Mycah’s family slept until the midday meal. They woke up as Abram’s Brother, Ruse, came by with a tray full of food. The smell of something to eat woke them up right away.


    I ate with Mycah’s family and they seemed content. The Great Harmonious Spirit still had them because they were markedly calmer than they should have been. The Healers came and checked their wounds and they didn’t mind at all.


    It was abundantly obvious the moment the men deemed the camp safe again. The Great Harmonious Spirit released its hold and I had five edgy boys that wanted to do something. Actually, they wanted to do anything other than sit quietly on a warm b in the infirmary.


    “Mama, can we go look for aliens?” Niah asked crawling onto myp, he had big brown eyes that pleaded with me.


    “Can we go ride on the transports again, Mama?” Aiden asked, wrapping a hand in my hair and pulling at it roughly.


    “I want to fight!” Jonathan demanded bouncing up and down.


    The children exined to me in detail everything they wanted to do. They wanted to go back outside and see the trees. Mycah wanted to learn to swim. Rees wanted to know what Damien and his Brothers were doing. Niah was curious about the parts of the camp they hadn’t been in yet. They seemed impossible to organize like this and I couldn’t answer all of them at once.


    “Stop jumping around and sit down!” I ordered them, watching Aiden and Jonathan start to roughhouse. “You’ll tear open the wounds on your bodies. You need to be still, right now!”


    One would listen for a second, but I couldn’t get all five of them organized. I’d never been a “parent” in the real sense. Certainly not to five boys at once. This was very new to me.


    “Speak to the lead Brother,” the woman with the neck wound gruffly informed me when it became obvious I was losing what modicum of control I had over them. “The lead Brother will tame the others. They aren’t old enough to focus their thoughts, yet, but you can help them do that.”


    I spoke to Mycah and looked him in the eye. It seemed to settle all of them. The questions andints now came from just one little boy. I could handle that better.


    “You don’t have clothing,” I reminded Mycah, pinching his naked thigh, “so you can’t go outside. Your Daddy and his Brothers aren’t here to teach you to swim. You have to rest here until the Healers tell you it is okay to go y with the other little boys.”


    Restless did not begin to describe the five of them. I worried they’d pull out the sutures the Healers had put in. I begged them to be still, but they were bored and activity was normal to them.


    They needed to be amused, so I told them stories. Jack and the Beanstalk, Cindere, and Peter Rabbit. The stories meant nothing to them.


    “Do you boys know where aliense from?” the woman with the neck wound asked pointedly, turning her face slightly toward us.


    Mycah exined they came out of burning hunks of metal, which is what the boys had seen. He was quite sure of that. The aliens lived in burning ships that exploded on the ground.


    “Theye from others. ces very far away from here. At night, way up in the sky, you can see their home. It glows faintly red,” the woman exined.


    The boys didn’t believe her, but this was a story they could get into. All my stories had been about things they’d never seen and could not imagine. When the woman talked about the aliens and the night sky, they had a frame of reference.


    Tyle’s family came by and quietly undid the ropes binding therge woman to the b. They didn’t interrupt her as she spoke to the little ones about others and different alien beings. She knew a lot about the alien race that I was most familiar with, the snake looking things, and talked mostly about those.


    My five nude boys sat on the edge of their b closest to her and listened to her talk. I sat with them and they were finally content. Aiden reached a hand into my hair and yed absently with the strands. Otherwise, they were still and quiet,pletely engrossed in her story telling. This was intensely interesting to them. I was just relieved they weren’t tearing open their wounds.


    The woman let the boys ask her questions, but she insisted theye from Mycah.


    “The family needs to learn tomunicate internally, so their bond is strong,” she exined to me, almost begrudgingly. “They will each express themselves independently when they are doing different things. When they should be all focused they need to center themselves on their lead Brother.”]


    Focusing the questions on Mycah seemed to give the boys more stability. They could stay calm when everything was funneled that way. It was a lesson for me and one I appreciated.


    “Thank you,” I said directing myment to the woman, she had no interest in me and turned away. I felt good having been polite, though.


    Paterians were different from Earthlings. Over many moons I’d learned to appreciate the way Damien’s family interacted with others. Unless something was going on, Damien spoke for the group. It should not have surprised me that Mycah’s family should behave the same way. These boys would probably be a lot like Damien’s family and I should anticipate that.This content ? 2024 N?velDrama.Org.


    When I thought about it, I knew more about Paterian children than I admitted to myself. Rose and I had written stories for them, I knew what they liked to read and hear. These were males that liked stories based on what was around them. Treating Jonathan and his family like Earth children would not work. My baby was part of this world, so I had to treat him ordingly. I needed to treat him as what he was, a Paterian.


    Tyle and his Brothers passed by and the woman demanded their attention.


    “Those children cannot even be three turns of the sun yet,” she said gruffly. “Find them something to do to keep them calm. They can’t be left with nothing to do.”


    Aryn smirked just the way Bane would have as they moved away. The woman’s mannerisms were funny to them, but they listened to her. She certainly had amanding presence.


    The boys were given that paper like substance and something like multicolored crayons. The woman demanded they draw pictures of the aliens and their crafts. She wanted them to draw a ship and an alien they’d seen. The activity was interesting to the boys and kept them busy, but still.


    “Do you have a male offspring?” I asked hesitantly, unsure if she would speak to me.


    It took a few heartbeats before she gruffly informed me she’d never had offspring.


    I got the impression this was a sore spot for her and thought the matter would die quietly. It did not.


    “You should stay in the camp, cousin,” a grown man said from a b in front of us. “Our essence is strong here. You would breed powerful, fine offspring and we would be honored to try with you. We sense you are near your cycle.”


    It was, by far, the worst pick up line I had ever heard. My face flushed red and I turned to see a family looking lustily back at the woman. It was like being in the middle of a bar and your girlfriend is getting hit on.


    The man talking wore his hair long and he and his Brothers were shirtless. Heavy muscley underneath their deeply striped skin giving the men a powerful appearance. They were scarred from fighting beasts outside, but not from whips or women’s teeth. These men had lived a rough life, but it had been on their terms. Given my experience, I could see these were free born, full-blooded Paterians.