Watermelon #3
Dumpling chooses this moment to attempt a territorial claim on my lap. There is no lap. There is a belly where a lap used to be, and seventeen pounds of determined cat trying to fit on the remaining surface area. He kneads. He circles. He refuses to accept the geometric reality of the situation.
The baby kicks.
Dumpling yowls—offended, betrayed. This belly used to be his. This warm spot has been invaded by a kicking usurper who doesn’t even pay rent, who hasn’t even had the courtesy to arrive yet and is already making territorial claims.
He retreats to Ren. Sits on his chest instead. Stares at my belly accusingly, as if this is all my fault, as if I’ve personally orchestrated this insult to his dignity.
“He’s going to hate her,” I say.
“He’s going to be obsessed with her.”
“Same thing, with cats.”
Ren strokes Dumpling’s back. The cat purrs, still glaring at my bump. The baby kicks again, apparently unwilling to let the insult stand, and Dumpling’s ears flatten.
This is my life now. This is my family—an emperor who fights trade wars over semicolons, a dragon who researches hatchling development in secret, a cat who is already engaged in a territory dispute with an unborn child, and a baby who hasn’t even arrived yet but is already picking fights.
I didn’t plan for any of it.
I wouldn’t change any of it.
The Moon Garden is quieter at night.
Cooler. The stones still hold the day’s warmth but the air has turned, carrying jasmine so thick I can taste it.
I lower myself onto the bench—slowly, carefully, one hand on Ren’s arm because apparently being pregnant and feeling like an old lady are not mutually exclusive—and let the garden settle around me.
This is where we didn’t quite kiss for weeks and pretended we weren’t disappointed about it. Where we walked while pretending we weren’t falling. Where I finally stopped running and let myself stay.
The stars are scattered across the sky like someone threw a handful of light and didn’t bother to arrange it properly. The air is cool but not cold, carrying that particular sweetness of late evening in a garden that’s been tended for centuries.
The baby kicks. Reminder, not complaint. She does this when I’m thinking too hard—interrupts the spiral, demands attention, refuses to let me get lost in my own head. I’ve started thinking of her kicks as punctuation. Emphasis when she agrees. Protest when she doesn’t.
This one feels like a question.
“Still waiting,” Ren says. He’s beside me on the bench, close enough that our shoulders touch. Close enough that I can feel the warmth of him through my sleeve.
“Still pregnant.”
“Still here.”
We’ve done this before. This exchange, or variations of it. Check-ins that aren’t quite check-ins. Ways of saying what we mean without actually saying it.
Still here. I’m still here. Are you still here? We’re still together.
“I have people now,” I say.
The words come out before I’ve decided to say them. That keeps happening lately—eight hundred years of armor and it’s developing cracks I didn’t authorize, letting things escape that I’ve kept locked away for centuries.
Ren waits. He’s good at waiting. The best at it, maybe. He gives silences room to breathe, lets them expand until they’re comfortable instead of pressing.
“Ridiculous people,” I continue. “Who prepare briefing documents for nursery invasions and compile prenatal mathematics curricula and research hatchling fragility like it’s their job.
Who bet on my baby’s arrival date and clear my path of inconvenient ministers and stand guard over a room that doesn’t have a baby in it yet. ”
“They care.”
“They care badly. Excessively. In ways that don’t make any sense.” I look at him—at the profile I know by heart now, the jaw and the cheekbones and the tired eyes that aren’t quite so tired when he looks at me. “I’ve never had that before. Not really. Not in eight hundred years.”
He takes my hand.
Doesn’t speak.
The jasmine smells like memory. The baby kicks like hope.
“It’s terrifying,” I admit.
“I know.”
“I might like it.”
“I know that too.”
The stars are bright tonight, scattered and careless and perfect.
The garden is quiet except for night sounds—insects singing, distant water moving, the soft whisper of wind through the jasmine.
Somewhere in the palace, Dumpling is probably knocking something over to protest his diminished lap privileges.
Somewhere else, Tianlong is pretending he’s not secretly planning to teach my daughter to fly.
Wei is running perimeter checks, adding another page to his briefing document.
Jing is reading, probably memorizing developmental milestones she’ll share with me tomorrow whether I want them or not.
Mei is doing whatever Mei does in the dark hours—watching, waiting, making sure the path stays clear.
And I’m here. In a garden that smells like jasmine and memory.
Holding hands with an emperor who waited seven months over a comma and who looks at me like I’m the most important thing in an empire full of important things.
Carrying a baby who kicks when I think too hard and who is going to be stubborn like both of us, who has people who care about her before she’s even taken her first breath.
It’s everything.