Water Breaking

Who: Herbert and Sammy
Where: Williams' house
When: 11:47 a.m.

The night previous Sammy had crashed, and crashed hard. The caffeine and sugar had worked it's way out of his system and sent him crashing into the couch cushions as soon as Geo had worked his hair out of the braids. The rest had been welcome, and unlike the night before he'd slept without waking -- scratch that, he'd slept. His body was so tired that by the time he woke up Sunday it was 11:30 in the morning. Sammy swung his legs over the edge of the couch and pushed himself up, rubbing at his hip where the cellphone in his shorts' pocket had been pressing up against it as he stumbled into the laundry room to check on the eggs still nestled in the blankets. He blinked, stopped rubbing his hip, and fumbled for the phone which thankfully had enough battery power for him to send off a text to Herbert.

Water's broken! It said. Two small funny words. The power on the phone died - it had been on for days now - as Sammy fell to his knees beside the basket with a wide, sunny, happy grin.

Herbert was almost to Peyton's house when the cell phone in his pocket-- not at home, this time, given how Olivia had called him the other night and he'd never even known it-- gave a sudden, funny jingle. He nearly fell off his bicycle in surprise, but managed to just stop, instead, and pull it out. It said "new text message" in the window. Right when the message showed up, apparently, it was much easier to actually view it than if it'd been sent hours before.

"Water's broken," he read aloud, frowning in confusion. The number said it was Sammy, but what did breaking water have to do with anyth--

Oh. Oh, wait, did that mean the ducklings were hatching? Water breaking was something to do with birth, wasn't it? But surely there were no waters to break for eggs....

Rrr, didn't matter! Peyton could wait a while longer, Herbert wanted to see ducklings, by the spirits! He tucked the phone back into his pocket and took off in the direction of the Williams' house. It didn't take him long, cycling at a good clip, to reach it, and this time he went right around the back to the entrance to the laundry room and knocked there, leaving his bicycle leaning against the house.

Sammy scrambled to his feet and got the door as Herbert was knocking a second time, spinning the lock, then the doorknob as he pulled it open and stepped out of the way. Well, he stepped out of the way for just a minute, and then he was dancing forward to grab Herbert by his t-shirt and tug him into the laundry room, looking over his shoulder at the basket in case the eggs had cracked fully open.

Laughing, Herbert let himself get pulled along. "They're hatching?" he asked-- stupid question, because they obviously were, and why else would Sammy have texted him like that for? But hey, Herbert never shied away from stupid questions. "How long have they been like this? --And where'd your braids go?" He finally noticed that Sammy's hair was no longer in its tight, beaded, teeth-tempting braids, but rather in a mess of curls even more crinkly than before.

When they were next to the basket again Sammy held a finger up, then jogged from the room. He returned to Herbert's side a minute or so later with his notebook - retrieved from beside the couch - and leaned against the werebear like he was a wall as he wrote. "So many questions," He teased, sticking his tongue out, "But, in order asked, yes they're hatching. I don't know, probably a while, I just got up about a half hour ago -- Geo took them out. Now my hair is out of control, right?" And he was down on his knees again beside the basket as a flash of wet, downy-feathered wing showed in one of the larger cracks.

Trying to be steady for Sammy to lean on, while really more interested in the eggs anyway, Herbert looked between writing and hatching eagerly. "It's a good kind of out of control, though," he assured Sammy, then he crouched down, too, to see better. "I guess Geo knows about them, now. Was that a wing?" A gooey little wing, but still a wing, surely! The ducklings were really pushing open their shells hard, weren't they?

Sammy coughed lightly as he shook his head, curls bouncing with the motion as he pulled the edges of the blanket over the basket. "Er, actually he still doesn't," He admitted, watching as more shell fell to the bottom of the basket and there was a flash of black beak. "Which is, yanno, amazing..." He reached out, pushing Herbert slightly so that if the duckling popping out looked up it would see the werebear first. "But yes! That was a wing. A very wet wing."

Giving Sammy a mildly confused look, Herbert braced his hands on the floor for balance but stayed where he was put. "That is kind of amazing. I bet he will soon, though, when there's three little ducklings running around the house. Did you figure out what they ate?" Herbert... rrrrm, hadn't had time, and he hadn't been home so he couldn't bring them anything, himself.

"Soggy bread and stuff like that," Sammy was sitting on the floor now, legs framing two sides of the basket as he leaned over, shadow dark on the basket. "I had a list, it's...somewhere. Upstairs in my room I think, buried under homework." Which wasn't done yet, but he'd get it done later. Right now: Ducks! "I guess it's easier for them to eat if it's wet."

The two of them were practically nose to nose, leaning over the little basket. Herbert felt very big. But oh, that egg was almost splitting! "Should we get them some?" he asked, only glancing at Sammy's notebook briefly to get the gist of the note. This was really rather exciting. "Will they be hungry?"

There were a couple of minutes of 'silence' before Sammy answered, arm bent awkwardly as he scribbled an answer to Herbert's question finally. "Don't know yet." He chewed on the inside of his lip as he shifted again. "We might, but they might want to sleep before eating. It takes work getting out of the shells, I'd think, so...yeah, they might go right to sleep." He kind of hoped they didn't and they could watch them.

"Hrrrrum. Maybe we'll find out, then. Oh-- is that...?"

