Little Lady Briana

28 A Princess Scorned

The scary people were outside the window again. No matter when Briana looked out her bedroom window, the scary people were there. Unlike a monster from a story, they wouldn't go away with a drink of warm milk and being snuggled by Mom. Aunt Kiara and Grandma were working on it, of course. Once again they were fixing a situation that Briana had created. She stared at the mass of angry people, muttering hatefully to themselves as they gathered in the morning fog, and whimpered. There was nothing a baby girl could do but cry.

A much more normal part of Briana's morning was a soggy, droopy diaper. Mom, Dad, Rosa, or any of her other caregivers would fix that for her the moment she asked. Getting changed meant the morning was really starting, and Briana wasn't ready for that. She waddled her way back to the playpen-crib her parents had set up and burrowed under the covers. Sharing a proper crib with Ava would have been the best, but Briana's crib didn't have room for two baby girls. Therefore, Dad had taken her crib downstairs and set up a playpen in its place. There was a nice futon mattress making up the crib floor, set up the same way that Mom and Dad did for sleepovers with Melody.

The sleepy, diapered girl snoozing under the blankets healed Briana's heart. She wrapped her arms around Ava, loving the softness of her girlfriend's skin. Even better was the diaper that crinkled on Ava's hips. Ava's diaper was less crinkly than it had been the night before, now almost as soggy as Briana's. Though taller than Briana, Ava was a spindly thing, her arms and legs as thin as a faerie's. Like Briana, Ava got cold easily, which made her the perfect sleeping snuggle buddy. Briana's last action before falling back asleep was to burrito them up into a nice warm bundle.

Mom and Dad woke the girls what seemed like an unfairly short amount of time later. Ava was so sleepy she didn't protest when Mom rolled her over and popped her diaper tapes. The Little girls laced their fingers together and sucked their thumbs in pure baby-indulgence. Once they were freshly diapered, Mom and Dad moved on to dressing the Littles. Ava made sleepy protest noises at being dressed, though she subsided with a blush when Briana kissed her cheek. To match her girlfriend's colorful Indian dress, Briana requested her yellow sundress and rainbow tutu.

Going down the narrow stairs to the living room had been scary for Ava at first, until she and Briana had figured out that they fit perfectly side by side. With an arm around each other's waists, and the other on the stair rails, the Little girls could traipse down the stairs without help from any Bigs! Breakfast smelled like pancakes or waffles, either of which would be heaven. Briana had almost forgotten the protestors as she waited for Ava to get her crutches situated – when a horrible crash of glass made her jump!

The air rang with Ava's screech of terror and Dad's shouted curse. Briana was on Jane's heels to the window, deftly dodging Mom's restraining grasp. The windows were unbroken, thankfully. A pile of green glass shards on the porch suggested that someone had thrown a bottle. The cops had bent a man over the picket fence and were handcuffing him – but the rest of the protestors were cheering the criminal on.

"You don't have to look, Schätzchen." Jane put her strong, dadly arm around Briana's shoulders. "They are awful, but they won't get past the police."

"I have to do something, Daddy." Briana looked up at Jane resolutely. "We can't keep living like this."

"Your Grandmother and Kiara are working on it, Baby Bee." Briana half-expected a soothing stroke of her hair to accompany the words, but Mom was still across the living room. She was soothing Ava, of course. Briana's heart burst with love to see Mom treating Ava like a member of the family so easily.

"I caused this, I should do at least something to fix it." Briana bit her lip in vexation. Those were fine words to say, but she had no ideas on what she could do. She looked up at Dad earnestly, "I can clean the glass up."