(Elena)
It happened at breakfast.
Not dramatically. Not as an announcement. Luna had been doing the reaching-toward-words thing for three weeks — sounds that had shape, sounds that were clearly trying to be something specific, the specific concentration of a person who has understood that the sounds other people make have meaning and is working on making them herself.
She’d been working on it.
She was fifteen months old and the walking had become running two weeks ago, which Rhydian had predicted and I had not fully believed until Luna ran into the training yard fence at speed and bounced off it and sat down and looked at the fence with the assessment of someone filing a complaint.
Running. Then words. In that order.
Rhydian had said it would happen.
Breakfast was the three of us, which was the arrangement on the mornings when Brennan didn’t need us until the second hour and Luna was awake and Hanna brought her in and the morning had a specific quality of ordinary that I’d stopped taking for granted sometime in the last year.
Luna was in the middle chair.
It was her chair now. We’d gotten it two months ago when she’d become clear about not wanting to be held at meals, when she’d started pointing at the table and making the *I’ve decided* sound until we understood that she wanted to sit at the table like people sat at the table.
She sat at the table like people sat at the table.
She was eating the soft bread the kitchen made specifically for her, which she approached with the same focus she brought to everything. Breaking it into pieces. Inspecting the pieces. Eating them in an order that seemed to have internal logic.
Rhydian was reading the morning report to my left.
I was going through the border summary to his left.
We were doing what we did in these mornings — being in the same space, each doing the thing, occasionally saying something about whatever was in the report, occasionally looking at Luna to track what she was doing.
Ordinary.
Luna reached for another piece of bread.
She looked at Rhydian.
He was still reading, head down, the morning light on his hair, one elbow on the table the way he always eventually ended up in spite of knowing better.
She looked at him with the specific focused assessment she brought to things she was about to go toward.
Then she said: "Dada."
Clear.
Deliberate.
Completely certain.
I looked up from my report.
Rhydian looked up from his.
We both looked at Luna.
She was looking at Rhydian.
"Dada," she said again. Directly to him. Like she was making sure he’d heard.
Rhydian put his report down.
He looked at her.
He looked at her face — the specific look he gave her, the one with nothing managed in it — and something moved through his expression that I’d seen before in the infirmary and in the courtyard and on the morning she walked. The specific quality of arriving somewhere that turns out to be real.
His jaw moved.
"Hi," he said. His voice came out entirely wrong for morning conversation.
Luna grabbed another piece of bread.
"Dada," she said again, like she was just confirming something they both already knew.
Rhydian put both elbows on the table. He put his face in his hands.
I looked at him.
Then at Luna.
Luna was eating the bread with complete satisfaction. She’d said what she intended to say to whom she intended to say it and had returned to the matter of breakfast, which was the appropriate order of priorities.
"Rhydian," I said.
His voice came through his hands. "I’m fine."
"You’re—"
"I’m fine," he said.
He lifted his face.
He was, in fact, not fine in the traditional sense. His face was doing the full version of the thing, the unmanaged open version, the version I’d watched arrive at the birth and at the first steps and in the corridor at four in the morning.
His eyes were wet.
"She said—" he started.
"I heard her," I said.
"She said—"
"I was right here," I said.
He looked at Luna.
Luna looked back at him.
"Dada," she said, one more time, with the patient quality of someone who has already said the thing twice and is offering a third repetition as a courtesy.
He made the sound.
The helpless one. The one that came from somewhere he didn’t have control of.
I looked at my report.
I looked at it very carefully.
I was not going to say anything about the fact that her first word was dada. I was not going to make anything of the fact that I’d been at every feeding and every waking and every two-in-the-morning wondering sound and every morning and Rhydian had been right there too and I was not — I was absolutely not—
"Elena," Rhydian said.
"I’m reading," I said.
"You’ve been on the same line for—"
"I’m reading," I said.
He was quiet.
Luna grabbed her cup.
"Mama," she said.
I looked up.
Luna was looking at me.
"Mama," she said again.
I stared at her.
She held out her cup.
The cup was her signal. She held out her cup when she wanted more water in it, which was not a complex communication, which I had understood and responded to approximately twelve hundred times.
But she’d said *mama* when she held it out.
"Mama," she said a third time, with the patient quality of someone who had also said this word twice already and was willing to offer one more.
I took the cup.
I poured the water.
I put the cup back.
My face was doing something I wasn’t fully in control of.
"Elena," Rhydian said.
"I’m fine," I said.
"You—"
"I’m fine," I said. "She wanted water."
"She said mama," he said.
"She says sounds," I said. "Senna said the first real word would be followed by—"
"She looked at you and said mama," he said.
"She looked at the cup," I said.
"Elena."
"The cup," I said. "She was looking at the cup."
He was quiet for a moment.
I looked at my report.
The words on it were entirely unreadable.
"You’re going to make me say it," I said.
"I’m not making you say anything," he said.
"She said dada first," I said.
"Yes," he said.
"She said dada first and then she said mama second," I said. "She clearly said mama second."
"She did," he said.
"Because she wanted water," I said.
"Or," he said, "because she knows who you are and decided it was time to say it."
I picked up my report.
I put it down.
"You cried," I said.
"I did," he said. Completely unapologetic.
"For the first word," I said.
"It was my name," he said. "The first version of my name. From her."
I looked at him.
He looked back.
