Dragon Ball/Z/GT Fan Fiction ❯ The Piccolo and Alaura Saga, Episode Four: Children Of The Dawn ❯ Eresa and Asere ( Prologue )

Alaura Flaxen sat propped up by an assortment of pillows in the queen-sized bed she shared with her mate, Piccolo, gazing down with wonder and love at the tiny little being suckling at her nipple, a little fist pressing against her breast, causing the milk to flow more swiftly into the child's waiting mouth.

She stroked the infant's sweetly soft cheek with the back of one finger, marveling, as she'd done when her oldest daughter, Neko, was a baby, at just how beautiful and perfect this little daughter of her's was.

She'd just arrived home from the hospital a little less than three weeks ago and spent all of her waking hours devoted to the new mother she'd recently become. She knew, being a mother was one duty she'd never grow weary of.

Not as long as their was breath in her body. As she nursed her daughter, Eresa, she knew that she was created to be a mother above any and all things. That realization, which came to her when she'd held her firstborn, Neko, in her arms when she'd been a little baby, sat comfortably at the back of mind.

She smoothed her hand over the child's hair, dark, nearly blackish brown like her father's, sticking up on her head in fuzzy tufts, and smiled as the baby gazed back at her as she suckled with large dark eyes that seemed filled to the brim with an intelligence far beyond her years.

Alaura did not doubt for a moment that had she been able to speak, her daughter would have spouted exactly what she was feeling and what her opinions were on this or that. She knew, deep down from the moment she first laid eyes on her, and even before, when she'd been growing to fruition within her womb, that this particular child would never be wishy-washy.

She felt the change in the air currents and as suddden as there was emptiness before her only moments ago, her heart's desire appeared and filled that emptiness, carrying a still bundle wrapped snugly within his billowing white cape. He looked at her over the dozing infant at her breast and did not smile. He rarely smiled anymore, Alaura knew.

Though he had long forgiven her, for he realized that she meant more to him than he'd ever have thought possibe and that he'd rather die than live without her, Alaura knew that it was still hard for him to look at this particular child of their's without seeing her true sire within her features and remembering her betrayal of his faith and love that one night she'd fallen prey to her own lonliness and need of comfort while he'd been awhile on a mission with their daughter, Neko.

(A/N: Read "Changing Seasons" if you want to know more about Alaura's betrayal…)

However, she knew he would stay with her if only for the children he considered his own as well as her's, no matter that no blood of his coursed through their viens. Neko, in college now and studying to be a doctor whose specialization was the care and wellfare of children, was the only child they'd planned and asked a friend of their's for help to conceive.

The only child, really, that had not been, for lack of a more sensitive word, an accident. Alaura knew that Piccolo would not abandon them to spite their mother, even if he did not still love her.

"Is Eresa finished eating yet?" He asked, towering over her as he always did when he refused to sit down and forced her look up at him, "Asere is hungry, she was making gurgling noises at me and trying to eat my cape."

"Just a minute," Alaura said, slipping her finger between the baby's mouth and her breast, gently breaking the contact. She passed the now dozing infant over to him and he slipped her twin sister into her arms. After she arranged herself so that Asere would be nursing from the opposite breast as her sister, to let her used breast recover before the next feeding rolled around, she said; "She needs to be burped, then you can put her in the bassinette for a bit."

He nodded as the baby curled up against his chest, waving her little hands and feet in the air before grabbing a fistful of his white cloak and drawing the material to her mouth, gumming on it contently. Alaura glanced up as she coaxed her nipple into Asere's mouth and helped the baby to latch onto her flesh to achieve the suction she needed to gain her nouishment, to see Piccolo smile softly at the little one he held in his arms as wriggled and waited to be relieved of the gas build up inside her tender belly from her meal of warm breast milk.

Yes, Alaura was glad he did not blame the children for what had been her own folly.

