like you when I first came here. Wilhand and Pike didn't have any furniture that was big enough for me, just like we don't have any furniture that's little enough for you, and I was hurt real bad, but Pike fixed me, a little bit at a time. And Wilhand made me soup, so it was easy to feed it to me even though my face hurt."

He looked her over again. "Are you hungry, Tiny?"

She didn't seem to be upset, but it had also been a while since breakfast.

He levered himself back up to feed her again, and hoped Pike came home soon so that he didn't have to think up too many more things to do. The house felt too empty without any gnomes in it, even though he always thought he ought to be used to it.

******

By the time Pike got home, he'd found something to do, but only because Tiny had fallen asleep after he fed her and it didn't matter that his only books were werewolf books. He'd scooped her up off the rug in the sitting room and carried her to his bed instead.

He usually only slept in it because Wilhand had made it for him, but as he sat in his chair and worked slowly through his book and watched Tiny sleep on her back in the middle of the huge mattress, he was glad it was here.

Pike called his name even before the door closed behind her, and Grog put the book down immediately, rushing out to greet her.

Pike was moving even faster than he was, in spite of her tiny legs, and he bent down and caught her as she leapt into a hug.

"Monstahh!" he exclaimed, fondly.

"Grog! I thought you were going south to see Keyleth before you came back west!"

"And leave my best buddy that long? Never."

"Ohh!" she hugged him again, but when she let go, she glanced at his face and her expression suddenly shifted. He quickly faked a smile, but it was too late. "Grog-" she began, looking suspicious.

"Ok," he said, "I might have come back for a reason. I might have found something that got a little... complicated."

She sighed. "Oh, Grog, not another talking sword!"

"No!" he spluttered, "No, it's, uh - there's no talking yet?"

He'd known he needed to bring Tiny to Pike for so many days. He'd been trying to get here all this time, had been thinking about this moment all this time, and it had never occurred to him to figure out what to say or how to broach the subject.

"Just... wait here, ok? I'll show you."

She raised an eyebrow.

"She's not dangerous at all!" he said, "Just... sit down in the good chair. I'll be back."

"She?"

He didn't answer that one, focusing instead on keeping his chin up. Pike was going to love Tiny! She had to!

As he rushed out, he heard Pike call, "Grog!" behind him, but he ignored her.

In his room, he froze as suddenly as he'd run off, looking down at the sleeping infant in the middle of the bed. After all these days of traveling together just the two of them, it felt funny to think of waking her up when she was sleeping. He usually just used it as an opportunity to move a little faster or focus a little harder on dinner, or (more than anything) to sleep, himself.

But maybe she should be awake to meet Pike. And maybe she should be awake for Pike to meet her.

He bit his lip, but before he could decide, he heard Pike's feet coming up behind him, not far behind.

He scooped Tiny up, half on instinct. If he was holding her, Pike would know she was his. If he was holding her, Pike would understand that they belonged together.

"What-"

He turned around to face her.

She gasped softly. "Oh, Grog."

"Her name is Valentine," he said, softly, "But I call her Tiny. She's little and perfect and new, but not too new, 'cause she can look at things and roll over onto her back, and she needs me. Needed me. Needs us."

Pike was frozen. She looked like she didn't understand what she was seeing, which didn't happen all that often. He felt like he should help.

He sank down to sit on the bed. "You can climb up and see, if you want," he said, still keeping his voice low, "She's sleeping right now."

Pike moved almost as if she were in a daze, clambering up onto the big, giant-sized bed and standing on the mattress next to him to look down at the baby in his arms.

He looked over at her, feeling his eyes soften. He had been worried for a moment, hadn't been able to help being worried, but even Pike in a daze didn't seem scary this close. Not when he could really see her eyes, as bright as ever even in her confusion.

She reached tentatively out toward Tiny, stopping her fingers just short of the little tiefling's skin. "Grog, she's beautiful."

"I know," he answered.

"Where did she come from?" she asked, "She doesn't look like a nymph."

Grog blushed. "Oh, no, Pike! It's not like that. I only found her, but she didn't have any parents, and we looked for two whole days, practically, and where was she supposed to go with no parents, huh? She's only little and she needs a home."

"So you brought her home with you?"

"Yeah," he said, taking a deep breath before he added, "I'm not dumb, you know. I know somebody's probably going to say I can't keep her, but I have to. She doesn't have anybody else."

"I can see that, Grog, but-"

"No," he interrupted, raising his voice a little, "No buts. She doesn't have anybody, but now she has me. And she got left once already, and people shouldn't get left twice. Not left on purpose."

