Forever Original | Alaric Saltzman

Chapter 24

September 1, 2012

Hilda wondered how she went from hating kids to willingly changing diapers.

As it turned out, she and Rebekah were quite a good duo when it came to raising a baby.

It was easy to communicate when Hope was asleep. Either hand gestures or mouthing or entering the other's mind was sufficient to get across a good point.

They knew each other well. Hilda knew Rebekah worried about whether Hope was warm or not, and made sure to always prepare extra clothes. Rebekah knew that Hilda worried that Hope would cease to breathe in the middle of the night, so she slept beside her to listen to her heartbeat.

One did the cooking, the other did the cleaning. Hilda elected to always do any shopping that was needed, and Rebekah always took Hope out in her carriage to see the outside world. They traded off who burped her and gave her formula.

Hilda had reached out to the old Creole Coven she and Kol had met in Colorado. They were more than happy to do the cloaking spell in exchange for some materials from Hilda, which she happily provided. They were guarded against locator spells and prying eyes. They could choose who got to see their real faces, but for the majority of the time they stepped outside, they always looked different to passerbys. The witches had also added in a bonus early warning spell system that the two sisters kept handy. If they heard metallic rattling from one of their purses, they would know they'd been discovered by someone unwanted.

Hilda was still unsure why Rebekah would ever want children of her own, but she had grown to have an appreciation for the joy that tiny creatures like Hope could bring.

She was so calm. Hilda knew that many new parents struggled to get used to their babies crying all the time. But the two vampires seemed to always know exactly what she needed and when, and were able to prevent her from crying very often. In general, she was a very happy baby, always smiling.

She was curious. Her gorgeous little eyes constantly darted all over the place. She hardly focused when Rebekah played peek-a-boo with her (they soon learned that Hope was not interested in such lousy games).

"You're doing it again!" said Rebekah one evening when she found Hilda talking to Hope in the nursery about all the things in the room.

Hilda made a face. "Why do you complain about how I talk to her? She wants to know!"

"You speak to her as if she's our age! You've never once used baby talk on her."

"Because it's stupid, Bex, I'm not going to make my voice high pitched and make weird faces for her entertainment. We've learned my now that she wants to be introduced to new stimuli constantly. I read an article that says they learn to talk better when you speak to them normally."

Rebekah didn't understand how a person could be so casual with a baby. To her, Hilda was a heathen. Rather than cooing and making Hope laugh, she would talk to her for hours on end about magic and about the outside, the plants and animals and most of all, the special places she had been. She spoke as if to another full grown person.

Once, she'd listened to Hilda go on an hour-long monologue about the Parthenon. Rebekah had expected to come upstairs to find Hope asleep from boredom, but instead, the little girl had been looking up at Hilda in wonder.

Maybe Rebekah was just jealous that Hilda calmed her down easier.

The youngest Original had noticed a change in her sister. She had yet to visit Alaric, but they spoke every day. She told him nothing about Hope, simply said she and Rebekah were vacationing together to take a mental break from their family.