Chapter Text
Afternoon light spilled through the nursery curtains like honey, puddling in golds and pearls across Rumi's changing mat. Celine had just changed the seventeenth diaper of the day — though who was truly counting anymore? — when a sudden stillness fell over the baby.
Rumi's tiny arm had drifted skyward, fingers unfurling like petals greeting the morning sun, each digit splayed against the air as though she were a little starfish suspended in some invisible, luminous sea. Those wide browns tracked the movement with a gravity that seemed far too knowing, for something so impossibly small.
"What are you looking at, little one?" Celine's voice rose narrowly above a whisper, as her fingers combed through the downy lavender fuzz crowning Rumi's head. It had grown these past weeks, just enough to curl at the very tips like question marks waiting to be answered.
As if summoned by her mother's — no, her guardian's — voice, Rumi's other hand rose to meet its twin. Fingers tangled and separated, wove together and drifted apart like dancers learning their first choreography.
The baby's expression rippled through a watercolor wash of emotions: confusion bleeding into fascination, wonder blooming into something approaching pure, distilled marvel.
Then came the sound — a soft coo, delicate as wind chimes, the first utterance she'd made that was not born from hunger or discomfort or the terrible silence of grief neither of them could comprehend.
Celine found herself frozen, transfixed, watching this minuscule discovery with the same laser focus she'd once reserved for tracking demons through moonless nights. Yet this was different. This was learning; the baby was discovering her own body, that mysterious vessel she inhabited. That these strange, wriggling things at the end of her arms — these miracles of bone and sinew wrapped in soft skin — belonged to her and her alone.
"Those are your hands," Celine whispered, feeling wonderfully, terribly foolish for narrating reality to someone who couldn't possibly decipher language yet. But she continued anyway, helpless against the pull, cradling a minuscule fist between her forefinger and thumb. "These are your fingers, Rumi-ah. You have ten of them. Just like your—"
The word lodged in her throat like broken shards. Just like your mother.
Instead, Celine gently unfurled each finger, marveling — there was no other word for it — at the impossible delicacy, the perfection of each translucent nail no bigger than a grain of rice. Rumi watched with rapt attention, rosebud lips forming a perfect 'o' of astonishment, as Celine guided the tiny hand back into her field of vision like presenting a pure revelation.
"You're going to do so many magnificent things with these hands." Her voice came out uneven, frayed where strength should’ve been. "You're going to hold things, precious things. Reach for dreams. Maybe play piano, like she always wanted to learn. Maybe wield weapons, like I was taught to do." She paused, thumb stroking across the impossible softness of Rumi's palm, tracing the barely-there lines. "Maybe both. Maybe neither. Maybe something entirely your own."
Later that night, as Celine attempted to parse another parenting guide by the warm amber glow of her bedside lamp — Developmental Milestones: What to Expect — she kept peering toward the bassinet that now resided beside her bed like a small boat tethered to a dock. Purchasing it months ago, when Mi-yeong's belly had still been round with promise, hadn't been entirely without purpose after all.
From the periphery of her vision, she could see Rumi's arms conducting some invisible baby orchestra, hands opening and closing like sea anemones trying to capture moonlight that spilled through the window in silver hues.
Celine let the book fall closed, pages marked but unread, words unabsorbed. She simply watched, chest warmed with almost contentment, as baby Rumi practiced being human.