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Jeff wasn't quite sure how to frame the scene he was greeted by as he came into the farmhouse with the week's groceries.He'd always wanted to be a dad. He'd seen plenty of pictures of his parents with him as a baby and known that he'd one day take photos like that: sitting in a chair with his baby in his arms, holding the baby over his forearm for some tummy time, or cuddled up in a front pack. And of course there would be a plethora of photos of his gorgeous wife and their baby - tender moments of her curled up in bed with their baby or playing with them - and there absolutely would be the obligatory bath time photos, messy meal times and the many other adventures of parenthood.But in all his imaginings about what his future family would look like, he had to admit he'd never pictured a scene quite like this.The first part was pretty close to what he’d imagined - Lucy humming as she danced around the kitchen with their baby - but he'd never pictured the second part- said baby was right now an eaglet and stuffed down her tee-shirt. She had one hand on the towel-wrapped lump to keep him in place, and Scott's downy head was peeping over her collar as he watched everything.“Lucy?” Jeff put down the bags of shopping.“Oh! Hi Jeff!” Lucy popped out an ear bud and danced over to him to help put things away, moving with shuffling little steps and hops. “Scotty's colicky, he accidentally went bird because he got so upset and distressed. I can't burp him like this, so I figured some dancing might help shake the bubbles loose.” She smiled as she accepted a bag of rice from him. “That and he likes it.”A well timed squeak from the eaglet seemed to be an agreement.“And he's down your shirt because…?” Jeff handed over a tin of formula next.“Because he got cold,” was the sensible answer as she took the tin. “We don't have a heat lamp and I can't sit on him like his birth parents would.”“Makes sense.” Jeff nodded and went to put the meat into the fridge. “Still no sign of ‘em?”“Not a thing.” Lucy slowed her dancing to a gentle sway, looking slightly puffed. “I think his parents might have been fully wild were-eagles, not…” she stopped to search for the term she wanted “...not ones with their human soul still dominant. We found him at just the right time when he could still switch and have his human soul in charge.”“Lucky us,” Jeff smiled. Personally Jeff was very glad to hear Lucy's theory about Scott’s birth parents, it meant they were even less likely to hear a knock at the door. It'd only been a couple of weeks, but he adored their son. “Giving him up would break my heart, but if they did show up I'd do it,” was his thought as he unpacked the rest of the chilled foods.He put the meat, milk and butter away, and in the middle of handing the bag of flour and other baking things to Lucy - since she was closer to that cupboard - the eaglet chose to protest the current state of affairs. Unhappy with either the lack of movement, the lack of humming, the lack of attention in general or something else entirely, he shrilled and stretched up to repeatedly nudge at the underside of Lucille's chin with his beak.“I just fed you, young man!” Lucy sounded somewhat exasperated as she juggled the unhappy chick and a bag of salt.“Growth spurt?” Jeff quickly put the potatoes into their box in the pantry.“Must be.” Salt safely away, Lucy turned to the stack of sterilised baby bottles on the kitchen island.Jeff stopped in the act of reaching out to the fridge. “Not meat?”“No, I want to see if we can tempt him back into human form.” Lucy made a valiant attempt at getting the tin of formula open, but it wasn't easy one-handed.“Here, lemme have him while you get that ready,” Jeff offered, holding out his hands.“Thanks,” Lucy offered him a grateful smile. A reach under her shirt and she had a double handful of towel-wrapped, squawking eaglet. The baby were protested vigorously, but settled down again as soon as Jeff had him tucked against his chest. Lucy had the bottle ready in short order, then passed it over.Jeff took the bottle, sat down at the kitchen table and offered it to the eaglet, who pecked at the teat and made a decent effort at trying to nurse, but was quickly frustrated and very vocal about it. “None of that, Scooter,” Jeff admonished. “You want the bottle, you gotta have a mouth, not a beak.”Scott tried again, clicked his beak, then shifted in his arms. “Attaboy,” Jeff smiled and repositioned the tiny boy before offering the bottle again. Half an hour and a decent burp later, Jeff was cuddling a very sleepy little boy. “Food coma time, eh? C’mon Scooter, let’s get you settled.” Jeff slid off the seat and started humming as he walked off towards the bedroom.Lucy watched him go, a soft smile curving her mouth. She’d always wanted to be a mother, she’d known that since she was a little girl.That her child was a were-eagle, well, that was something that not even she had seen coming. 