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Lyra and Cyrus’ Rooms
Halfmoon Castle
Halfmoon
Subtheria
Eight Months After the Coup Attempt
Cyrus watched on with a tender smile as C’yara and Adora cuddled up next to Lyra in the bed with Cyrus standing at the foot of it. The children had a look of awe and wonder on their faces as they laid a hand on Lyra’s distended stomach. Everyone in the room was softly purring (or doing that weird pseudo-purr, in Adora’s case) and it left Cyrus with a wonderful feeling of both pride and contentment. As hard as this pregnancy had been on Lyra, these small moments made it more than worth it.
Adora’s expression changed to one of confused concentration, a look that usually meant that she had just thought of something that confused her and she was trying to figure it out. As such, it was of no surprise when she looked at Cyrus and asked, “Hey, King Tiger?”
“Yes, Little Lion?” Cyrus returned even as he was suddenly hit with the strangest sense of foreboding.
“Where do kittens come from? How’d it get in Queen Lyra’s belly?” Adora asked with a quizzical tilt of her head.
Cyrus felt all of the blood leave his face as his tail stilled, his eyes widened, and his purr cut off. All of his survival instincts were telling him that his best move was to take the emergency exit out of this conversation.
“You know, that’s a great question,” Cyrus began as he started to slowly back away towards the door. “One that I think Lyra—”
“Oh, no you don’t,” Lyra cut him off as she pointed at the door. Cyrus didn’t need to see the spell go off to know that she had just magically locked it. “You helped get me into this so you’re going to help me get out of it.”
“Is it some big secret or something?” C’yara asked, looking back and forth between her parents.
“I’m real good at keeping secrets!” Adora exclaimed.
“Oh, no, it’s not really a secret or anything, it’s just…” Cyrus trailed off as he tried to find the right word.
“Complicated,” Lyra supplied.
“Complicated? You mean like all that math I’ve been learning?” C’yara asked as she made a disgusted face.
“Or like the obstacle course we had to run?” Adora added, no doubt referencing something from her time in the Horde.
(They made a five year old run an obstacle course? What the fuck?)
“No, not quite like that,” Lyra said. “It’s just that…”
Lyra seemed to be at a loss for words this time so Cyrus jumped in. “You know how you had to learn addition and subtraction before you started learning multiplication and division?” Cyrus prompted.
“Yeah,” C’yara replied while Adora nodded.
“It’s kind of like that. There are certain things you have to learn first before you can learn the other thing and, before you can learn that, you need to be older.”
“Why do we need to be older to learn things? What does age have to do with it?” Adora asked.
“That’s… another complicated question,” Lyra said as she cast her gaze about the room. “You need to be older so that way you can… understand things better.”
“But what does age have to do with understanding things?” Adora pressed. “You understand things by learning about them, not by getting older.”
“That’s… true, to an extent,” Cyrus allowed. “But being older means that you’ve experienced more and have had more time to learn more things which will help you understand things better.”
Adora seemed to mull that answer over for a moment before saying, “Sure, I guess. But why can’t you just tell me the things I need to know first in order to learn where kittens come from now? I’m a fast learner.”
Cyrus desperately locked eyes with his wife as he fidgeted on the spot. He didn’t really have a logical counter to that.
“I’m afraid that you still need to be of a certain age before you can learn some things, Adora,” Lyra eventually said, clearly deciding that there was no salvaging this skiff wreck of a conversation.
Adora’s brow furrowed in obvious agitation. “So, we need to wait until our age is some… magic number before we can learn where kittens come from?”
“Yes and also no,” Cyrus stepped in. “We can tell you some things but we can’t tell you everything until you’re older.”
Adora grumbled as she crossed her arms. While she had been mostly silent, C’yara didn’t look too pleased by this turn of events, either. “So, what magic age do I have to be before I can learn everything?”
Well, there was absolutely no getting out of this question. Giving a vague answer would just be mean so they’d need to lock themselves into a specific age. Cyrus once again locked eyes with his wife before having a silent conversation with her to decide who would be forced to pick a number.
Cyrus lost the argument. “We’ll tell you everything when you’re… twelve,” he decided.
