I held Sidney’s baby and blinked as she squalled loudly for her parents.  Well, maybe Sidney’s concerns were justified, after all.  Baby Zoey was, indeed, a kraken.  She was in her human form – which could, thankfully, breathe underwater like oceanids – but she was quite loud for a baby.

Sidney, back his in male form, came rushing over with a bottle.  “Okay, here, give it to her, and I’m going to go – go take a nap.  Having babies is hard work.  Thank you.”  He kissed my cheek, then swam off without another word.

Well, I guess that meant I was left to babysit a baby kraken without much information on whether there were actually things I needed to know about taking care of said baby kraken.

I decided to pretend Zoey was just a normal baby because I had babysat those before, so I could just feed her and then do my best to amuse her while her oceanid parent got a nap.  I had no idea where Jett was, but I figured he was out deep in the ocean – he had to eat a lot, and he didn’t like to do so close to the shore since he’d severely affect everyone else’s food availability if he did, so generally he went out several miles whenever he needed to eat.

We hadn’t figured out Charlotte’s situation yet.  Not exactly.  For some reason, I was now invested in this, along with Theo, and we’d come to a silent but mutual decision that we were going to get her out of this without violence if we could.  I was pretty sure the centaurs would be afraid of a giant kraken, but Charlotte was less convinced, worried that the centaurs might actually decide to try attacking him just for the “fun” of getting to face something that rare.  I wanted to talk to Jett and find out if one, he’d be willing to threaten people to help protect someone, and two, if he thought he could handle a centaur herd if not?  I mean, I couldn’t really ask him to get involved in an actual fight.  I didn’t want to.  He and Sidney were some of my closest friends plus he’d just had a baby.  There was no way I was going to even suggest he potentially get injured, but I was hoping his mere size would be enough to intimidate the centaur herd into leaving Charlotte alone.

But if it wasn’t, what then?  That could be bad.  Not only might the centaurs attack Jett, but Charlotte would be stranded on an island with them – that was the only way we could safely bring Jett to the surface, after all, so we could be sure humans wouldn’t see a giant kraken – and she couldn’t swim, so she’d be forced to face them.  Theo had minimal magic and I might have more, but I wasn’t under any delusions that I’d be useful in a fight.  I’d probably freeze up and start crying, most likely.  Maybe we should bring both Jett and the pandemonium?  But what happened if the pandemonium decided to attack the centaurs anyway?  There were just a lot of “ifs” to this equation and I didn’t like it.

On the other hand, though, Charlotte’s only options seemed to be giving into them, leaving town, fighting her way out, or dying.  Most of those were bad.  Moving would involve no violence, but…well, I wouldn’t get to see her again, which for some reason made me sad, but also there was another problem.  Theo was concerned about the idea of a centaur herd running rampant in town.  Apparently this was a very dangerous thing, and he wanted to see if they could be stopped regardless of whether Charlotte was in danger.  Which meant leaving town might not really be a helpful option in the long run anyway – it would help her, but it wouldn’t solve the actual problem.

I so desperately wanted to end this without violence but I didn’t know how.  I doubted I could just talk the herd out of it – people like them, who did enjoy being cruel and sadistic, they would likely pick up on my timidity in the face of violence and just end up bullying me or hurting me physically instead of listening.  They probably needed to be put in their place by someone stronger than them, because they’d only listen to someone stronger than them, and that meant…Jett, right?

But I really didn’t want to put Jett in danger, either.  I just needed to know how dangerous it really was if he faced off against a centaur herd.  Kraken were deadly, right?  And terrifying?  It worked with other merfolk, surely it would with centaurs, too?  And he’d still be dangerous and scary even if he was on land, wouldn’t he?  I mean, he could stay in the water and just slap them with his tentacles from there, and, uh, that would be enough, right?  Not that I wanted it to come to that, but just in case it did.

What on earth was I even thinking about these days?  Here I was, actually trying to figure out how a potential fight would end, while holding the baby of the very person I was wanting to volunteer for said fight.

“I’m crazy,” I murmured to Zoey, who screwed up her face at me but thankfully didn’t start to cry again.

I might be crazy, but I was also concerned that in this situation, if intimidation from Jett didn’t work…there might not be an option other than violence.  That was terrifying.  This was why surface people were so scary, because why did violence have to be used to solve problems?  There ought to be other ways.

But…maybe sometimes there weren’t.  And I was really afraid this might be one of those times.

Zoey was almost asleep in my arms when Jett arrived home, melting from his giant form into his human form at the door so he could fit inside his house.  He paused when he saw me with the baby, then headed in our direction.

Zoey spotted her kraken parent and immediately got excited enough she popped into her kraken form – more like a regular adult octopus size form – and attempted to escape my arms to get to him, which was a lot easier for her to achieve in this form than her human form.

