The Tooth Under Her Tongue

The morning started with a word that shouldn't exist.

I was feeding Ashara, her small mouth working rhythmically against my breast while Dorian sharpened his blade nearby. The domestic sounds—nursing, whetstone on steel—had become our lullaby against the chaos that stalked us. Then Ashara pulled away, milk still on her lips, and turned toward the window.

"Veth'ara."

Not babble. Not the sweet nonsense of infancy. A word in the Old Moon Tongue, pronounced with perfect inflection by vocal cords too young to shape such sounds.

Outside, a branch snapped. Heavy breathing—something large had been approaching our shelter. But at Ashara's word, the breathing hitched, turned to whimpers, then rapid retreat through the underbrush.

"What did she just—" Dorian was on his feet, blade half-drawn.

"I don't know." My voice came out steady, but inside, ice crystallized along my spine. "Veth'ara" meant "turn back" in the old tongue. A command. A warning. A word she couldn't possibly know.

Ashara giggled, reaching for my breast again as if she hadn't just spoken power into the world. Around us, birds that had been singing fell silent. Not from fear—from respect. As if something ancient had remembered how to speak.

I tried to convince myself it was coincidence. Babies made all sorts of sounds. Some just happened to align with dead languages by chance. But when I lifted her to my shoulder to burp her, she yawned—wide, innocent—and I saw it.

A glimmer of silver where no silver should be. Under her tongue, just for a moment, something metallic caught the light.

My hand froze mid-pat. "Dorian."

He heard the tremor in my voice, was beside us instantly. "What is it?"

"Her mouth. When she yawned. I saw—" But when I gently opened her lips to look, there was nothing. Pink gums, the tiny white ridge of a first tooth trying to emerge. Normal. Human. Wrong.

"You're exhausted," he said gently, but his eyes stayed on Ashara's face. Watching. Waiting.

I wanted to agree. Wanted to chalk it up to sleep deprivation and constant fear. But as I changed her blanket later, my fingers found something that made denial impossible.

Tangled in the folds of wool was a shard no bigger than my smallest fingernail. Silver-white, warm to the touch, humming with a vibration that seemed to come from inside rather than out. It felt like holding concentrated moonlight—beautiful and terrible and absolutely not something that should be in my daughter's bedding.

"What is that?" Dorian reached for it, but I pulled back.

"I don't know. But it was warm. Like it's been... alive."

We found a jar, filled it with salt—the old protection against things that shouldn't be. The moment the shard touched the crystals, it began to whisper. Not loudly. Not clearly. But unmistakably there, like voices heard through water:

"The second name was never yours to bury."

I slammed the lid shut, but the words had already crawled under my skin. The second name. The one I'd heard in that space between spaces, when I'd pulled Ashara free from the god-skin. The one I'd never spoken aloud, thinking silence would starve it.

But names, I was learning, were patient things.

That night, Ashara slept between us as always. Her breathing was deep, even—the sleep of the innocent. But as the moon rose, she began to murmur. Not crying. Not fussing. Words in that same old tongue, strung together like prayer or prophecy.

I leaned close, trying to make out the syllables. Her mouth opened slightly, and there—definitely there this time—something glinted under her tongue. A tooth that couldn't be a tooth. Too early for teeth, too bright for bone.

I reached out, needing to know, to understand what my daughter carried in her mouth like a secret. But the moment my finger touched her lip, the glimmer vanished. Swallowed or dissolved or never there at all.

"Did you see—"

"I saw." Dorian's voice was grim. "She's carrying something. Or something's carrying itself in her."

We didn't sleep. How could we, when our daughter might be incubating the very thing we'd fought to keep out? Instead, we watched her breathe, cataloging each sound, each movement, searching for signs of the foreign in the familiar.

It was nearly dawn when Dorian finally dozed, exhaustion winning over vigilance. His dreams were immediate and violent—I could tell by the way his hands clenched, the small sounds of distress. I reached to wake him, but then he spoke.

"No. You can't have her. She chose. We chose."

A pause. His face contorted with horror I couldn't see the source of.

"You took the name from my mouth," he said, but the voice wasn't quite his. Older. Hungrier. "But you forgot the root."

He woke gasping, sweat-cold and shaking. "I dreamed—the god, it was wearing her face. Our daughter's face. But ancient. It said—"

"I heard." I pulled him close, feeling his heart race against my palm. "Just a dream. Just—"

We both turned to look at Ashara. Her eyes were open. Silver with that ring of gold, watching Dorian with an expression too knowing for her months. And she was smiling. Not the gummy, reflexive smile of infancy.

This was deliberate. Aware. Amused.

"Hello," she said, clear as bell-chime. Then closed her eyes and returned to baby sleep as if nothing had happened.

We sat frozen, two parents confronting the possibility that we'd won the battle but lost something deeper. That in protecting Ashara from becoming the god's vessel, we'd simply... changed the terms. Not possession. Inheritance.

The crack in the cabin's mirror—the one that had sealed when the mirror-child dissolved—was reforming. Not all at once. Just the first curve. The beginning of a letter. The start of a name that refused to stay unwritten.

"I named her," I whispered, needing to hear the words. "I held her. I chose her."

The response came not from the room, not from the night, but from inside my own mouth. A voice using my tongue, my teeth, my breath:

"But I remember the name you swallowed."

I clamped my lips shut, but the damage was done. Somewhere deep in my throat, I felt it—a word trying to climb free. The second name, the one I'd heard but never spoken, had found a new home.

Not in Ashara.

In me.

And through me, it would find its way to her. Mother to daughter. Blood to blood. Name to name.

The tooth under her tongue was just the beginning.