Duun laughed aloud, well-pleased.
Thorn ran, ran, ran on tottering legs, out of doors, on the dusty earth where outbuildings had been; naked in the warmth of spring.
Duun knelt. No one nowadays saw Duun’s body, the lightning-blasted scars of his right arm, the scars that skeined across his side and leg. But here he wore no more than the small-kilt, in the warmth, with the hiyi flowering by the back door and drifting blossoms down pink as Thorn’s smooth skin. Infant hair had gone, come in gold, darkened again in winter metamorphosis. Perhaps it was seasonal; perhaps a phase of Thorn’s life. Duun held out his arms to Thorn and Thorn laughed as he plunged into Duun’s arms, all dusty-smelling.
“Again,” Duun said, and set him upright, crouching again a little distance off to make Thorn run. Infant legs tried and failed, exhausted. Duun caught him, hugged him, licked his mouth and eyes, which Thorn did to him when Thorn had stopped laughing and gasping, clenching small five-fingered fists into Duun’s trailing crest and the shorter hair of his forelock, and digging his face for a sly nip into the hollow of Duun’s neck when he got the chance, but Duun ducked his head aside and got in a nip first. Small unclawed feet drove at his lap, the small body strained and Thorn ducked down to bite him ungently in the chest.
“Ah!” Duun cried, seizing him in both hands, kneeling, lifting him kicking and squealing aloft at arm’s length. “Ah! Devious!”
He hugged him again and Thorn bit again. He had gained teeth, and strength, but they were not teeth like Duun’s. Duun bit at fingers and Thorn caught Duun’s mouth and pushed back his lip to try his fingers on Duun’s larger, sharper teeth. Duun nipped and Thorn rescued his hand and squealed.
There were more visits. “Bye, bye, bye,” Thorn bade the meds sullenly from the porch. He squatted down naked as he was and grimaced then. He had bit the chief med, and the med had come within a little of flicking an impudent youngster hard on the nose.
But the med had stopped himself. Duun was standing there, hatani-cloaked in gray, arms folded.
The meds went away. Thorn made a rude sound and urinated on the step.
Duun went and snapped him soundly on the ear with thumb and forefinger. Thorn wailed.
“Bad,” said Duun. The wail went on. Duun went into the house, into the kitchen and got his hand wet in the sink. Thorn followed, naked, holding hands out, wailing all the way and dancing in his distress.
“Shut up,” Duun said. And flicked cold water in Thorn’s face. Thorn blinked and howled and clawed frantically at Duun’s legs, not in rage. Pick me up, that meant.
Duun picked him up, armful that he had become, rocked him with a swinging of his body in that way he had learned the infant liked. A small face nuzzled its way to his neck; this did not always mean biting. This time it did not. Thorn clung to him and snuffled, soiling his cloak with running eyes and nose.
“You were bad,” Duun said. To such simplicities the philosophy of hatani bent nowadays. He swung from side to side and the sobs stopped. The thumb went in Thorn’s mouth, irrepressible, though Thorn ate meat now, which Duun chewed for him and spat into his mouth. (“Not advisable,” the meds said, obsessed with disease. But he did it, which was an old way, a hill way, and easier than urging a spoon past Thorn’s dodging mouth, or cleaning up when Thorn fed himself and smeared it everywhere. Duun’s mother and father had done this for him. He took perverse pleasure in performing this dutiful service. It shocked the meds. That gave him perverse pleasure too. He smiled at the meds. It was strange. They had become familiar with him. They looked him in the eyes, at least more than once in the visit. “Ellud-mingi sends regards,” they said. “I sent mine,” he said in return. And perversely added: “So does my son.” That sent them on their way in haste. Doubtless to take notes.)
He rocked Thorn and sang to him, absently: “Wei-na-mei, wei-na-mei.” And Thorn grew quiet in his arms. “You’re getting too big to hold,” Duun said. “Too big to make puddles on the step.”