"Alright,' Angus scowled. "Everybody, freeze. Somebody tell me what the devil is going on." Marcus got up and went over and looked in the basket.
"Babies," Marcus said, looking up at Angus and showed him two fingers to indicate there were two of them.
"Baby whats?" Angus asked, automatically presuming they were baby animals of some sort.
"Baby babies," Anise told him, coming in behind Ginger.
"Wait, like, human babies?" he frowned.
"Cubs, technically. Human, for now, at least," Ginger said. "Til they're old enough to be turned. Then the pack will turn them."
"Premies, very obviously," Marcus said. Angus just was having a hard time wrapping his brain around the girls going to deliver supper to the pack and coming back with a basket of babies. He got up and went over to look in the basket. Sure enough, there were two tiny, tiny babies in the basket.
"Where's the mother?"
"In intensive care, whatever that is," Ginger said. "The pack females don't have enough milk now that they're injured, and unless we step in to care for them for a bit, these two won't survive."
"So we brought them home so they wouldn't starve to death," Anise said. "We knew you'd agree it was the right thing to do since we're the only ones here who have baby milk."
"Formula," Ginger corrected. "Jessie wants to send me upstairs to go get warmer clothes for them, but its May, almost June. They really don't need warmer clothes, at least not right now. I'll get some things out so that when I bathe them they've got some fresh things to wear--if that's okay."
"Of course," Angus said. "They might not need warmer clothes, but you know how many times a baby can need a new change of clothes in a day, so having extra clothes ready is a good thing. There actually are some things for boys that I bought when I was deliberately freaking out Suzanne, and I know there were newborn things in there. Of course we didn't use them. I reorganized all that stuff before I hurt my shoulder, so you let me go up and find them."
"But what are we gonna do for cribs..." Anise began.
"Calm," Angus said. "You all need to give me half a tick to get up to speed and wrap my head around the fact that right this minute I have seven kids that I am responsible for without Ruby."
"Sorry," Anise said, and she and Ginger both took a breath to relax.
"Now," he said, "we can manage this if we're organized about it. Now, Anise, do what I tell you. Go upstairs, please, and bring down the Moses basket. These teeny weenies are small enough that they'll both fit in there together just fine. We'll use that. Caprice rarely uses it now. "
"I know where those boys clothes are," Marcus said. "Should I fetch them?"
"For now, if you would just get out maybe six or eight onesies and a couple sleep sacks and some newborn diapers, we might manage. Bring them down here. Caprice isn't used to the sound of other babies. She's never heard them, so if we want the babies to sleep tonight, I'd like them to not be in the nursery with her at night til she adjusts."
"I'll take care of that, and I'll bring down the Moses basket too while I'm going," Marcus said.
"Thank you," Angus said. Ginger unwrapped the babies, and she looked at the ankles of them. "What are you doing?" Angus asked.
"One baby is named Rand, and one is named Ty. I'm looking for their marks. Because wolf women often care for the children collectively in the packs, they often mark the inside of the left ankles of twins at birth so that they can tell them apart. It's basically like a tattoo. It's a very small rune mark. Some mothers remove the marks when she can tell them apart, but other mothers just leave the marks. And sometimes a twin will actively choose to keep the mark because it has been with them as long as they've remembered. It becomes part of them. See? Look here." She showed him a mark on the ankle of one of the babies. it was a simple, tiny arrow pointed up.
"That's the Nordic rune for Tyr. He's actually the Nordic god of war, but in this case, Elizabeth used it to symbolize that this is Ty." She looked on the other baby. "Ah. Here is it. Rand means Shield Wolf. It means wise wolf, pretty much. But look. She has a little circle here on his ankle. It's a very simple image of a shield, I think. This one is Rand. I'm sure of it."
"Well, it's not very handy to have the marks way down on their ankles. Would they be offended if I temporarily put a copy of each mark on the inside of their wrists?"
"No, in fact, some of the more practical women do just that, especially in identical twins," Ginger said. "I just don't know how to cast the spell."
"It's not hard," Angus said. He cast the spell and made exact copies of the marks on the inside of the left wrist of each baby. Ginger looked at Angus, amazed.
"It didn't disturb them at all," she said.
"It doesn't need to," he replied.
"We'll have to make a place in our room for them," Anise began.
"No. You'll leave them with me overnight. I think I can manage a four pound baby. Its entirely different to manage a four pound baby than it is to manage a twelve pound one. I can manage," he told them.
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