It was. One of the eggs finally broke open the rest of the way, two wide cracks meeting and the top popping off, revealing a little, wet duckling-- upside down-- inside, the smaller half of the egg still stuck to his bottom. Chuckling, Herbert carefully reached in to pull it off with just the tips of his fingernails, and the duckling kicked until the egg rolled over and it could pull itself out.

Sammy carefully moved out of its line of sight, leaving Herbert alone in front of the small, quivering bird as it lifted its head up on a weak neck and blinked at the were. A look of mischief crept into his eyes as he looked down at the remaining two eggs, one of them cracking further open as he wrote yet another note to Herbert. "So, you know about imprinting, right?" The small duckling crept forward, close to the bottom of the blanketed basket.

"Rrr?" Looking away from the cute little ball of sticky, egg-wet down when the notebook came into his field of vision again, Herbert blinked. "No? I don't think-- unless I've forgotten. What's imprinting?"

"That one," Sammy pointed his finger at the back of its head, careful not to touch the wet-down, "Probably thinks you're its parent now." he withdrew his hand, unable to stop the smirk that stretched his lips. "'cause it saw you first."

"Oh." Herbert blinked down at the wobbly duckling in surprise, then ducked his hand into the basket and let it wobble right onto his fingers. He shot Sammy an amused glare. "You did that on purpose, didn't you?" he accused cheerfully enough.

It was easy enough to agree, and Sammy did, curls bobbing as he nodded, seemingly focused on the duckling who was pushing from its shell. "I might have, yeah," he agreed, blinking at the head that poked out and turned upwards. "Now you get to have a duckling following you about," His shoulders shuddered as he looked up again at Herbert. "Isn't it fun?"

"As long as the apartment people don't mind," Herbert chuckled. Well, and Olivia... that could be interesting. He wondered vaguely how long he could keep this quiet from her-- probably not long, at all. He did scoot back, though, and quite pointedly let Sammy be the parent for the other two. One little duckling was quite enough. "Those two get to be yours, though," he added, giving the one slumped and sticky on his palm a careful little pet on the top of the head with the very tip of one finger. He didn't want to hurt the little one, after all.

The second newly-hatched duckling made its way towards Sammy on unsteady legs, wobbling and nearly going down as its tiny feet hooked into a loose thread. "I should have got Geo to come in here, but...he's asleep." His eyes ticked from the drooping wet wings to the last egg that needed to hatch. "Do you have a name for that one yet? Or is it still too new?" He knew what he wanted to name his anyhow, had since he'd brought them home with Fallon that Tuesday night.

Name. Name? Uuuuh. Herbert hadn't even considered naming, and he gave Sammy a blank look. "No. What should I name it? I've never named anything before." He'd never really had any pets, so this was rather new to him.

"So, uh...I read fantasy books, right?" Okay, so Herbert didn't know - Sammy hadn't said anything about it before - but still, it was rhetorical. "And...there's a book with a gryphon named Elda. You could name the duckling Elda, right? I'm naming mine Kit and Blade, after two more characters from the same book."

"Kit and Blade? And Elda?" Herbert looked amused. "A duck named after a gryphon, I like that." He held up the duckling and told it-- her, he supposed, with a girl's name-- "There, you're named after a noble mythical creature. Don't think you have to live up to it, or anything, though."

Sammy lifted the hatched duckling up and gently set it on his lap, away from the other duckling who was forcing its head through the shell surrounding it. "I can just see it now," He laughed slightly, pointing to Elda, "She'd pretend she's bigger than you and get in the way of supposed dangers..." He hoped they wouldn't, though, since they were so...tiny and fragile.

"I can just see it, little tiny duckling between me and-- and--" Those vampires. Or a demon like Jace. Or something. Yeah, that was not such a funny thought. He shook his head, smile fading a little, and he gave Elda another little pet. "Should we clean 'em off, you think? They're all sticky."

It took a moment to consider the answer to that question, and then he was shaking his head as he reached out to lightly lift more shell off of the third duckling. "It should dry off/clean off by itself. I mean, if it hatched in the wild it would get cleaned off until it went for its first swim, right?"

"It's not like we're raising them wild," Herbert pointed out, thinking hard, his own self. "I'm at least going to get a towel so it won't be sticky all day while I carry it home. Her home. Is that okay? I can take it home and wash it for you." The duckling, Elda, was already picking herself up a little and looking around with bright, black eyes.

"Good point," Moving carefully so he didn't damage the fragile little body of the duckling on his lap he moved it back in beside the third, which was staring up at him before bobbing its head to look at its new basket-mate. "I'll get you a towel - or a dishcloth. A towel might be too big." He ran his finger along the newest hatchlings head. "Will that work for you?"

"Yup. Maybe I'll go find some bread, while you're at it." He remembered where the food was, yup. Though when he stood up, he held Elda up to his nose to make sure he knew her smell. He wasn't entirely sure he'd know any other way which one she was, once he set her down.

If he could have made sounds, Sammy would have had to cover his mouth to make sure no snickers escaped, but as it was it just looked like he was cold and shivering as he watched Herbert with his baby duck. If he hadn't gotten the smell right, the duckling would probably have made known she was his by lifting her head or something, but Herbert knowing her scent was good, too. Sammy grabbed his notebook as he got to his own feet and headed from the room, making a note to get a small bowl as water as well.

By now, Herbert knew when Sammy was laughing, and he shot the boy a playful glare as he set Elda down and set off to get his own half of the deal. Ducklings would need food on top of baths, after all.

Herbert thought, already, that he was going to enjoy being a duckling-parent.