Chapter 66: 66 - The Creek

“Abacth!” Probus ran to the open door as fast as his little legs could carry him, arms outstretched. Rapax took a knee in time to get hugged and then playfully fell over, pulling his amico onto his chest as though Probus had knocked him over. Probus giggled with delight but was soon on his feet, grabbing his nobilis’s fingers in an effort to pull him back up so he could show him an interesting bug he’d trapped in a cup and partially squished that morning.

Baca pouted a little when his own amico didn’t fly into his arms so readily. “Tiaki! Dude! Hello?”

“Hah, Babac,” Tiaki acknowledged him while running infinity loops through his mother’s legs.

“Do I get a hug?”

Tiaki paused to consider, grew a mischievous smirk, and then barrelled headlong into Baca’s legs before Baca could get down all the way. Tiaki really did knock him over backwards, and Baca fell on his backside laughing as the shark host jumped on top of him in a much more intentional take-down. What ensued was a goofy wrestling match. Baca grabbed the toddler and rolled him onto his back, trapping the child between his knees and elbows. Tiaki’s playful shrieking set off Manasik’s brotherly protectiveness, and soon the little snake host was added to the prison formed from Baca’s limbs. Baca rocked back on his heels to tickle the wiley toddlers, and their belly chuckles drew Probus’s attention away from the dead bug in the cup. Soon Baca was contending with the little lion host as well, and Probus got swept off his feet and laid out across his brothers’ tummies so Baca could contain all three of the triplets in a single, squirmy, squishy heap. The happily shrieking toddlers all made repeated, valiant attempts at escape, only to get hooked back into Baca’s lap every time they tried.

“Where are you planning on taking them?” the general asked Rapax as they watched the noisy fun unfold, and she hoisted a very relaxed, sleepy but snacking, and excessively heavy Ddalu higher onto her hip.

“Oh, we figured we’d follow the stream down to where that one creek branches off. It’s shallow and lazy, so there are plenty of bugs to catch and lizards and frogs and things to spot. Tiaki will like splashing in the water, and Probus has gotten into catching bugs recently. I’m sure that just thrills you,” he jabbed and then chuckled when she rolled her eyes.

“As long as the bugs he finds aren’t nine feet long, I’m good,” she snarked. “Moro’s still coming to take Manasik, right?”

“Yeah. He got held up, but he’s coming. The shaft of the hoe he was weeding with has a crack in it. It’s had a crack for a while, but he hit a rock and the crack… cracked,” Rapax said with a snort. “Anyway, he took the tools back to the shed for us so he could look for a new shaft.”

“Abacth! Abacth!” Probus called through hysterical giggles, arms outstretched to him from where Baca was containing him in a tight bear hug with his brothers.

“Excuse me, General. Duty calls.” Rapax joined the tangle on the floor, staging a dramatic escape from Baca’s clutches by freeing Probus first and then enlisting the toddler to help him tug Manasik and Tiaki free as well. “Good job, my man!” Rapax praised, offering Probus a high five and then fist bumps to both Manasik and Tiaki, the latter of whom couldn’t have cared less as he was already preparing his next assault on Baca.

Knock, knock.

Moro let himself into the already open door. “Sorry, I’m late.”

“You’re not late,” the general assured him.

“Tajam isn’t napping already, is he?” Moro asked hopefully.

“No. He’s just in the bedroom, probably chewing on something.”

“Still teething, huh? Can I say ‘hi’ before we go?”

“You don’t need to ask, Moro. Help yourself,” the general said, jerking her head gently in the direction of the boys’ room. “He might be a little cranky though. I think he went in there to escape all the chaos out here.” Moro laughed at that and disappeared into the larger of the two small bedrooms.

“Probus, where are your shoes?” Rapax asked, and the cheerful blonde ran to a crate by the door where all the family’s shoes were kept, pointing animatedly. “Which ones are yours?”

“W’ion shoe.”

“That’s right,” Rapax encouraged him. “Can you find them?”

Probus proceeded to pull nearly every shoe out of the bin before he found the matching pair with a small, black lion’s head embroidered onto the inside lining of the heel, and he presented the shoes proudly to his nobilis before plopping into Rapax’s lap so he could help put the shoes on Probus’s chubby feet.

“Good job, man!” Rapax said, giving Probus a high five when he’d been shod. “Alright, Manasik. Your turn. Where are your shoes?”

The little snake host much more demurely picked through the scattered shoes until he found the two with snakes embroidered on the heels of the insoles. He then proceeded to quietly hand them to Rapax, sit on the floor, and offer him one foot at a time.

“Good job, Manasik!”

Manasik bashfully accepted the praise and high-five before slithering off to play with a toy while he waited for everyone else to get ready.

Rapax laughed when Baca realized it was time to put shoes on the boys, only to struggle getting Tiaki to cooperate. Tiaki would not be dissuaded from the wrestling match, nor hold still long enough to put the shoes on after Baca had found the appropriate shoes with shark insoles himself. Tiaki’s mother had to set Ddalu down to intervene.

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“Hey, Tiaki, want to go outside?! Go on an adventure with Baca?!” she asked, holding Tiaki’s face still while the rest of him continued to squirm.

“Babac!”

“That’s right! Do you want to go play outside with Baca.”

“Go ‘side!”

“Mmhm! Let’s do it! But you have to put your shoes on, or your feet will get owies. Remember what happened the last time you didn’t put your shoes on?”

“Wo’ ick an’ ow-ie!”

