Sorcha had no clear role. There was no word for what he was in either language. He stayed home with Nisa and Nuri. The 23rd scared him off from the streets for a while, and Nuri was there, and Nisa needed help while she regained her bearings after the birth. She was torn between a deep peace when she was with Nuri and he wasn’t crying, and a whirlwind of anxiety when he slept or fretted. When would she work again? Where would she work again? What did he need? How would she know? Sorcha knew some of the answers to some of her questions and was patient enough to steer her back to Nuri when the questions he couldn’t answer loomed too large. They were together, the three of them, all day. Sorcha changed diapers, sang to him, cuddled him when Nisa needed a moment to herself. Sometimes the fatigue got the better of them both and they all slept together in the middle of the afternoon on Dirva’s bed, Sorcha on one side, Nisa on the other, and the baby between them. Sorcha didn’t have a name or a role, but he was part of the family, too, and as much a parent to that child as I was.

It surprised no one but me when Sorcha began to lactate, but it surprised all of us when Nisa let him nurse the baby. I knew in a clinical and removed way that this happened—that when a father is with the child as often as the mother, among elves at least, that father’s milk begins to flow. I knew it in the way that I knew the mechanics of birth, but had never seen it and had no feel for it. Sorcha spent hours with that tiny child nestled inside his shirt, keeping Nuri warm with his own flesh. Sorcha was so deeply connected to that child that in the night when Nuri cried it was first Nisa who woke, then Sorcha, then Dirva. Often Sorcha was already down the stairs when Dirva woke.

I was the first to notice when his breasts began to swell. He was so tired, so distracted by the baby that he hadn’t noticed until I pointed it out. We were curled up in bed, lying together like nested spoons, him on the inside and me on the outside. I had my arm around him. He reached up to scratch his ear, and in the process my hand brushed over his chest. What had been hard, smooth, and flat in all the years I’d know him was now slightly rounded, the skin taut, his nipple larger than before. The glands had swollen and were beginning to fill with milk. I cupped his right breast, which fit perfectly in the palm of my hand. “Sorcha, are you…is this…Sorcha, I think you have breasts.”