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thetravelerwrites · 8 days

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Growing Pains (Centaur Dads)

Rating: General Audiences Additional Tags: Adoption, Gay Dads, Exophilia, Centaurs, Kids Series: Part 17 of Shelter Forest: The Towns Words: 2,068

When their son comes home from school upset, two centaurs must figure out how to have The Big Talk about what adoption means. Please reblog and leave feedback!

Rollie stalked through the front door with his head down and dropped his writing board by the hall tree. Without bothering to say anything to his fathers, he immediately went to his room, not quite slamming the door but certainly shutting it with more force than normal. Beyram, a Rahvan centaur, and Alphons, a Haflinger centaur, looked at each other in concern and made their way through the open layout of their cottage, knocking on their son’s door. Rollie was a bright, happy eight-year-old child, so for him to be silent and brooding was wildly out of character.

“Rollie?” Beyram asked. “Everything alright?”

Rollie didn’t answer.

“We’re coming in, alright, son?”

Again, Rollie said nothing, and his fathers eased the door open. Rollie sat on his bed with his arms crossed sullenly, a tear rolling down his face.

“Hey, buddy,” Alphons said gently, patting his back softly. Both centaurs folded their legs carefully and knelt next to the bed. “What’s going on? What’s got you so upset?”

“The kids at school make fun of me,” He said. “They said it’s weird that you both have four legs and that I only have two. They said it means that I’m not your real son.”

Alphons and Beyram looked at each other and winced. They knew that they’d have to have this conversation eventually, but they hadn’t known it would be so soon. Rollie had only just started going to the local school, and while he enjoyed it at first, he slowly seemed to become more introverted. Now they knew why.

“Listen, buddy,” Alphons said. “You are our real son. Just because we adopted you doesn’t mean you’re not our son.”

“Adopted?” Rollie asked, looking up in confusion. “What does that mean?”

“Well,” Beyram began reluctantly. “Da and Pa can’t have babies like other families can–”

“Why not?” Rollie asked guilelessly.

“Oh, god, we don’t need to have this conversation too, do we?” Alphons said in an undertone. Beyram ignored the question.

“Since we can’t have babies the normal way, we decided to look as hard as we could for a child that we could love, and we found you and brought you home with us. That’s what adoption is. It doesn’t matter that we’re centaurs and you’re human, you’re still our son. You’re someone we picked out specially. We chose to love you and be your fathers.”

Rollie frowned, still looking confused. “I don’t understand.”

Alphons and Beyram looked at each other, at a loss for what to say.

“So… I am different from you? You’re not really my parents?”

“No, that’s not it at all!” Alphons insisted. “Of course you’re our son! You can’t ever doubt that! You’re our son and we love you!”

“Listen, son,” Beyram said. “Let’s take a trip tomorrow. We’ll show you what we mean. Alright?”

“A trip to where?”

“The place we found you. It’s called an orphanage. It’s where you became our son. Would you like to go see it?”

After a moment of contemplation, Rollie nodded. “Alright.”

The next day, Rollie sat on Alphons’s back and the three of them set off for Coleville, where there was an orphanage that was run by a lizardman named Cetzu and his human wife. It took about a week for them to get there since they traveled slowly and took frequent breaks. They wanted Rollie to have fun on the trip as much as he could, so they went camping and mushroom picking and frog hunting and lots of little activities that Rollie loved to do. He seemed in much better spirits during the journey.

They reached Coleville and went straight to the orphanage, where Cetzu was outside, sweeping the front steps. Alphons and Beyram had sent a letter to Cetzu in advance, so he had been expecting them.

“This is where you lived before we adopted you,” Beyram said as they came up to the building. “You were only a baby back then, so it’s no surprise you don’t remember.”

“I lived here?” Rollie asked. “Why?”

Alphons nudged Beyram, and he fell silent. As far as they were aware, Rollie had been left on the doorstep of the orphanage when he was only a few days old. Thankfully, the orphanage regularly paid mothers in the town to be wet nurses for the infants, otherwise Rollie would have starved. They weren’t sure how to break it to Rollie that he had been abandoned, and had carefully avoided answering direct questions. They knew they’d have to explain it at some point in the trip, but they were dreading that conversation.

“Welcome!” Cetzu said, rushing forward to shake hands with the centaurs as they arrived. Cetzu was quite tall, but the centaurs dwarfed him by a wide margin. “I’ve been waiting for you. My goodness, is this Rollie? He’s gotten so big!”

Rollie wasn’t normally shy with strangers, but the nature of the trip had caused a bit of trepidation in him, and he hid a little behind Beyram’s foreleg.

“Hi,” He said in a small voice.

“Hello, there,” Cetzu said brightly. “I’m not surprised you don’t remember me, you were barely a year when you left us.”

“Da and Pa said I lived here when I was a baby,” Rollie said.

“That’s right,” Cetzu said. “My wife and I looked after you until your fathers came to get you. Would you like to come in and meet the other kids?”

Rollie nodded and stepped forward toward the garden where about ten other children were playing. He only needed a small amount of encouragement before he was darting around with them, playing chase.

“We really need your help, Cetzu,” Alphons said a little desperately. “We’ve been hedging the question, but we can’t avoid it forever. How are we supposed to explain that he was abandoned?”

“Well, we don’t know that he was abandoned, necessarily,” Cetzu said. “It’s entirely possible that his parents died or met with an unfortunate fate. It does happen.”

