If Lirdunglu had known being a father was such a thrilling experience, he would've looked into the possibility a lot sooner.

Being employed aboard the rising-in-fame-and-notoriety starship, the Abstract Destiny, and being in a vital position at that, Lir didn't get out too much. The ship never left Star City, but even though the station was a veritable mixing-pot of cultures and species with something new to be found around every corner, Lir just didn't get to do a lot of exploring. The magitechnology the Destiny used to create new lives always needed careful monitoring, as the good Doctor Schroeder wasn't about to risk unborn lives on machines that had the slightest risk of being faulty, so Lir was always on call. Sure, he wasn't the only magitech specialist on the ship's roster, but he was one of the best, and he took his job very seriously.

He'd always known he liked kids. Why work for a man who had midwifed literal hundreds of them if he didn't? Yet it had never before occurred to him to look into having kids of his own.

Just how he'd ended up in what some people were calling the "Offworld Avengaean Bonding Project" and others thought of as the "Second Fur and Feathers Frenzy", he still wasn't quite sure. Certainly Doctor Schroeder was always up-to-date and informed about anything interesting going on anywhere -- with a rapidity and thoroughness that seemed to border on supernatural some days! -- but it wasn't as if the good man had gone advertising it to those members of his crew that were partly or purely Avengaean.

But with the "wolfdragon" eggs all synthed and settled, and the Fire/Light crossbreed eggs soundly under the eyes of their two mothers, the Destiny's laboratories had been put on hold. It was the first time they'd really had a lull of quiet since the hatching of the Genesis Clutch -- during which Lir actually hadn't been employed, but when he had signed up, things had been the excited business of a company returning to the work it loved to do -- given that it was the first time both of the altered Hatching Bays had been filled.

So with ample free time on his paws -- months of it, really -- he'd somehow or another gotten leave to go planet-side for a while and feel some solid earth under his feet... and wound up with his name on the registries for the bonding project or second frenzy or whatever it was you wanted to call it.

Anedefracho was the lovely dragoness it had been his pleasure to catch. She was sharp of mind and sharp of tongue, and a veritable wellspring of powerful emotion that was almost heady to be around. Even though her interest in him hadn't extended much past the whirl of the flight, she was still entertaining to be around as a friend that he just happened to share a clutch with.

Lucky for Lir, he'd been far more captivated by those eggs she'd laid than with the notion of having a mate, and just being friends with Ane was just fine. There were... well... lots of them, and he found himself playing the happily watchful father time and time again, sitting out in the sun as he pondered the creamy shells and wondered what the lives inside them would be like.

The days just after they'd been laid, he'd practically been dancing. He had, in fact, returned to the Destiny to prance about the halls and share the news with his friends and co-workers, and been congratulated all around. He'd even written off a letter to his one sibling that he actually had contact with -- his brother Begug, off on Avengaea. Supposedly their father lived there as well, but the only contact Lir had ever had with October Bonder was the genetic sample of him in the Doctor's Biopool....

By now, however, the eggs were a couple weeks old, and Lir had gotten over his fatherly high enough for it to sink in that most of his firstborn would be bonded or sponsored off. That alone didn't bother him, of course, since it was only natural and was the way things had worked since time immemorial. What did make him stop and frown a little was the thought that, in all likelihood, he'd lose contact with all -- or at least most -- of his offspring whenever they went off with whoever they chose. That, too, was pretty much just how things worked, given the multitudes of worlds out there in the cosmos, but was not a fact he could accept as easily.

That was why he was padding down the corridor that led to Doctor Schroeder's office, his feathered crest flattened a little nervously. Though the man was as warm and friendly and grandfatherly as anyone could be and hadn't minded when Fantredala had vanished off-world and returned with her two little hellions, he was still Lir's employer, and the ship was a ship and not a dragonry, and Lir had no guarantee he'd get a "yes" to the question he had to ask.

The doctor's office door always stood welcomingly open -- well, retracted into the wall, anyhow, given that all the doors aboard the ship were electric rather than swing-open-and-shut affairs -- and even though both it and the room beyond were large enough to accommodate a creature of Lir's size, he still respectfully stopped outside and tapped his claws on the doorframe in lieu of rapping knuckles.

Schroeder's office was a warm and roomy affair, totally out of sorts with the rest of the sterile ship and looking more like a noble man's sitting room. The floor was carpeted and the painting-covered walls were entirely faux-wood panels, and the chairs in front of the dark faux-wood desk were plush and upholstered, though the chair behind the desk was a faux-leather affair, albeit one so well-used and worn and loved that it was no longer squeaky or shiny. The same could be said for the entire room, however. If it was a noble man's room, it was a room that saw use and company, and was made all the more homey by its aged and lived-in feel. The only thing it was missing, in fact, was a fireplace.

The doctor's desk was an example of organized chaos, covered with papers, charts, photographs, and who knew what else. A good half of the mess was also being used as a bed by the giant longhair calico that was Schroeder's cat, Schroedinger. The man presiding over it all was in khakis and a baggy argyle sweater in white and greys. All he was missing was a pipe, except the doctor didn't smoke and never had. Didn't drink, either. He was, in fact, entirely without vice -- if you forgave him sidestepping law and regulation to do the right thing, anyhow.

Doctor Schroeder looked up at Lir's "knock" with a smile. "Ah, Lir! Hello there. Need something?"

Lir bobbed his head. "Hello, Doctor. I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"

"Not at all, not at all. I only throw these papers about to look busy," the man smiled, eyes twinkling. "Please, come in."

"Thank you," Lir answered, stepping into the room and sitting down on the floor, which was comfortable enough given the plush carpet the doctor had had installed long, long before Lir's employment. He nodded his head politely at Valentine, Schroeder's eternal shadow, standing unobtrusively in a corner as if his legs never tired, received a nod in return, and turned back to the man at the desk.

"How's your clutch doing?" the doctor asked.

"Wonderfully, thank you. Although that's just what I came back wanting to talk to you about... or really to ask you about, doctor."

"Please, you can just call me Schroeder here. As long as you don't call me Reinhardt."

Lir blinked in surprise. Reinhardt... Schroeder? "That's what the 'R' stands for?"

"Yes, but don't go telling everyone, now," Schroeder answered with a merry wink. "So what's this question of yours?"

Reminded of his nervousness, Lir tried not to knead his paws in the carpet. "Well Doc... Schroeder... I was..." He took a deep breath, then let it all out in a rush. "I was wondering if it would be alright for me to bring one of my kids back with me, when they hatch? I know the ship isn't a dragonry or a hotel or anything, but I'd really like to be able to watch one of them grow up. I hoped... since you let Fantredala keep Angel and Shag, and you like letting the firstborn of each Synth run around the public parts of the ship, that it would be alright?" He tried not to make puppy-eyes at his employer, but rather thought he was failing.

"Well of course!" Schroeder laughed without even the slightest pause. "My ship might be a ship and somewhat closed to non-employees, but to all the rest of you, it's home. I would love to see you bring back one of your little boys or girls back with you."

Lir could have collapsed across the floor as if he were a rug himself. "Oh thank you, Doctor! Thank you so much!"

The little man waved a hand in light-hearted dismissal, beaming. "Nothing to thank me for, Lir! I'd be a monster of a man if I refused you the right to raise one of your own flesh and blood. So, go on then! Go back to your eggs and be fatherly. Your job and your cabin will still be here for you when you get back."

Lir backed out of the door, bobbing his head the whole way as if his bowing mechanism had suddenly broken. "Thank you! Thank you!"

He practically flew down the halls after that. He just couldn't get back to his waiting children fast enough.