Adora and C’yara both groaned in unison as Adora rolled her head back while C’yara flopped onto her back. “But that’s six years from now!” C’yara complained. “That’s forever!”
Cyrus chuckled slightly. “It may seem like that now but those six years will fly by.”
“Well, what can you tell us now?” Adora asked with a pout.
Ah, right. That had been the easy part of this conversation. “Right. That. You see, children, generally speaking, when two people love each other very much, they might decide that they want to have kittens,” Cyrus began.
“Wait, why did you say ‘generally speaking’?” Adora interjected. “What other reasons would people want to have kittens?”
“There are a few,” Lyra began, “but they’re unimportant right now. In our case, it’s because we love each other very much and wanted to have another kitten.”
“Is that also why you had me?” C’yara asked.
“It is,” Lyra said with a smile as she petted their daughter’s mane. C’yara smiled and purred as she nuzzled into the affection.
“Once a couple has decided that they want to have a kitten, they… Well… What do you know about gender?” Cyrus asked.
C’yara tilted her head in confusion while Adora looked to her. “Um… There’s a,” C’yara concentrated as she tried to sound out a word, “spetrum—”
“Spectrum,” Lyra corrected.
“Spectrum but there are three, like, big ones: male, female, and non-be— non-bri— non-ber—”
“Non-binary,” Cyrus provided.
“Yeah, that thing. Each one has its own set of common pronouns but it can get complicated. Also, sometimes people change their gender or are several genders or something,” C’yara concluded.
“Very good,” Cyrus smiled and nodded. “Did you know that, Little Lion?”
“Nope!” Adora replied instantly. “I mean, I knew that boys and girls are things and are different but I’ve never heard of that third thing or anything.”
“We’ll need to see that you’re properly educated on that,” Lyra commented. “Moving on, whenever a kitten is born, they’re usually assigned one of those three genders, almost always either boy or girl.”
“How do you decide what gender they should be?” Adora asked.
“We’ll tell you when you’re older,” Cyrus said, causing Adora to grumble something about ‘stupid magic numbers.’
“Anyway, you understanding that is important so you can understand this: exactly how a couple decides to have a kitten is dependent largely on what gender they were assigned at birth provided they were assigned either male or female,” Lyra explained.
“In the case of Lyra and me, since she was assigned female at birth and I was assigned male at birth, what we needed to do was simple. We… did a certain… dance that only adults are allowed to do. This dance led to Lyra getting pregnant which means that a kitten would eventually grow inside of her,” Cyrus explained.
“How come only adults are allowed to do this dance?” C’yara asked.
“Quite a few reasons,” Lyra answered. “One of which is that it’s dangerous for people who haven’t finished growing.”
“Another is that having a kitten is a very big responsibility. You need to know and be able to do a lot of things if you want to responsibly have one and, by the time that you’re an adult, it’s generally assumed that you already know and can do those things,” Cyrus added.
“Yeah, that makes sense,” Adora said with a thoughtful look. “It’s kind of like taking a test: you shouldn’t take it until you’ve learned what’s gonna be on it.”
“That’s one way of looking at it, yes,” Lyra said with a nod. “However, this is one test that, ideally, you absolutely shouldn’t fail. You want to make extra sure that you’re ready before you take it.”
“On a related note, do you two know what to do if someone tries to touch you in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable?” Cyrus asked.
“Scream and claw them,” C’yara answered while Adora said, “Punch them in the crotch and find an officer.”
“Both good answers although, Little Lion, you should also scream. Both of you should find an adult you can trust as fast as you can.”
“So, that’s where kittens come from if you have a boy and a girl but what about two boys or two girls? Can they have kittens if they do that adult dance, too?” C’yara asked.
“No. Two people who are assigned male at birth or two people who are assigned female at birth can do the adult dance but they can’t have kittens that way for reasons that we’ll explain when you’re older,” Cyrus answered.
“They can still have kittens, they just need to use magic to help them do it,” Lyra added.
“But not everyone wants to go through that or can go through that, for whatever reason. For those people, if they still want to start a family, they can always adopt someone,” Cyrus said.
“Where do those kittens come from?” C’yara asked.
