Back when Bella had looked after little Katie, she'd racked up a mountain of childcare experience, so now she wasn't the least bit rusty. Cradling her own daughter with practiced ease, she posed a question everyone knows.
"Oh ho ho ho ho — this child, she looks clever already! Little Elsa! Papa's here! Papa's going to give you a little test — who is the most... in all the wor—"
Before she could finish, she felt a chill; her eyes flicked forward on instinct, and there was Natasha, gripping a dagger in one hand and watching her with a sweet little smile.
This bargain of a little sister, this bargain of a wife, was just too rough with her! I'm only asking a question — is that really called for? She's actually drawn a dagger? What kind of new mother keeps a dagger tucked under her pillow?
Bella gave a sheepish laugh and bowed and scraped, the very picture of meekness and humility.
"...What I actually meant to ask little Elsa was whether Mama is the prettier one!"
Natasha put the dagger away and gave her a look that said, smart of you.
"I want blueberries."
"Done! I'll go pick some this instant!"
"I'd like some of those Hobbit cream scones too."
"Sure, I'll have Bilbo make them," Bella promised readily.
"Hmm?" Natasha tilted her head, a puzzled look crossing her face.
"...Bilbo probably wouldn't get them right. I'll make them myself!"
Bella's cooking was surely no match for Bilbo's, but what mattered was the thought behind it — the husband cooking for the wife, the wife feeding the child. Little Elsa was a well-behaved baby too, seldom fussing or wailing, and the mood in the little family of three was wonderful.
After the meal, Bella waited on her wife with a bowl of soup.
"Here, open up. You've been through so much — I made this soup specially for you. Give it a taste."
Natasha took a small sip, savoring the unusual, delicate richness it left on her tongue. "What kind of soup is this? It's delicious — I've definitely never had it before."
Bella said in a low voice, "It's trilobite soup! Well? Isn't it good? I went and gathered a whole big sack of trilobites just for this."
"These trilobites you're talking about — are they the same thing I've seen in books?"
"...Should be, yeah." Bella said it without a care in the world. "Don't worry, I've already got my people breeding them. From now on we can have it every day!"
"Is that what I'm worried about?"
"Then you're worried about my paper? Relax — after eating this many pounds of them, I know trilobites inside and out by now!"
Trilobite soup was rich in nutrients, and Natasha recovered quickly. There was no custom of postpartum confinement here, so that very afternoon the two adults were sitting beside the crib, one on each side, gazing at their daughter.
Little Elsa's constitution was sturdier than an ordinary infant's, and the magic that saturated every corner of Vanaheim would keep nudging it upward in small increments — which was precisely why Bella had insisted her wife give birth in Arendelle.
"Papa — me? I'm Papa, and this pretty one beside me is Mama. Got that? Hmm?" Bella smothered the baby's little hand in kisses, then lifted the infant's left hand to touch her own face, so the child would form a first impression of her, and afterward took little Elsa's right hand and had her touch Natasha.
The baby's cheeks were rosy, her eyes bright, and she cooed a couple of times at the pair of them. Her little head couldn't yet make sense of words like "Papa" and "Mama"; she only patted their faces on instinct, then lingered a moment longer on Bella's side.
Bella was overjoyed: deep down, the child felt closer to her after all. She figured it was because her own heart was purer — little children were especially sensitive to that sort of thing. Because of her line of work, Natasha's mind was far too cluttered; even with those dearest to her, she never fully let her guard down. In this, Bella held a real edge.
But she didn't let it show. It wasn't easy being the child's mother — ten months of carrying her, all the toil of the birth, the nursing on top of it, only for the baby to end up feeling less close to her? If Natasha ever found out the truth, she'd bristle for certain...
Little Elsa felt differently about the various playmates her papa had rounded up for her. She was fondest of the strikingly handsome little unicorn, indifferent enough toward the little elephant and the like, and rather turned up her nose at the Beaver family's butterball of a baby beaver. The child was plainly one to judge by looks.
After a week's rest in Arendelle, the two of them took the baby back to Earth to see her grandparents.
"What a healthy child — wonderful, just wonderful. Ah... and just like that, I'm a grandfather?" Charlie sighed with feeling.
In a haze, his bachelor days in Forks five years back seemed to hover right before his eyes; now, all at once, here was this whole big family — there was something almost unbelievable about it.
"Mm, she really is a good baby, very quiet — better than Katie, and better than Natasha as a little one, too!" Samantha sized little Elsa up from the perspective of someone well practiced at raising children.
Plenty of women her age were grandmothers over here in America; girls pregnant before marriage were a dime a dozen, nothing out of the ordinary.
After the visit with the grandparents, Bella carried her daughter over and paraded her in front of little Katie.
Little Katie looked at the new stroller that had turned up beside her, her big bright eyes blinking, as if to ask: who's this?
Bella introduced little Elsa and little Katie to each other. She figured neither child would remember much of it — but no matter; given time, they'd grow familiar naturally.
June 2005.
Bella actually had a great deal on her plate: taking revenge on the vampire clan, mastering new spells, school, the trilobite paper and the trilobite farming, Chanel, the Brotherhood — she truly had no shortage of things to deal with.
But those were basically her own affairs — she could tend to them or not, and no one would say a word if she let them slide. Charlie, Samantha, even Natasha, now moved to a desk job — they didn't have that luxury; when it was time for work, they had to work. So Bella bravely shouldered the burden and stayed home minding the baby for two whole months!
By this point little Katie was nearly two years old. She could now say everyday phrases like "prettiest big sister," "Papa," and "Mama" quite clearly, and even whole sentences that got her meaning across — like "I want to eat" and "I want to play" — came out fluently.
Little Elsa was only two months old, but with genetically formidable parents like Bella and Natasha, her baseline was a shade better than Katie's had been. Her pronunciation wasn't clear yet — more like babbling — but from her glances and gestures you could roughly tell she was calling for Mama and Papa.
As for little Elsa calling Bella "Papa," Charlie and Samantha had long since stopped finding it odd. It was just a form of address, after all; the way they saw it, Bella simply loved the child and loved the affectionate little pet name. She couldn't actually be the father, could she?? We may not be well-read, but don't try to fool us — no chance that's possible!
The month before — back in May, that is — Root had given birth too. A cloned body, in the end, carried certain problems that current medical science still couldn't explain. Shaw's artificial sperm had mutated to some degree during the gestation process, and so Root delivered two babies at once, a boy and a girl. The boy was rather frail; the girl, on the other hand, was perfectly healthy.