“That’s right. You kicked a rock and it gave you an owie,” she adeptly deciphered his babble. “So let’s put your shoes on this time.” Tiaki sat down after that, sprawling backwards on the floor and rotating his trunk and head about to pick at the dirt-crusted soles of Rapax’s boot while Baca quickly slipped his shoes on. That child did not know how to sit still. As such, Tiaki was the leanest of the triplets while Manasik — a child that was sometimes easy to forget for how relatively unobtrusive he was — had retained the most baby chub.

“Hey, Moro! Are you about ready?” Rapax called.

“Uh… yeah! One sec,” the disembodied voice floated from the boys’ room. “Ok, buddy, I gotta go. Your momma thinks you need a nap, and she needs a break.” Moro appeared at the door a moment later with Tajam very contentedly draped over his shoulder, eyes already growing heavy.

“Babac! Babac! Go ‘side!” Tiaki demanded impatiently, and Baca shrugged at the group, opening the door to free the triplets while Moro transferred Tajam to the general’s shoulder, and Rapax helped to give chase.

“Have fun!” the general called after them, and a moment later, Moro overtook Rapax to catch up to Manasik and scoop him up onto his shoulders.

“Last one to the creek is a dragon mole feeler!” Moro declared, and Baca and Rapax each collected their amicos on their shoulders for a race as they entered the treeline.

It was a delicate balance moving fast enough to be competitive but not so fast that the motion jostled the boys too violently as they bounced and dodged around the thick shrubs and thicker trees along the stream’s edge, and then, half the time, Probus’s arms were wrapped around Rapax’s face in a way that made it either difficult to see or to breathe. But it was still fun, and first or last place, hearing the boys laugh made it worth it.

They arrived at the creek in short order, and, predictably, Tiaki wanted to be put down immediately so he could belly flop in the water while Probus started a hunt for critters to catch and Manasik happily clung to Moro’s hair, content to simply look around and watch his brothers play. Rapax was soon being shown a worm or caterpillar of some sort.

“Be gentle, little man. You don’t want to squish it. That would… make the bug dead. Here!” He took a knee and snatched at a fern frond to extend to Probus. “Put it on this so you can watch it.”

Probus complied, squatting down to stare and point at the (definitely already half-squished) bug wriggling on the fern. “Buk!”

“That’s right, man. Bug! I think you killed it.”

“Buk di’ hinum wi’ got!” Probus clapped for emphasis.

“Yeah, that’s cool, man,” Rapax replied with no idea what the toddler was saying except that it had something to do with bugs and he was clearly excited about it. Fortunately, Probus didn’t need much more than the occasional validation and a steady stream of enthusiastic head-nodding to confirm that he was listening.

“Iss fin’ mi tum. Go!” Probus finished, and promptly resumed toddling about, looking for more bugs to accidentally squash.

“No idea what you just said, but sure, lead the way,” Rapax stood up, quickly brushing himself off as he muttered to himself. He casually followed the little blonde head about as it bobbed up and down, turning over rocks and leaves on his hunt for bugs. Rapax grinned crookedly, realizing that he’d been the one to teach Probus how to do that on their last excursion. “You’re a quick study, my man!”

But he was less enthused about the giant grub Probus presented to him a moment later. It was…. Well, for starters, it was the size of Rapax’s pointer finger, but it was at least twice as fat. “Buk!”

“Yeah. You… found a bug.”

“A’ Abacth!”

“Nah, man, you can have it.”

“A’ Abacth!” Probus insisted and forced the juicy thing into his hand.

“Aah… thanks.”

“We’com,” the child chirped and resumed his exploring.

“Yeah… better me than your mom,” Rapax comforted himself with a laugh, dropping the bug back into the dirt the moment Probus’s head was turned.

***

The triplets were tired and getting sleepy as Baca and his two friends carried them home on their shoulders. For once, Tiaki wasn’t urging him to set him down, or jerking excitedly on his sweaty, grown out, strawberry blonde hair, or even swinging his feet. Instead, the toddler was resting his cheek on Baca’s head and sucking his thumb. “I think we actually tired this one out.”

“They’re probably getting hungry. Those snacks got eaten a while ago. Let’s hope they hold out long enough to get them home. Did you have fun, my man?” Rapax asked Probus, jiggling one of his legs. “Did you find enough bugs today?”

“La’f buk.”

“Lots of bugs? Yeah.”

Probus started jabbering in Rapax’s ear, and Baca checked in with his own little shoulder cherub. “How are you doing up there, Tiaki?”

“B’ikie.”

“You want your blanket? Are you getting tired, dude?”

“Mn.” Tiaki’s cheek rubbed against Baca’s hair as he tried to get comfortable.

“Come here, Tiaki. I’ll hold you.” The little shark host dove into Baca’s arms and allowed the commander to adjust his position until the little brunette’s head was tucked carefully under his chin, arms loosely draped over his nobilis’s shoulders. Baca could have sworn that, not two steps later, Tiaki was out cold. He didn’t mind, though. Of the Yudha boys, Tiaki made people work the hardest to meaningfully interact with him, so these moments when he was actually still and accommodating were all the more precious for it.

The bunkers came into sight after a bit of a walk. It was funny how the distance always seemed so much longer on the return leg of these day trips. Maybe it was the longer shadows of the early evening? Or maybe it was the more tired plodding after playing so hard for so long.

“Am I the only one seeing that?” Moro asked, and Baca looked up from the path in front of his feet.

“Looks like more people showed up,” Rapax said with a burdened sigh. “I wonder how many this time.”

“So much for giving the general a break,” Baca contributed dryly.

“No, wait!” Rapax’s tone shifted to become much warmer, and Baca looked closer.

“Is that…?”

“Those are animals!”

“Primordials! Rogue and Arum are back!” Moro whooped excitedly, and suddenly everyone had a new spring to their step.