aldersprig | Family Planning, a story of Dragons Next Door Verse, for the Giraffe Call

For inventrix's prompt.

This is in the Dragons Next Door setting, which has a landing page here (and on LJ).

I'm pretty sure I know what race(s) mom and dad are, and will reveal it... later

“I’ve been thinking of having another child.”

Andromeda dropped that over breakfast, while their three kids were distracted with the busy work of devouring calories for the day and elbowing each other out of their personal spaces. Her husband studied her, eyes half-lidded, cautious.

It was a trueism that every child was a blessing, but in a mixed-race family, where having a child required magical intervention and a very very careful laying-in time, it was nothing to take lightly. The second of their three had nearly killed her in the second trimester. But now all three were in school, and she was getting broody again.

Alon, whose people did not, generally, mate for life, was more than a little uncertain what to do with his wife’s seemingly insatiable need for children. But over the breakfast table was not the time to discuss it. “Talk to your mother about finding an egg shell, then?” he offered, “if you’re sure….”

“I’m not,” she admitted. “Aloysius, stop bolting your… what are you eating?”

“Grilled oats with steak?” Their oldest looked up from his meal, grinning ear to ear with teeth that had come in sharp as needles. “Coach says I need to gain some weight if I’m going to wrestle.”

“Are they making up a class for you?” his younger sister taunted. “Scrawny nags who bite?”

“Take it back, Anna!” He poked her in the second set of ribs. “Take it back!”

Andromeda sighed, and met her husband’s eyes. “Really not certain,” she repeated, even as she reached out her third arm to tug their older children away from each other. “No biting at the table, kids.” She tugged Agnella to the other side of her. “It’s the clutching instinct, I’m afraid.”

Alon picked up their youngest bodily before he could bite his brother’s foreleg, and held Afram upside down, four legs waving wildly, a hoof nearly missing his father’s chin. “Maybe we could… get a dog?”