“You know what I mean, though,” Alphons insisted. “He keeps asking why. We don’t know how to explain it to him without hurting him.”

“Well…” Cetzu said sadly. “There may be no avoiding a little bit of upset, I’m afraid. But your job as his parents is to reassure him that he’s loved. Regardless of why his birth parents gave him up, you chose him and you love him. Just make sure he knows that. That’s really the most important thing.”

“Yes…” Beyram said, watching his son play and laugh.

“Maybe ask the other kids to help you,” Cetzu suggested. “You’d be surprised how well kids grasp these concepts, regardless of their age. They’re all dying to get adopted. If Rollie hears how excited the kids are to find their own parents, he may understand how special it is to be chosen.”

“That’s a good idea,” Alphons. “It’s is alright to talk to the children?”

“Of course,” Cetzu said, stepping aside and waving to the children. “Go right ahead, I’m sure they’d be happy to.”

Beyram and Alphons stepped into the garden fence. The kids stopped their game and gathered around the centaurs, their faces curious. It wasn’t surprising: centaurs were unusual here on this continent. Beyram and Alphons only knew of two or three others in the region, and they very rarely crossed paths with them.

“Circle time, kids!” Cetzu said, motioning for them to sit. “Leave room for our new friends.”

The kids circled up and sat expectantly. Cetzu sat with them and instructed Beyram, Alphons, and Rollie to sit alongside them.

“So,” Cetzu said. “Our new friend Rollie just found out he is adopted. What do you all think about that?”

Every one of the children raised their hands.

“Coby?” Cetzu said, pointing at a young boy of perhaps seven.

“I think it’s great!” Coby said. “I can’t wait to get adopted!”

“Why?” Rollie asked him.

“Because I want to have a family, like all my friends from town. I want to have parents and siblings who love me.”

“How do you know they’ll love you?”

“Why would they adopt me if they didn’t want to love me?” Coby asked, his head tilted.

Rollie looked introspective. “How come you don’t have parents? What happened to them?”

“Nothing,” Coby said matter-of-factly. “They just didn’t want me.”

“Why?”

“Rollie, that’s rude,” Beyram said in an undertone, but Cetzu shook his head.

“It’s alright,” Cetzu said, turning back to Coby. “Do you want to answer that question?”

Coby shrugged. “I don’t know why they didn’t want me,” Coby said. “But that’s not my fault. There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m great.”

The other kids laughed, and Rollie cracked a smile. He still seemed a little confused, but he kept asking the others questions. The others had similar things to say, that they were abandoned or that their parents died or couldn’t take care of them for whatever reason. Beyram and Alphons weren’t sure if Rollie really understood, but they were happy he seemed engaged in the conversation.

Rollie asked them if they really wanted to be adopted, and they all said yes. When asked why, the answer was the same: They wanted what every other kid in town had. They wanted a family. They wanted to be loved.

Rollie asked the other kids questions for hours, until the sun began to set. Cetzu invited the family to have dinner there, and they accepted. After dinner, Beyram and Alphons left a large donation to the orphanage and left for the local inn. It had a stable room that was rented out to four legged folks, and Beyram booked it.

As they were settling down for the evening and laying out Rollie’s bedroll, Alphons asked, “Hey, buddy, how are you feeling?”

“I’m alright,” Rollie said, getting under the blanket.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” He said, looking up at his fathers, who were kneeling next to him. “I get it now. I’m special. That’s why you chose me, right?”

Beyram smiled. “That’s right. You see,” He said, scratching his neck. “When Da and I got married and began living together, we always knew we wanted to have children, but we knew we couldn’t go about it the normal way. We always knew we needed to go about it differently than other families, so we knew we were going to adopt. It took us time to get the house set up the way we wanted and get everything prepared, but as soon as we did, we started looking for our baby.”

Alphons nodded. “It was a while and a lot of trial and error, and we were worried we may not find the right one, but then we saw you, and it just clicked. We realized you were our child, and you always had been. It just took us a while to find you.”

Rollie looked pensive. “What happened to my other parents?”

Alphons sighed, apprehensive. “We don’t know, son. All we know is that Mr. Cetzu and his wife found you outside on the doorstep. There could be any reason why, but we don’t really know.”

“Hmm…” Rollie hummed. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” Rollie said, standing up out of his bed and throwing his arms around Alphons’s neck for a hug, and then did the same to Beyram. “You’re my parents now. And you love me, right?”

“Of course,” Alphons said, ruffling Rollie’s hair. “We love you very, very much.”

“Absolutely,” Beyram said. “We’ve loved you since the day we laid eyes on you, and we always will. You’re our son.”

“Then it’s fine,” Rollie said, getting back into his bedroll. “Goodnight, Da. Goodnight, Pa.”

“Goodnight, son,” Beyram said.

“Goodnight, buddy,” Alphons replied.

Rollie wanted to stay another few days before returning, so it was almost another two weeks before they made it back home. Beyram and Alphons were both worried that Rollie wouldn’t want to return to school, but contrary to their expectations, he wanted to return right away.

When he returned home from school the first day back, he gave his fathers a hug around the middle and sat at his little table for a snack.

“How was school, son?” Beyram asked. “Did the kids pick on you again?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t care,” He said nonchalantly. “They didn’t get chosen, so they don’t know anything.”

Beyram and Alphons smiled, kissed the top of Rollie’s head, and gave him his apple slices.

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