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“Ah…ten fingers? Ten toes?” Odette gasped out.
“And a healthy pair of lungs.” Her mother laughed, wiping her eyes as she stood over…over our child.
They cleaned her the best they could, wrapping her in a blanket, before bringing her over to us…to me. Odette was still too tired to lift her arms.
I shook my head. “I don’t know how to hold her.”
“Like this,” Wilhelmina said, moving my arms for me before she set…the most beautiful little princess the world would ever know in them.
I stared at her little face, her eyes barely opening, but she moved in my arms, and little cries came out of her. She even had little wisps of hair.
“Oh my God,” Odette whispered, touching her in my arms. “She’s so little. So beautiful.”
My eyes stung the more I looked at her. When she peeked open an eye and met mine, that did it. The tears came from my face, and I could not hide them or pretend they were not real. My heart was burning and cooling at the same time.
“She’s perfect,” I whispered, stroking her cheek gently with my finger. “Absolutely perfect.”
I was in and out of it.
So tired, but I wanted to stay awake and see her. Hold her more. I fed her once, but I could barely remember it. I was so out of it. It all happened so quickly. We were still a few more days from the due date, but all of a sudden, as I was taking a short walk, my water had broken, then the world had flipped upside down in an hour.
When I opened my eyes, I saw him sitting right beside me, awake and alert as ever, just staring down at her, mesmerized by her, rocking her very slowly.
“Gale?” I whispered, and only then did his head lift back up. When I met his eyes, they were red. “Are you crying?”
“On and off,” he admitted and smiled. “I’m a father, Odette… you’re a mother… We are parents.” He looked back down at her. “We are her whole world right now. She is everything.”
“You are happy with her?”
“You have to ask?” He chuckled, moving carefully over to me. “I’m a mess. Completely beside myself with joy. Look at her. She looks like me.”
I laughed, even though I was sore. “I think she looks like me.”
“Not a chance. Girls look like their fathers. Boys like their mothers. This is all me,” he bragged, touching her cheeks.
“Sorry to break it to you, Your Majesty, but I look like my mom. It’s—”
“Shh.” He shot me a look and then looked back to our daughter. “My daughter is sleeping, and she needs her rest so she can grow and show you that she takes after me.”
Again, I laughed, looking at her, feeling the tears in my eyes. I reached up, touching her little foot through the blanket. “We need to pick a name.”
He chuckled. “Your mother declared she’s naming her after herself.”
I rolled my eyes. “Absolutely not.”
“Did you finally pick the perfect one then?” he teased since I had rejected all his former choices.
I shook my head. “No, we’ve been working on a name for a month, and now nothing fits. I want something unique but fit for a princess. But I’ve got nothing.”
“I think I might have one new name now. It came to me as I was holding her,” he said and glanced back at me.
“What?”
“Serenity…the feeling of holding her in my arms. It is serene. And therefore, Serenity.”
I thought it over.
It was a very serious name. But then again, she was a princess and could very well one day rule this country.
