As the shoulders came she got more excited. She blew forcefully threw her cheeks between periodic groans of pain, contracting her muscles to aid the child’s arrival. Finally the shoulders made it through and the rest came comparatively easy. The instant the child was free she leaned forward to clear its throat and lungs. It cried noisily and she cleaned it beneath the stream of running water.
She smiled and cried with joy as she examined her child. It was a boy, and she immediately chose to name him Sebastian. She ran her hand down his chest, examining him to reassure herself that he was whole and pure. The tiny knobs on his forehead made him look even cuter than a human baby. Each no larger than a pencil eraser, she knew they would one day be long and handsome. His legs bore the barest peach fuzz coating, the precursor to the thick, luxuriant fur that would cover them in adulthood. His hooves felt rather soft, but they would undoubtedly toughen up when he was ready to walk.
Alexandra continued to weep as she held the baby satyr to her breast. It suckled enthusiastically. “Rest easy, little one,” she said as she played with his tiny hand. “You and I have a lot of work to do when you grow up.
“A whole lot of work.”
Michael Oliveri is a computer geek by day, working as the technology coordinator for a small, rural high school district. After several hours of wrestling with computers and cursing the Beast of Redmond (that’s Microsoft to the uninitiated) he goes home to wrestle with his own computer, a custom built beast he tortures relentlessly as he writes. He lives in a quiet Illinois town with his wife Melissa and dog Sasha.
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