Butterfly Delivery - Adrinette

Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral?

The travelers were invited to spend the night with their Brazilian colleague - which they accepted, planning to set out again the next morning. On account of his age, Master Fu was offered the spare bedroom, but he decided he didn't need it. In the end, everyone chose to sleep on the floor. Marinette woke up groggy when she heard a baby cry - or she got up, at least. Not really awake, she stumbled over to the crying baby, picked it up, and offered it something to eat. Somewhere in her foggy brain, she did notice that the baby seemed uncertain, but the thought flitted away as soon as the baby decided it would have some milk.

"Marinette? What are you doing?" Adrien laughed.

Marinette woke up most of the way when she heard Adrien's question, and she felt a bit embarrassed. These days she usually felt quite comfortable around the boy who used to put her on edge, but she'd never breastfed Bridgette in front of him before! She looked down at the baby in her arms... that was not Bridgette. She was nursing Felix!

"Sorry..." she mumbled turning a shade of red. She felt like she should hurry up and hand the baby back to his father, but she also didn't want to take the nipple away from him now that he was eating so heartily. "I don't want to disturb him..."

"Then, I'll let you go ahead and finish," Adrien decided. "I - should probably quit watching too." He turned away, giving Marinette some privacy. It had been an awkward encounter, sure, but there was also a heartwarming aspect to it. He'd seen the girl he loved, treating his son as her own. A while back he'd made the conscious decision to claim her child while in front of strangers; but now, co-parenting both children was becoming instinct. It was starting to feel like a family.

--

"Hey, Adrien," Marinette yawned. "You've flown all over the world for your modeling tours. Does the jetlag get any better?"

"A little, but not really," he told her sympathetically. "If it's bothering you, try wearing sunglasses, and drink lots of water. That helps."

"It looks like our shipment has arrived." Master Fu came back over to them, carrying a glass box. "But we must be very careful not to open this portable greenhouse. The spell requires live lavender; the plant will not survive the trip if it's exposed to frigid air."

"Then I probably shouldn't be the one to carry it. Give me something less fragile," Marinette requested.

"I think you've actually been getting better with that sort of thing. You've been carrying Bridgette everywhere and haven't dropped her yet."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, but Bridgette is special. I haven't changed on my own; having to care for Bridgette brings out a better version of me. I don't think I can get that part of me to surface for the sake of a plant."

--

Clang! Clang! Clang!

The sound of a hammer on metal echoed down the halls of the monastery, issued from the reforging of the peacock miraculous. In the archives, where the sound was faint, Adrien and Marinette bent over piles of reference books that, to them, mysteriously appeared to be written in French. They'd tried taking the books outside, where the banging couldn't be heard at all, but then the books converted themselves into a script the two couldn't understand at all until they returned back inside.

"So, it looks like there are twenty-eight ingredients we have to gather to heal Nathalie -" Marinette started.

"And an additional fourteen for Mère," Adrien finished. "We most likely wouldn't be able to use the same blood for both of them, but the first twenty-seven ingredients should be the same."

"The bit about the blood is confusing. The other steps are all clear, but this one has so many addendums. 'The blood of a relative, but the blood of a relative doesn't always work, and the blood of someone who isn't a relative sometimes works'? It sounds to me like the ancients who wrote this book were just guessing and only happened to sometimes get it right."