Miles and weeks away, in a sunny townhouse in San Francisco, a family of eight dragons finished their breakfast. 

Moros trailed behind Lamis with handfuls of dirty utensils, as his mama took all the dirty dishes to the sink.

“Thank you for being so helpful, Moros!” Lamis said, grinning as Moros dropped the utensils into the soapy water. Then she hummed, frowning dramatically. “Hm, Moros, Moros. You need a nickname!”

“Momo!” Moros told her with a grin. “That’s my nickname. Unless I get an extra one.”

“Oh yeah?” Lamis started rinsing the dishes, before putting them inside a box with racks inside that smelled like soap. “What’s an extra name?”

Moros thought of all the things the scientists and Knight called him. “B-3, stupid, anomaly, monster, beast, idiot, demon, um…”

Lamis’s hands stopped what they were doing. Moros could see them tremble. He was curious about the faint golden scars he could see running up Lamis’s arms. They looked like electrical burns, but more angular, like cracking glass. Moros had seen a lot of different burns, and healed from all of them too, but he’d never seen burns like the ones his mama had. Lamis took a slow breath and the shaking stopped, though her feathery hair was still all floaty. Moros thought it was pretty when it did that. 

She turned to Moros, kneeling so she was at eye level with him. 

“You know none of those are nice names, right?”

“They’re just names.” Moros shrugged. Deimos and Knight both called him stupid, but he only liked it when Deimos said it. Affection in his older brother’s eyes and the little curl of his tail, or fierce and protective after he tried to bend one of the rules too much. Knight said it like it made him worthless.

He didn’t mind the names. He minded the way they were said.

“Those aren’t nice names. They’re words that aren’t nice. Those– people shouldn't have called you that. You aren’t a monster, or a demon, or stupid.” Lamis took his hands, holding them gently between her own. “And you’re not B-3. You’re Momo, for as long as you want to be Momo.”

Moros curled his hands around Lamis’s, drinking in her words like a parched flower. 

“What if I’m scary?” He asked. He thought of what Deimos had told him and his brothers, that their parents would be upset if they found out what they were made from.

“Do you still want to be Momo, even if you’re scary?”

Moros looked up at her and grinned with all his teeth. “Yes.”

“Then you’ll still be my little Momo, and it won’t matter how scary you are. Because I’ll still be your mama,” Lamis said. “For as long as you want me to be.”

“Forever,” Moros decided.

“Then I’m your mama forever,” Lamis squeezed his hands. “And after forever too. Unless you want me to be a papa, I can be a papa sometimes, if you want that too.”

Moros grinned. “You can do that?”

“Yup. You can be a mama or a papa, or a sister or a brother. The thing that matters is what’s inside of you, not the words people call you. No matter what, I’m your parent.”

Moros thought about it, but he didn’t need to for long. “I think I’m happy being a brother. And I like you being mama. Maybe another day we can try papa.”

Lamis smiled, kissing his head. “You just let me know. Usually I’m a sister, unless I’m at work, then I’m a mister.” Her voice took on a lecturing tone. “Gender is a social construct we can play with, as long as we let people know our preferences–” She squeezed his hands. “Ah, but we can talk more about social stuff like that later, when you meet more new people.”

Moros beamed and wiggled excitedly, lunging forward to hug Lamis tightly, giggling. “I like meeting new people!”

Lamis cuddled him close, tucking Moros’s head under her chin. She easily rose back to her feet, holding Moros against her side as she went back to rinsing dishes, one handed. “Yeah? Tell me about the new people you’ve met.”

“Um, I got a new handler a month ago because I scared the last one!” Moros grinned. “His name was Darrel and he always looked away whenever there were bugs for feeding time, so I knew he didn’t like them, so I hid crickets in my mouth and when he got too close ‘cause I wasn’t talking I opened my mouth and they jumped all over his face!”

His mama chuckled, the sound much less light than it was before. “That was a good plan. You’re very clever Momo.”

“Icelus’s the planner,” Moros said matter-of-factly. “I’m supposed to be good at climbing and staying quiet. That’s my purpose. But I get ideas for funny things all the time. Like I hid an apple in a fish one time and Deimos spent a week trying to figure it out!”

His mama laughed, bumping her muzzle against the side of Moros’s head. “That’s a good one! I once moved all of Dionysis’s tools slightly to the left in their whole lab. It drove them nuts! Especially when a few days later, I moved everything slightly to the right.”

Moros cackled, kicking his feet in delight. “Deimos notices when things get moved too, like when the cameras change angles a bit! I’m really good at finding blind spots in cameras but sometimes I forget they’re there. But I like to make funny faces at the walls to scare people.”

He didn’t actually know if he was scaring people past the walls, because he couldn’t see or hear them, but he liked to imagine he did all the time. That was why everyone treated him like he was going to snap their heads off at any moment.

“Funny faces like this?” Lamis crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue, making a silly sound. 

Moros giggled and nodded. 

“They don’t like it when I do this,” he said, sticking his tongue out so it lolled. It was forked and longer than his brothers’.

Lamis’ brows raised. “Wow! I bet you have no problem licking your elbow with that!”

Moros blinked. He’d never tried before, so he did it with ease and beamed up at Lamis. “Easy!”

“Wow! That’s so cool!” Lamis chuckled. 

Moros grinned and scratched at the back of his neck where the bandages were still taped on. He never wore bandages for this long; usually he never got bandages at all. The cuts from their surgery before coming to the townhouse healed completely after eating all the treats the night before.

“Want me to check on those for you, sunshine?” Lamis pulled her hand out of the sink, flicking the water off her claws, then wiped the rest off on a towel. 

“Okay!” Moros turned around and allowed Lamis to carefully peel away the bandage. She let out a surprised hum.

“Chi was right, you kids do heal fast.” She was clearly thinking a lot more than that, which she didn't say.

Moros’s tail wagged. 

“We have an unprecedented healing factor!” He boasted, reciting the words he remembered Knight saying after his leg had healed.

“You really do,” Lamis agreed. She took a clean cloth out of the sink, gently wiping the dried blood off the back of Moros’s neck. “Does it still hurt at all?”

“Nope!” Moros chirped. “Deimos says the pain always fades.”

His mama hummed, something tight around her eyes. 

“Not all the time.” She let out a breath, smiling again, and Moros remembered that he wasn’t supposed to tell Mama that Icelus got headaches a lot. “Well, I think a bath may be better to clean all this off than me scrubbing you at the sink. What do you say?”

Moros paused as he tried to recall the meaning of the word. He’d heard it used when they were littler by some of the scientists. His scales clamped down, smoothing over. 

“Like decontamination?” He asked doubtfully. “I don’t like decontamination.”