“And all of a sudden,” her voice dramatically changing for effect, in a hushed and whispered tone, “he jumped!”

“Oh no!” Her Audience was captivated. “Did he die?”

“Close!” She looked up and they made eye contact for a moment. Her green eyes were deep emerald tonight. Funny how they changed. He couldn’t sum it up to her choice of color or her mood…either way, emerald green was beautiful on her.

She didn’t let his presence be known, she was after all in the middle of a story-performance. “He could feel the air as if it were the ocean, and he began doing what felt natural to him: he simply swam. This swimming in air was sure he had invented rested on him, finally. He was doing something he only dared to dream of. Something so far fetched and out there no one would believe him if he tried to explain it.

He could fly.”

She clasped her hands shut.

“Oh, come on Mommm!” Fiery red curls bounced around her face as she shook her head at the suggestion of an end to story hour and a beginning of slumber.

“It’s time, Punkin. Up you go,” she helped the little one into her bed and tucked her in.

“I see you over there, Austin.” Iris didn’t miss a beat. Her smile. Her face glowed. “ Don’t just stand there, come give me good night kisses….good ones, too. Like Mom does.”

He let the fact that his first born has never once called him Daddy, always his first name, slide two years ago. Turned out, it wasn’t a phase. They tried for awhile to get her to call him The D Word but she just refused. He kissed her on the forehead, closing his eyes as he did so, as if by doing that he could somehow stop the hands of time from stealing this precious moment turning it into a fading memory. If only he had known how right he would be…

“Who loves you?” He asked.

“Austin does. Nobody will ever love me the way Austin does.” She finished the sentence, seemingly understanding. “Not even Mom.”

They all laughed at her joke. To be so small and so young she is so funny. Her sense of humor never fails.

“I love you,” Her Mom kissed her again and turned her light out.

“Goodnight,” she said.

They closed the bedroom door after bidding her a good night and walked down the hall the stairs.

Austin watched as Agatha made them a milkshake. It was a nighttime routine. She was so beautiful. Tiny. Fierce. But only to him. To everyone else she was Miss Fields, the librarian. To him, a Goddess. She had dark red curly hair, like the little one. Green-Changing eyes. She was 5”0 tall, or “Five-foot-short” as she put it. That’s where Iris got her sense of humor.

As Aggy made the milkshakes she lost all the excitement she previously feigned. She had to show him something. And it couldn’t wait. Not much longer, anyways.

She had a very eventful day today.

Just then, she looked at Austin.

He was looking at her with a bewilderment she had never seen before.

A noise was coming from their bedroom.

“Did you hear that?” He asked.

“Yes.” Agatha answered. “Come with me.”

When she opened the bedroom door, The Noise was right there for all to see.

In the middle of their bed, in some crazy millennial apparatus that makes this kind of thing okay, The Noise laid on their bed screaming.

“Not the intro I was hoping for, but it works.”

“Agatha.”

He never called her that.

Austin walked into the room looking at the newborn laying in the middle of their bed. Agatha stood chewing her thumb nail, which she only did when she had done something only she would do.

“Where did this baby come from and where are it’s parents?”