Jett chuckled and took her from me, petting her head for a moment or two until she changed back into her human form and started yawning again.  “We don’t have much control over our transformations at this age,” he explained when he noticed my surprise.  “Any sort of strong emotion and we tend to switch.  Once she learns you’re basically family she’ll start doing this when you arrive, too.”

I poked her tiny fingers gently, a smile on my face.  “I think Sidney’s happy about having a baby kraken, fears and all.  He talks a lot about how few there are of you and how he doesn’t want you to be alone.”

“I’m not alone,” Jett answered simply.  “I have Sidney, and you, and our other friends.  Even if Zoey were oceanid, it wouldn’t change that.  I have plenty of family around.”

“Is it nice, though?  Having another kraken here, even if she’s just a baby?  Is it nice to look forward to that when she gets older?”  I asked curiously, floating along after him as he walked along to the other room we’d built.  Apparently his gravity in human form allowed him to easily walk along the bottom of the ocean, rather than how human forms would normally work in water – but that also meant he couldn’t really swim in human form, which was why he mostly used his kraken form unless he needed to be smaller for some reason, like to fit in their house.

Jett shrugged slightly.  “It’s hard for kraken to live in the same area as adults,” he admitted.  “Mostly due to the amount we eat.  Zoey already eats a lot more than your average baby, and by the time she’s in her teens, I’ll have to take her out really far to get enough for us both to eat.  As an adult…it’s not impossible, but hard.  There’s a good chance we won’t be able to live near each other by the time she’s an adult, just for purely practical reasons.”

I could see the sadness in his face at that.  She was his daughter – tiny at this point, still, but he was already aware that down the road, they would probably have to part ways and live further apart than might be necessary if she’d been an oceanid child and could just stay here with them if she wanted.  Granted, an oceanid wouldn’t have to stay, so she could still have wanted to travel or move to another community, but it sounded like it was almost guaranteed that because she was a kraken, eventually Zoey would have to live apart from Jett.

I felt so bad for him and immediately bounced forward to give him a hug.  “Well, maybe we can figure out a way that won’t have to happen, but she’s just a newborn now, so you can at least enjoy all the time with her until then, right?”

Jett gently patted my arm, but I could see the thanks in his eyes even if he didn’t say it.  He wasn’t as demonstrative as I tended to be – blame my dolphin family for that, maybe – but he also didn’t mind it when I hugged him, which was good.  And he seemed to appreciate it under the circumstances.

I watched as he put Zoey in the crib they’d built after the other day, her falling to sleep almost instantly.  My worries started to seep in again as we returned to the outer room.

“Jett,” I asked hesitantly, “do you think you’d be able to scare off an entire centaur herd?  Just, um, intimidate them?”

He raised an eyebrow.  “Strange request, especially from you.  What’s going on?”

So I explained how I’d rescued Charlotte and then discovered that she was basically on the run from a centaur herd and they might take over the town once she was out of the way.  I mentioned Theo, but left out his backstory or how I’d become friends with them – aka bonding with random strangers in the middle of a storm by sharing our personal history – and how I wanted to stop the herd without violence, but I couldn’t think of how to do so except by threatening them with something bigger and scarier than they were.

“Charlotte thinks the demon pandemonium will help her, but that sounds so…violent,” I admitted.  “So it’s not like you have to help, she can probably fix it on her own, but I just thought maybe if they’d be scared of you that might be enough?  But I really, really don’t want to put you in danger or anything so I don’t know what happens if they don’t go along with it.”

Jett looked thoughtful.  “How many are there?”

“Eleven.”  I bit my lower lip.  “Theo pointed out that elemental magic could help slow them down, maybe trap them in mud, but that’s not really a solution, because eventually they’d escape.  We can just get the pandemonium to come and see if they’d be enough to scare them.”

I had no idea if demons would want to fight centaurs who were trapped in mud, but…probably?  Wouldn’t they see that as a potential enemy being weakened and as the prime time to strike, therefore?  Charlotte was planning to sneak through town tomorrow to visit her demon friend to talk to them, which I was afraid sounded really risky because what if the herd caught her?  But even apart from that, would the pandemonium agree to trying to be non-violent unless there was absolutely no other way to proceed?

“I was hoping you’d be enough to scare them into backing off without doing anything, but Charlotte isn’t sure they wouldn’t still try,” I added.   He needed to know the risks involved.

Jett looked a lot less bothered by the risks involved than I felt.  “You said something about thinking about a dragon, too, but she thought they’d just try to take one on?”

I nodded.  Personally, that sounded stupid to me.  Dragons were kind of like military tanks – heavily armored with a lot of firepower.  Literally, for most of them.  And they could heal from almost anything.  I didn’t understand the reasoning behind wanting to take on an opponent like a dragon or a kraken just for, well, the bragging rights?  I didn’t know how strong centaurs were, but it concerned me that a herd that size might feel comfortable taking on a dragon.

No wonder Theo was worried about them taking over the town.  If they were equal to a dragon’s power in a herd that size, that could be very dangerous.