On a seemingly normal day, in the middle of giving little baby Taeyong a bath, Polytrix hear a series of loud shrieks coming from elsewhere in their house. It startles them, obviously, and Mira and Zoey rush off to find their girls while Rumi stays behind to quickly but carefully rinses the soap off their son and get him dressed and in his crib before she can join them.
They find Jihae and Hani, cowering and crying in a corner in Hani’s room. They jump in shock and relief when they see their Mom and Eomma.
“Girls! What happened?” Mira lifts Hani up and holds her while Zoey does the same with Jihae.
“And where’s Aeri?” Zoey asks, peering around the room frantically for a sign of their eldest daughter. She sees a ripped teddy bear on the floor, and recognizes it as one of Aeri’s.
Jihae sniffles. “We’re sorry, we didn’t mean to.”
Mira squints at the toy on the ground. “Didn’t mean to tear it?”
Hani nods. “It was an accident! We promise!”
“Okay,” Zoey nods, panic rising, “But where’s your sister?”
Their two younger daughters point at the closed closet.
Mira and Zoey place them on the ground and slowly approach the closet door. As they get closer, they start to hear a quiet sobbing noise. Alarmed, they rush to open the door.
Inside is Aeri, hugging her knees up to her chest on the floor.
Except she’s changed. Large fangs protrude from her mouth, giving her the appearance of an overbite. Her hands have darkened into an ominous purple color, and her normally little fingers have grown in length. The tips of her fingers have sharpened into a set of dangerous claws, and if they look closely, they can see her toes have done the same, puncturing the set of Bluey socks she’s wearing. The cherry on top of it all, almost literally, is what’s on her head. Protruding from the sea of purple hair, just a few shades darker than Rumi’s, is a pair of short horns.
She looks up at them with tearful eyes. The color of them has changed to gold.
Before they can say anything, their daughter recoils from the door, bracing herself as though expecting an impact. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry-”
“Hey, hey,” Mira crouches down to get to her daughter’s level. “It’s okay. It’s okay.” Zoey joins her in crouching.
“I’m not- I’m not like them! I promise!” Aeri cries.
“Not like who, Riri?” Zoey asks her, concerned.
Aeri opens her eyes again, fearful and desperate. “Like the demons you kill! I’m not! I won’t hurt anyone! I promise! I promise!”
Mira and Zoey are struck by her assertion. Suddenly, they’re backstage again, staring at the love of their life’s purple streaked skin with horror.
Except this time, they have the chance to react like should’ve then. They get to give their daughter the comfort and understanding they didn’t afford their now-wife.
Mira reaches out to Aeri, Zoey following shortly afterwards. Aeri recoils again at first, but they smile at her comfortingly. “It’s okay, sweetheart,” Mira whispers.
“You’re safe. We promise. We’d never hurt you. We promise,” Zoey says soothingly.
It takes a moment, but Aeri shifts closer to them, allowing them to both gather her closer. They hug her and whisper about how much they love her, how safe she is with them, how they know she would never hurt them, or her Mama, or her sisters, or her brother, or anyone else.
It’s during this that Rumi finally joins them, her weapon drawn. “Sorry!” she shouts, and quite frankly, Mira and Zoey are starting to grow weary of hearing people say that word for things they obviously can’t control, “Tae was being fussy and refused to let me out his diaper on and and was clinging to me and I didn’t wanna bring him with me just in case-”
She stops talking, finally registering the state of the occupants of the room. Her weapon disappears, and she joins her wives on the ground with their eldest daughter. “What happened? Where’s-” Rumi looks behind them, and her wives follow her gaze to where their younger daughters are standing, wringing their hands and staring at the floor guiltily. “Girls? What happened?”
They hesitate. When their parents gesture for them to come closer, they take a moment to do so.
“We’re sorry, Riri. We didn’t mean to do it,” Hani whimpers sorrowfully.
Jihae nods, “We didn’t! We swear!”
“What did you do?” Rumi asks them, frowning.
They both sniff pathetically, and then point at the torn teddy bear on the ground. Comprehension begins to dawn on the three adults.
“We were just playing!” Jihae insists. “We were throwing it back and forth so that Aeri couldn’t get it.”
Zoey tenses; keepaway is unfortunately a game she’s all-too familiar with. The people who bullied her in school used to do it with her notebooks. She reminds herself, though, that her daughters are 6, and this is a teaching moment for them, so they don’t do it ever again.
Her wives glance at her sympathetically.
Hani doesn’t notice the tension in the room. She continues the story, “Aeri got a hold of it, but we both grabbed the other side. We all started pulling, and then…” She trails off.
And then it ripped. They all can mentally fill in the end of that statement. Zoey winces slightly; that was how keepaway ended quite often for her, as well.
Aeri sniffs. “I got really angry, really, really angry. And then they started looking at me all scared, and I looked down and I was like this!” She sobs. “After that, I ran to the closet and hid.”
Rumi huffs sadly, and brushes some hair from her face. She inspects the horns on her head, the claws on her hands and feet, her gold tinted eyes, all of it. Aeri’s always looked like her, but right now, she looks more like Rumi than ever before. The first time she had transformed like this, she had hid as well. “That must’ve been so scary.”
Aeri nods. “I…I didn’t know I could do that.”
Her mothers share a look. Neither had they.
“Am I…” Aeri sniffs and hiccups. “Am I a monster? Like those demons you kill?”
Rumi’s breath catches in her throat. “No. You’re not a monster. And you’re not like those demons, because you don’t wanna hurt anyone.”
In that moment, she isn’t just trying to comfort her crying and frightened daughter. She’s saying what she wishes she had heard growing up. What would’ve made her worst fears at least lessen slightly.
(Later that night, her wives hold her while she cries, and repeat those same words to her.)