"Hey, little one," She whispered at the daughter who'd been blessed with her light hair, the color of new-mown wheat which was merely a fuzz about her head at this time, and the sweet azure eyes so matched her own that she felt no one would ever be able to miss the fact that she was her own!

Even the shape of her lips and the smallness of her nose matched her own features. "Hungry, weren't you? What were you and Daddy doing outside, huh? Was he showing you how the forest looks from way up in the sky, huh? Bet you liked that, didn't you?"

It was no great surprise that Piccolo doted on Asere. She halfway wondered if it were due to the fact that she looked more like her, Alaura, than like Gohan, her real father, than Eresa looked. Not that he loved the girls any differently, she knew that he loved them equally but, sometimes, if he realized it or not, he had a tendency to treat Asere with a little more patience that Eresa and spend more time with Asere than he did with Eresa.

Asere slammed her fist against her breast and she winced. For a newborn, she was awefully strong. In fact, both the twins were unbelievably powerful. That was something they'd inherited from their real father, that, she moved the blanket away a bit, exposing the long, flexible prehensile tail covered in dark fur that both infants had been born with, and their tails. Neko, herself had been born with a tail and had kept it all though high school with little to no problem.

After she'd started dating in her sophmore year in college, however, and judging herself by how she looked reflected in the eyes of her peers, she'd started to complain to Alaura about it every tme she came home on weekends and holidays and how much she wanted to have it removed so that she could be normal and find a boyfriend, finally. She still practiced martial arts, though not as much and not as seriously as she had when she'd been younger, after her childhood friend, Mira, had been killed.

Alaura had always thought her firstborn's tail was a beautiful part of her and thought that cutting it off in a surgery where it would not grow back was, to her, akin to slicing off an arm or a leg. But she also did not like seeing her child shunned by men who would easily have found her very attractive if only she didn't have such a freakish extremity. She wanted her daughter to be happy she she'd given her premission and the money to pay for the operation that would remove Neko's tail once and for all.

"Did she hurt you?" Piccolo asked, leaning over as he sat on the side of the bed, Eresa held upon his knee as he burped her gently and with remembered skill, she was, after all, not his first infant, "Looks like a bruise."

"She'd really strong for a baby!" Alaura agreed, feeling around the tender area of her breast where the infant had punched her in her desire and inpatience for more milk, "Neko was hearty too, I remember some of the bruises she gave me when she was a toddler and I was giving her a bath!"

"She would have made a great fighter…" He trailed off. She knew he was still hurt, however he tried to hide it, that Neko, the daughter who had been his pride and joy as child and young adult, trained by him and loved as a father would love any daughter who made him proud, had decided not to persue her martial arts training as feirce as she had in the past. It was almost as if he felt that, Neko herself, had also betrayed him, in a way different than Alaura had, of course, but a betrayal was a betrayal.

Now, he looked to his new charges with the hope in his ebony eyes that had once burned there for Neko, for the potential he had tried to help her attain. He looked at dark haired and eyed Eresa and blonde, lighter hued Asere and added; "These two are going to be amazing warriors."

"Well, for now," Alaura said, scooting down on the bed to hand a sleepy Asere over to him and take Eresa into her arms once more, standing up and carrying her to the crib, "They only they're gonna be fighting is the sandman and I can tell you right now, he's gonna win."

He burped Asere and carried her over to the crib to carefully lay her down next to her twin. Both he and Alaura smiled down at the infants as they instinctivly cuddled closer to each other as they had in the womb. Before she could say anything to him, he placed two fingers to his brow, just beneath the edge of the weighted white turban he always wore, and blinked out of sight. She sighed and turned around, walking slowly back to the bed and crawling under the covers.

The light from the afternoon sun blocked by the heavy drapes and blindes she always had up on all the windows due to her sensitive eyes and the overhead light hooked up to a dimmer switch turned down to as low as possible without having the room in complete darkness, Alaura pulled the covers over her head and tried to gain a little sleep while the babies rested before it was time to change and feed them once more.