“No, we were married very young. I was around your age, actually,” he said, and Cya made a face. “It was a different time back then.”
“Back in the Dark Ages,” they teased, and he tutted.
“The cheek on you.”
“Don’t change the subject,” they ordered sternly.
Tossing his empty plate into the bin at the end of the bench, he sighed. “We met in secondary, and we married after her second year of university.”
“Her?” Cya asked, blushing hotly when Hemersyn cocked a feathered brow. “Not that you—I didn’t mean to assume. I just…”
“Assumed?” he asked, and they winced.
“Sorry.”
He chuckled. “I take no offense, and you’re not exactly wrong. Just because I married a woman doesn’t mean I am averse to other options.”
“How very fluid of you,” they praised, and he flicked their cheek with a talon. “So you married in her second year?”
“We did, and for a while, we were very happy.”
“What went wrong?” they asked carefully.
A shadow passed over Hemersyn’s face. “Well, the loss of a child can either strengthen a bond to nearly unbreakable, or it shatters it quite completely. I am sad to report we fell within the latter.”
Slowly, Cya lowered their food to their lap, ignoring the greens that spilled onto their skirt. “You had—”
“A daughter,” he said before they could finish. “Zoe. She was ill, a hereditary mutation. She didn’t make it past her third birthday.”
Unexpected tears sprang to their eyes, and Cya blinked rapidly to clear their vision. “I never knew. Why didn’t you tell me?”
He reached out and hooked their long hair with a talon, securing it behind their ear. “You never asked,” he said, not unkindly, but it landed like buckshot all the same.
No, they had never asked, because they’d never wondered. They’d been so self-centered, so consumed with their own life and miseries that they’d never once considered, well, anyone else. Dex was right; they were a selfish piece of shit.
Allowing their wrap to roll off their lap and into the grass, they reached out and took Hemersyn’s hand in both of theirs. “I’m so sorry.”
“Me too,” he said, giving their fingers a squeeze. “I miss her every day, even after all this time.”
They rubbed the short, downy feathers peppering his wrists, searching for something to say. Weaponized words of destruction were more their bread and butter. But words of comfort? Of healing? They were quite out of their depth.
“I wish that had never happened to you,” they whispered, tracing the hard keratin of his index talon. “I wish I had known about it sooner. I wish I’d cared enough to ask.”
“Cya,” he started, but they cut him off with a hug.
Like the night of Cya’s meltdown, when they’d thrown themself into his arms, Hemersyn was taken aback. A warbling trill sang from his throat, and his arms splayed on either side of their body, like he wasn’t sure if he should return the embrace.
Eventually, he did. He circled their waist and patted their back, and Cya pressed their face into the soft plumage of his neck, smelling of cologne, leather seats, and sun-dried pine needles. He smelled like their childhood, and they sighed into his shoulder.
“You would have made a wonderful father,” they said, hoping it was the right thing, praying they weren’t mucking this up too badly. Choosing bravery, they added, “I would know, after all.”
A wounded noise escaped him, then he was cupping the back of their head and holding them tightly. And Cya was six years old again, having been stung by avyspin the palm of their hand. They perched in Hemersyn’s lap as he added a cooling salve and a bandage.
“There we go. You’ll be right as rain in no time.”
And at nine, sitting in the hospital hallway as their parents screamed at the doctor behind the closed office door to“fix her, godsdammit. What are we paying you for if you can’t fix her?”But Hemersyn took their hand and led them to the cafeteria where they couldn’t hear their parents’ hate anymore. They shared an ice cream sundae on the veranda, and they giggled as he let them boop a dollop onto his beaked nose.
They were fourteen, telling their parents they didn’t want hormones or surgeries anymore because maybe they weren’t actually a girl after all. The only reason they’d found the courage was knowing Hemersyn stood behind them, a quiet but steady foundation for them to lean on.
