The baby's arrival leaves Spite unimpressed.
It is a tiny, noisy, smelly, helpless lump. It takes up all of Rook and Lucanis's time and attention. When Lucanis finally sleeps and Spite gets a turn in their body, the baby shrieks and wakes him up again. For reasons Spite can't understand, Lucanis wants to be around the baby all the time. Lucanis thinks about the baby all the time.
Rook says it will someday be a person. Spite has his doubts. Even when it becomes a slightly larger lump that can move around on its own, it crawls on its hands and knees. It doesn't use its feet. Even Curiosity can use its feet!
Then one night when Spite finally gets to use the body and he's doing flying loops around the ballroom chandelier, he feels something tug at him. It's not magic. It's not a smell or a sound or a shift in the air. He doesn't know what it is, but he thinks he should—or that he did once.
He follows the feeling and, to his surprise, ends up at the baby's room. When he creaks the door open to peek inside, he braces for shrieking, but the baby, though awake, doesn't even seem to notice him. Its dark eyes are fixed firmly on the bars of the strange cage it sleeps in. Its brow is furrowed with tiny lines, and its mouth pulls down in a pursed pout. It reaches out its tiny hands, grabs the bars, and rocks on its fat little knees.
It wants to do something. It's determined to do something.
Spite leans a little further into the room. Something about the scene has him captivated. He practically holds his breath as the baby lets out a grunt of effort and then slowly, painstakingly pulls itself to its feet. With a whoop, Spite dashes to the sleeping cage, wings spread wide, bathing the room in a bright purple glow.
"You used! Your feet!" he exclaims.
The baby's eyes go round, and Spite shrinks back. He remembers the one time he tried to show the baby his wings when it was a smaller lump. It had screamed and screamed, and Rook had asked him not to do it again. The baby's mouth opens, and Spite prepares to flee the body and let Lucanis handle the screaming.
But the baby doesn't scream. It laughs.
The shrieking Rook says is the baby's laugh isn't all that different from the screaming, but its mouth is stretched in a wide grin. It releases its grasp on the bars to clap its hands and immediately falls back onto its rump. With much less effort than the first time, it pulls itself up to stand again. It uses one hand to firmly grip a bar and reaches the other toward Spite's wings.
Spite flutters one wing closer, and the baby, still laughing, bends and straightens its knees, bouncing in delight.
"Pah!" it says, which is the noise it makes when it sees Lucanis. "Pah!"
"No," Spite says. "Not Pah. Spite." He points to the wings and then his glowing eyes. "Spite."
The baby stops its bouncing, and the focused expression of before returns. It tilts its head and fixes Spite with a serious gaze. Spite leans closer until they are almost nose to nose.
"Spite," he repeats.
"Sssssss...," the baby hisses.
Spite nods and doesn't lean back even when the baby's free hand tugs roughly at his hair. "Yes. Say it. Say Spite."
"Spah," the baby says. And then, after a particularly emphatic yank of Spite's hair, it triumphantly yells, "Spy!"
"Yes!" Spite crows. His wings shiver in excitement, and the baby bats at the one closest.
"Spy!" it shouts. "Spy!"
Spite grins at the giddy feeling bubbling in his chest, one only Lucanis has felt around the baby until now.
The baby knows him. The baby likes him.
They spend several minutes enjoying their new game. Spite laughs as he flicks his wings toward the baby and away, and the baby cheerfully cries his name as it tries to snatch the gleaming feathers. But the baby's voice gets softer, and its grin shrinks to a smaller smile and then fades entirely. Its round face scrunches up again, its focus engaged in some new thought.
Spite watches breathlessly, waiting to see what the baby will learn to do next. The baby's face turns pink and then a mottled red with effort. Rook told him the baby wouldn't have wings, but as Spite watches the tiny muscles tremble with strain and hears the baby grunt, a little part of him wonders if feathers and light will suddenly erupt from its back.
Then the smell hits.
Spite rears back with a snarl of disgust. He and Lucanis have perfected smooth handovers of their shared body, but this time Spite jerks away with such abruptness that Lucanis is left staggering. Spite doesn't apologize. He flees the room to escape the horrid stench and then decides to flee the entire family wing just to be safe.
He'll tell Lucanis the baby said his name later.