"I’m not jealous," I said.
"I know," he said.
"Dada being first is completely—"
"Natural," he said.
"Arbitrary," I said. "Alphabetically convenient. D comes before M."
Rhydian looked at me.
"Did you just suggest that our daughter organized her first words alphabetically," he said.
"I’m suggesting that the order is not—"
"Mama," Luna said.
We both looked at her.
She was looking at me.
Not at the cup. At me.
She held out the piece of bread.
Not offering it — she offered things by pushing them toward you. This was different. She was holding it out in the direction of me and looking at me and saying *mama.*
I looked at the bread.
At Luna’s face.
At the specific expression on her face, which was the same one she wore when she recognized the wolf toy, when she made the recognition sound at the window, when she knew something that she knew.
She knew.
"Mama," she said again. Quiet. Like it wasn’t a question.
Something in my chest went to the specific place it went.
I took the piece of bread.
Not because I wanted the bread. Because she’d held it out and she’d said my name and I was going to take it.
"Thank you," I said.
She grabbed another piece for herself.
Satisfied. Done. The thing had been said to the correct person and acknowledged and we could all return to breakfast.
I ate the bread.
Rhydian was looking at me.
"Don’t," I said.
"I wasn’t going to say anything," he said.
"You were about to say something," I said.
"I was going to say—"
"Don’t," I said.
He was quiet.
Then: "She held out the bread."
"I noticed," I said.
"She’d already eaten three pieces," he said. "She wasn’t giving you her bread because she didn’t want it."
"I know why she gave me the bread," I said.
"Then—"
"I know," I said. "I know what it was. I don’t need you to explain it to me."
He held my gaze.
I looked at my report.
"She said dada first," I said.
"Yes," he said.
"That’s—" I paused. "That’s right. She should have. You’ve been talking to her since before she was born. You told her about the wolf toy and the cave and the ceiling crack and you made the sound with her in the courtyard before I got there." I looked at the report. "That’s right. I’m not—"
"Elena," he said.
"I’m not jealous," I said.
"I know," he said. "But you’re allowed to be."
I looked at him.
"You’re allowed to want to be first," he said. "You were at every feeding and every four-in-the-morning and every—"
"So were you," I said.
"I know," he said. "I’m just saying — if part of you wanted to be first — that’s okay. It’s a reasonable thing to want."
I looked at my report.
I was on the same line I’d been on for ten minutes.
"She held out the bread," I said.
"Yes," he said.
"That was—" I stopped.
"Yes," he said.
I looked at Luna.
She was investigating the inside of her cup, which she did when the level got low enough to make it worth investigating. She had her father’s specific quality of examining things she’d already examined, as though the thing might have changed since last time.
"She knows," I said.
"She’s known for months," he said. "She just now has the word."
I looked at my report.
"I’m going to be present for the next one," I said.
"The next word," he said.
"Yes," I said. "Whatever it is. I’m going to be present when it arrives."
"You were present," he said. "You were here for dada and mama both."
"I was reading a border report," I said.
"And then you weren’t," he said.
I looked at him.
He was right. I’d been reading a border report and then I hadn’t been, and I’d been right here for both words, which was more than I’d been for some of the things that had happened in the last year and a half.
"The soup is on your side," Rhydian said.
I looked.
It was.
"Iron," he said.
"I know what’s in it," I said.
"Week eight," he said.
"I know what week it is," I said.
I picked up the soup.
Luna looked at the soup.
She looked at me.
She made the *I’ve decided* sound.
She reached for the cup of soup.
"No," I said.
She looked at me.
"That’s mine," I said.
"Mama," she said.
I stared at her.
She kept her hand extended toward the soup.
Rhydian was very carefully not looking at anything.
"That’s mine, Luna," I said.
"Mama," she said again. The patient version.
Rhydian made a sound into his report that was muffled.
"Don’t," I said.
"I didn’t say anything," he said.
"You were about to laugh," I said.
"I would never—"
"Rhydian."
"I would never laugh at—" He stopped. The sound came out. He pressed his lips together. "I’m sorry. I’m—" The sound came again. "She’s using your name as leverage, Elena."
"I can see that," I said.
Luna kept her hand extended.
"Mama," she said.
"She already knows how to do this," I said.
"She’s your daughter," he said.
"She’s your daughter too," I said.
"She gets the leverage thing from you," he said.
I looked at Luna.
Luna looked at me with the patient expression of someone who had all day.
I gave her a small piece of bread dipped in the soup.
"That’s not the soup," I said. "That’s bread with soup on it. The soup is mine."
She ate the bread.
She was satisfied.
She looked at Rhydian.
"Dada," she said.
He laughed.
The real one. The one that I’d started collecting without meaning to, the one that had the quality of someone who had found something he thought he’d lost.
"Yes," he said. "That’s me."
Luna grabbed another piece of bread.
I went back to the border report.
I was smiling.
I didn’t say anything about that.
He didn’t say anything about it either.
Outside the window, somewhere, Cade was running the morning drills. Brennan would arrive at the second hour. Marta had charter things. The settlement was doing what it did.
And at the breakfast table, Luna worked through her bread in the order she’d decided was correct, and said *dada* twice more for no apparent reason except that she could, and said *mama* once when I reached for the soup, which I was choosing to interpret as affection rather than surveillance.
Both could be true.
I was learning that.
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