3 Chapter 3: The Morning Star

"M…Meera, Meera! Wake up!"

"H...Hm?"

Meera's eyes very slowly opened as she was woken up by the sound of her husband screaming like an animal.

"Stop screaming like a wild gryphir, my love…" Meera weakly breathed out as she very gently sat up, making sure not to wake up the baby in her arms,

"...You'll wake up our baby."

"It's already awake!"

"Shush," Meera stood up from the bed and placed a finger on Emmett's lips, "The baby has a name, Emmett…

…Lucifer."

"You—" Emmett lowered his voice as he looked her old wife in the eyes, "You named him after the Emperor? My love, have you gone mad!? No, wait. He spoke, Meera! The little bud spoke!"

"You speak of nonsense so early in the morning, my love. I sigh at your incessant nagging," Meera truly sighed as she started looking around for her cane, only to remember dropping it the night before.

"And your clothes…" Emmett then limped toward their closet, immediately grabbing a blanket and placing it over Meera's shoulder, "...Why does it look burnt?"

"...Are you not going to ask me where I found Lucifer?" Meera could really only blink as Emmett gently assisted her to their table.

"Where else would you have found it but from inside you?" Emmett waved his hand as he walked toward the hearth at the center of their small hut.

"Emmett," Meera watched as her husband started to light a fire, "I love you dearly… but your mind is clouded by stupidity. A child is not made overnight."

"You stole it!?" A fire burst forth as Emmett let go of the flint stones in his hand, "Return it at once, Meera. I knew something was not right when that baby spoke words to me!"

"Okay…" Meera sighed once again, "...I will humour you, my love. What did our Lucifer say? And please, stop calling him 'it'."

"It—He… he told me 'What the fuck are you looking at, little one'!" Emmett looked at baby Lucifer while saying that.

"And what did you say before that?" Meera looked suspiciously at her husband, "I know the words that come out of your mouth when you are surprised, my love — and they are not flattering."

"Why does that matter!?"

"Because children reflect the actions of the people around them."

"He's a baby! He's not supposed to talk!"

"Ssh. Lower your voice. Look, you woke him up," Meera could really only sigh, sniffling as she walked toward Lucifer. The smile on her face almost reaching from ear to ear while she very gently cradled Lucifer from the bed, "Isn't he cute?"

"He…"

"D…Dada?"

"...Oh," Emmett held his breath as Lucifer looked at him with his bright blue eyes, slightly moist from just having woken up, "He has my eyes."

"Your eyes are yellow, my love," Meera could really only sigh as she listened to the tone of her husband's voice instantly shift.

"...Are you not tired from carrying him?" Emmett then gestured to Meera to give him Lucifer, "You have been complaining about the pain in your back, let me carry him."

"No…" Meera quickly avoided Emmett, "...It is best for you not to hold him."

"That… I apologize if I have made you angry, my dear. But I want to hold our baby," Emmett's already shaking voice stuttered, "It is true that he spoke."

"I believe you, I already heard little Luci talk before both of us went to spend time in our dreams," Meera let out a quiet giggle as she gently placed little Lucifer back on the bed, covering him with a blanket and making sure he was comfortable,

"It's just…" Meera smiled at Lucifer, "He… has quite the strength in him."

"Then even more so for me to carry him instead. Your back is—"

"Emmett," Meera once again let out a sigh as she once again placed her finger on Emmett's lips, "Lift what I can not, bring the pot to our fire so that I may prepare us a meal, please?"

"...Fine," Emmett could really only grumble as he walked to the corner of the small hut, while Meera walked to the table, grabbing potatoes from the basket hanging on the ceiling and started chopping them; her movements slightly shaky and could not be compared to when she sliced the meteor as if it was cake.

"See? You could barely hold a knife, my love. You are as beautiful and fragile as I first met you," Emmett found himself out of breath as he slightly struggled to lift up their iron pot which was as aged as them, "We truly are at the end of our lives. Are we even fit to take care of—M…Meera, it… it's crawling! The baby is crawling!"

"Calm your heart, my love," Meera once again sighed as she heard Emmett dropping the iron pot, "Babies crawl, that is what they do."

"It's crawling on the wall!"

"..." Meera very slowly turned her head to where Emmett's trembling finger was pointing, only to see Lucifer crawling on their wooden walls like a lizard,

"Oh… 

…look how cute he is."

***

"This is the monster that destroyed my home planet. We must find him. I will find him!"

"Sir, if I may? I am not that well-versed in your bipedal physiology…

…but I am highly sure that it is a suckling, a newborn."

Somewhere in a galaxy far away from where little Lucifer landed, an old man wearing a bulky dark armor roared; his thick mustache, filled with the rage contained in his saliva.

He was with another person who had his arms crossed and standing on his six thin legs similar to that of crustaceans.

And although the two of them were different, the image reflected in their eyes was the same — a hologram of a baby, Lucifer.

"Yup, that's a baby," the 6-legged humanoid nodded.

"It doesn't matter. The thing's existence itself is...

...Illegal."

"..."

"Once we find it, and we will find it…" The old man with a mustache raised stepped forward, brushing past Lucifer's image and causing it to wither away as he walked toward a large window with a view of the endless dark expanse of space — and within that expanse, were motherships… hundreds of them,

"…The Council will parade its corpse across the cosmos."