Cyrus smiled sadly. “Their story is often similar to Little Lion’s. Their parents either died or they failed the test and so they gave them up for adoption so that way they could have a better future.”
That confused concentrated look came about Adora’s face again although this time it was tinged with sadness. “Can you only adopt kittens? Is that why you didn’t adopt me?” she asked in a small voice.
Cyrus felt his heart break, a reaction that Lyra seemed to share based on her stricken expression that Cyrus no doubt mirrored. “No, Little Lion, that has nothing to do with it,” Cyrus said resolutely as he walked to the side of the bed Adora was on while Lyra pulled her close in a tight hug.
Evidently sensing Adora's growing distress, C’yara carefully climbed around Lyra before pressing herself up against Adora and scent marking her while letting out a soothing purr.
“Th-Then why didn’t you? Did— Did you not want me?” Adora asked, clearly fighting back tears.
Oh. Oh, they had fucked up. They had blithely assumed that Adora had been okay with being given over to the High Temple to be raised. They hadn’t once considered how much it must have hurt and confused Adora to be spirited away from everything she knew only to be unceremoniously dumped off by the very person who had spirited her away. Sure, they kept in constant contact with her since she was frequently C’yara’s playmate but it must have been terrifying.
Cyrus looked at Lyra and saw she had squeezed her eyes shut, no doubt to fight off her own tears. Knowing that she’d need a moment to find her voice, Cyrus crouched down until he was eye level with Adora before reaching out and gently taking her face between his hands.
“Of course we want you,” Cyrus said tenderly as he slowly stroked her cheek with his thumb. “Don’t you ever think for even a single moment that you are unwanted, Adora, that you are unloved. Lyra and I are the Queen and King of Halfmoon. That means that certain things are much harder for us than they would be for other people and one of those things is adopting someone. If we adopted you, your life would be so much more difficult than it already is. We wanted you to grow up without certain pressures and that’s the only reason we didn’t adopt you.”
Adora whimpered softly as she screwed her eyes shut. She then whispered something to herself that was so quiet that Cyrus almost couldn’t hear it, something that made his heart break further even as he damned the Horde for ingraining such a thing in a five-year-old child.
“Don’t show weakness.”
“We love you, Adora,” Lyra finally said as she looked at the small child trembling in her arm. She shifted slightly so that way she could bring her other arm around to wrap both of the children—both of their children—up in a somewhat awkward hug. “Please never doubt that. We love you and we will always love you as though you were our own even though we didn’t adopt you.” She then let out a soothing purr as she nuzzled her face into Adora’s hair.
“Yeah, ‘Dora,” C’yara said as she wiggled a little to get that bit closer to the other girl. “You’re ours and everyone else has to deal with it.”
Cyrus let go of Adora’s face in order to wrap all of them into a hug, even if it was more than a little awkward given their positioning. A small sob escaped Adora’s mouth as her tears finally started to run down her face.
“Let it out, Little Lion,” Cyrus said gently as he added his purr into the mix. “We won’t love you any less for crying. It’s okay to be weak with the people who love you.” While crying wasn’t a weakness, that was a particular brand of trauma that they’d have to have Adora slowly unlearn at a later date.
Cyrus’ words seemed to break the dam as Adora wailed, her tears flowing freely. Cyrus’ own eyes started to water as he held his family tight and kept his purr going strong as Adora let out all of her pent-up emotions. Eventually, Adora’s cries turned to whimpers as she fell asleep.
Cyrus got C’yara’s attention and brought a finger up to his lips. When she nodded in understanding, he carefully picked her up so that way Lyra could move Adora to the inside of the bed and get her under the blankets. As she was doing that, Cyrus carried their oldest daughter to the other side of the bed and let her crawl in before getting in himself. He laid on his side and draped his arm across their children, letting his hand rest on Lyra’s stomach.
It was a bit early in the day for a nap but Cyrus would be damned if he let Adora wake up to anything less than all of them still being with her. She was loved and C’yara was loved and their new kitten would be loved, too. Their family may have unexpectedly grown in size and it may be an odd one now but Cyrus was going to fight with everything he had in him to keep them all safe and happy.
He could do no less.