Tiny shifted in his arms at the added volume, and Pike's eyes darted to her immediately.

She didn't quite wake up, and Grog lowered his voice again. He hadn't realized quite how sure he was until Pike had started making that face, soft and confused, and he'd known he had to convince her.

"I know babies are complicated," he said, "But I'm getting really good at taking care of her, and maybe we can put a cow in the backyard to get milk for her, or a goat or something, and I can wash diapers way more often now that we're back home, so she doesn't get wet and grumpy and I don't have to tear up old robes anymore, and we can get her a crib to put in my room so I don't worry about her rolling off things."

Pike frowned slightly. "I know, I know, it's just - it's a big responsibility."

"I know that!"

"I thought you said you didn't want responsibilities."

He looked down at Tiny for a moment, then back up at Pike, voice creeping up toward a whine again in spite of himself. "But look at her! Look at her little perfect eyelashes! And her little hands. I can't just leave her alone for somebody else to look after. Not when she's got so used to me. What if she misses me?"

"I don't know," Pike answered, biting her lip. "They say people don't remember if you leave them when they're a baby, but that doesn't mean they don't miss you while it's happening."

"No!" he answered, and he didn't know what he was saying no to, but he knew he meant it with everything he had. "No-"

Pike looked at both of them, just staring and thinking, and when Grog couldn't take it anymore, he pulled Tiny just the slightest bit closer, and said, "No," again, decisively.

She breathed out heavily through her nose. "Ok," she said, yielding the argument.

Grog felt a smile spread across his face. "Really?"

"Oh, I don't know!" she answered, eyebrows pinching together, "But if Scanlan can have a teenage daughter all of a sudden, I don't see why you can't have a baby one. But she's going to be a lot more work, you know. And Kaylie was already a lot of work."

"I know," he said immediately, "I know, but I thought when I found her that I could find her parents, and then I thought if I could get back here, we could find somebody good to take her so I wouldn't have to worry she'd gone off with someone bad, but then I got here and I-"

He looked down at Tiny again. "We're a 'we' now. We were a 'we' on the road, just like you an' me, and she's - she's my little Tiny!"

Pike suddenly snorted. "Scanlan's gonna freak out."

"No," Grog said, dismissively. But then he thought about it again, and - "Maybe?"

"Oh, definitely!" Pike said, "He thought he was the only one with secret children running around, and now here you are with a daughter, too."

"A daughter," he repeated. That was - new.

He looked down at Tiny again. "Hello, daughter," he whispered.

Pike plopped down to sit next to him, leaning against his arm. "I can't believe you came home with a daughter."

"You couldn't believe Wilhand came home with me, either, and that worked out alright."

Pike didn't answer right away, but as her eyes grew distant, he held his tongue, waiting for her to finish thinking about whatever she was thinking about.

Finally, she turned back to him, smiling softly. "Wilhand would have been proud, you know. He was proud of you anyway, but you know how he was about me being a champion and a cleric and everything. He'd have said he knew you'd have Sarenrae's blessing too, one day. He'd be proud of you for fixing something that went wrong."

He shrugged, uncomfortable at the praise this time. "It just happened."

Pike's smile widened, amused. "Half the time things 'just happen' around you, it's because you're good, did you notice that? Like you and me and Wilhand."

He grunted, unconvinced. "You just yelled at me for touching magic swords."

She laughed. "Ok, point taken. But half the time things happen with family, anyway."

He stared at Tiny. "Maybe."

"Maybe," she agreed.

******

By the time Scanlan came home, Tiny was wide awake, her golden eyes fixated on Pike's face as the gnome played peek-a-boo with her. Neither Pike nor Grog looked up from the baby in his lap when the front door opened and closed again, but they both shouted at once when Scanlan yelled out, "Hey, Pike, is this bag new, or is Grog home?"

Tiny yelled too, an extra shout to follow the giggles and shrieks at Pike's disappearances and sudden reappearances.

Scanlan kept half-shouting, his voice coming closer and closer. "It doesn't smell like dinner's cooking and I know Kaylie's not due for another couple of weeks, so I assume we're going down to the-" he stopped short in the doorway to the kitchen. "Oh. Never mind."

"We can make sandwiches," Pike said casually. Grog forced himself not to react. They'd decided the funniest way to tell Scanlan was to pretend nothing was weird about it and explain nothing, like he was supposed to know what was going on but had forgotten.

Pike covered her face again, and then uncovered it with her mouth wide open, gasping loudly and dramatically at Tiny, who squealed again, as she had every time Pike did that trick.

"Or you could make us your mansion," Grog said, "And then we'd have a nursery for until we can get a crib."