0o0o0 There was, Scott concluded, a big difference between knowing what to do and knowing how to do it.Being a father, for example.He’d always known he’d wanted to be one, but life and circumstances had made him set aside his dreams in favour of raising his brothers and Tanusha instead. Hope had been an entirely unexpected surprise. And while he knew the mechanics of keeping a living being alive and healthy, the practical? His was with humans, a mer, fae, a were-wolf and a were-tiger. He knew what to do when Hope was human, but when she shifted? It was only half a joke that he had a hard enough time keeping himself alive and kicking. Keeping a baby were-eagle alive and healthy wasn’t quite in his scope of practice.Right now though he had an eaglet that needed care and tending - and especially feeding - so Scott was doing one of the things he did best - improvising. A blanket-lined washing basket in the corner of his room made for a decent nest, and they had plenty of rabbit and suchlike in the freezer.“Thank goodness for instincts, nature videos and John doing a research dive and info dump,” was the Golden Eagle’s thought as he ripped another morsel of meat off the defrosted rabbit and stretched over the edge of the basket to feed it to the wobbly eaglet. It took about half the rabbit for her hunger to finally be satiated and for her beak to remain clamped shut when he offered her another scrap of meat. Her crop stuffed full, Hope now blinked drowsily at him.“Okay, she’s full and she’s tired, food coma time,” Scott was relieved, quickly bolting down a few scraps from the leftovers, then he froze. “...oh… wait. She’s too little to keep herself warm, that’s my job. Uhhh….” He looked at the eaglet in the improvised basket nest, then at himself. He’d never sat on a chick before, and the knowledge of how much he outweighed her and how easy it was to damage a bird’s light bones, especially a chick’s, made him exceedingly reluctant to start experimenting. “Um.”The sudden buzz in the back of his head of urgent conversations across the familial links was a welcome distraction. Normally it was a little irritating to have people talking about you ‘behind your back’, as it were, but someone (probably John) had noticed his distress: the cavalry was coming.He looked over as there was a tap at the door, then Jeff let himself in. “All okay, Scooter?”Scott strutted a few steps towards Jeff to get clear of the basket then shifted back into human form. “Uh, I need help.” He pointed to the drowsy eaglet. “I need to keep her warm, but I can’t sit on her.”“Why dontcha stick her down your shirt? Lucy did that with almost all of you boys at some point.” Jeff suggested with a smile. The obvious solution was a heat lamp, but there was no way that Scott was going to permit that with the Golden Eagle’s broodiness kicking in.“She did?” Scott blinked in surprise.“Yeah, the only one she didn’t was Gordon, he was too big when he found us.” Jeff was already moving to the cupboard where Scott kept his clean linens, finding a fluffy hand towel that was about the right size. “Go siddown, Scooter.” Jeff pointed him to the bed as he went to scoop up the eaglet.Once Scott was comfortably positioned sitting up against the headboard, Jeff brought Hope over and helped get her securely cuddled up inside his shirt. He added a pillow under Scott’s arms to help support the towel-wrapped bundle of eaglet, then he dragged a blanket over Scott’s legs. “I’ll clean this up,” Jeff nodded at the plate holding the remains of the rabbit, “and be back to check on you in an hour or two, copy?”“I copy,” Scott nodded, looking much more relaxed now they’d solved the problem of keeping his baby warm.“Glad to hear it.” Jeff picked up the rabbit and headed out, half certain of what he’d find when he got back.An hour and a half later, Jeff cracked Scott’s bedroom door open and smiled when he saw he’d been proven right. He slipped inside and crossed the floor with a parent’s hard-learned stealth, long lessons from the school of ‘do not wake the baby’. Scott was on his side, fast asleep and curled around a now human Hope, who was safely ensconced in a pēpi-pod and also deep in the land of Nod.“C’mere, missy.” Jeff leaned over Scott and eased his hands under the baby. A very careful lift and he got her transferred into the bassinet parked beside the bed and safely tucked in. An equally careful tug and pull got the blankets back over Scott, then Jeff was slipping back out. “Need to make sure that boy remembers to eat,” Jeff noted to himself as he slowly shut the door, “but I think he’s gonna be okay.”