"Oh, yeah!" Pike agreed, pretending to be surprised by the suggestion, "I bet you could even tell the kitchens to make us some real food, since it's a celebration and all."

"Oh!" Scanlan said, glancing quickly between them and putting on his best poker face, the one nobody else ever seemed to be able to see through even though he and Pike could. "Yeah, that's right - a - a celebration. I'm still not sure Kaylie would-"

"Not even for her baby cousin?" Grog asked, playing innocent as best he could, "Wouldn't she want us to have a little bit of meat for her cousin?"

Scanlan's face was priceless, part confused, part dawning comprehension, and another part confusion.

Grog tried to keep his face straight, but couldn't. He laughed, too early in the joke, and Pike wasn't far behind.

Scanlan laughed too, but a little uneasily, and Pike stood up from her chair to kiss him on the cheek.

"Sorry, Scan, we're just messing with you."

"Oh," he said with relief, "Ok."

"Valentine," Grog said, "this is Scanlan," he took Valentine's hand gently and pointed it toward the gnome. "See? Scan-lan."

Scanlan looked confused again, and Grog realized he hadn't introduced them both ways. "Scanlan, this is Valentine. I call her Tiny, but if she wants to be called something else when she gets big, that's ok."

"And Valentine is -" Scanlan began.

"My daughter!" Grog said proudly, "I have a daughter, like you! Only mine's little and I found her, instead of her finding me."

Scanlan looked over at Pike, and she shrugged, nodding at the same time. Then he looked back at Grog and grinned. "You've got a daughter."

Grog held Tiny high up into the air, making her squeal with laughter again. "I've got a daughter!"

"Valentine!"

"Yeah!"

"Daughters are the best!"

"Yeah!"

Pike smiled gently, folding her arms as she leaned against the countertop next to where Scanlan stood. "You two," she said fondly, "Did you know your dad and uncle were so sappy, Tiny?"

Grog reached forward with his foot and jostled her hip lightly. "You're sappy, too. You said she was beautiful."

Her smile got bigger. "I did say that." Her voice shot up in pitch. "Because you are beautiful, aren't you, Tiny? Yes, you are!"

At the sound of her name, Tiny reached out toward Pike, and Grog held her out toward the gnome.

Pike looked bashful for a second, but swept Tiny into her arms, taking her carefully away from Grog. "Ohhh, there you are!" she bounced Tiny against her hip, "My perfect little niece! I love you already."

"I have a niece!" Scanlan exclaimed.

"Yeah, you've - had a niece for a while," Grog said, "All of us have. Two, actually. So now you have - three?"

"Three," Scanlan confirmed. "But this one lives here!" His face shifted. "Oh, gods, a baby's about to live here."

"We're gonna build her the best nursery," Grog said, proudly, "Pike and I have been talking about it."

"Oh!" Scanlan said, "Right! Nursery! Celebration! I'll put the mansion in your room, and - oh, hell, it's a party! We'll have chicken!"

"Hear that, Tiny?" Pike said, continuing to bounce her up and down, "We're gonna eat so much chicken, and all to celebrate you!"

Tiny cooed, as if she had understood, and Pike laughed, making Grog's heart suddenly swell and feel full.

Scanlan was already singing, peeking in at Tiny over Pike's shoulder. "Valentine, Valentine, Oh how you'll shine! Valentine, Valentine, you're so divine!"

Grog found that he didn't mind Tiny being in somebody else's arms when those arms belonged to his family. He just came up behind them and swept all three into his arms, gnomes and baby alike, and breathed into the embrace of his whole, tiny family.

It was Tiny's family, too, and as she shrieked happily in the middle of them all, Grog hoped she knew it already. If she didn't, they had plenty of time to prove it, now.

He lifted them in the air, trusting Pike and Scanlan to have a firm grip on Tiny, and spun them in a circle, a little slower than he did when it was Pike by herself, just in case.

"You excited, big man?" Scanlan asked.

"I'm - happy," he decided, after a moment's thought.

As Scanlan got down to start making the mansion, Tiny got her hands really well tangled into Pike's hair. Grog helped her peel Tiny's fingers out, and then he was right back to having things to do. Important things. Things like sweeping his daughter back up into his arms, and blowing a raspberry on her tummy so she'd know he hadn't taken her away from Pike because they were mad. Like saying her full name again, over and over, so she would know he wasn't leaving her. Like eating chicken and milking cows and sleeping next to a crib in a brand new nursery in a magic mansion. Like planning for his next big adventure.

Tiny got her fingers into his beard next, and he just held her, and let her hold him back, and the pulling on his beard be damned.