Premature Metamorphosis

Chapter 3

He clung so tight to her shirt that his knuckles began to turn white. "I want to stay with you, Mommy." He mumbled into her shirt with an almost desperate whine.

Even with her lingering worries about his sudden clinginess along with just everything else in general, hearing him say that warmed her heart. So, she gave in and sat him down on her knee while they ate their pancakes, Evelyn adding great big dollops of syrup to each plate with silly sounds to accompany them so she could find some reassurance in the sound of her son's giggles, even if small, that she felt as if she hadn't heard in forever. She had some giggles to give herself when Hunter also tried to feed some of his pancakes to Flapjack so he wouldn't feel left out from all the fun.

The two of them, plus Flapjack, of course, spent the rest of the day together, Hunter clinging to her side almost the entire time.

It was quite the contrast to how he'd been the day before, distant and avoidant, and there was still a bit of concern lingering in regards to where this behaviour was coming from but nevertheless, she very much appreciated the quality time she was able to spend with her son while her husband was away at work.

And they actually ended up having quite the nice little day in! They cuddled up together on the couch watching whatever interesting movies they could find that were at least somewhat age appropriate along with the occasional bird documentary when requested (which was requested frequently alright).

Hunter had always been pretty disinterested in your typical kids' shows — although he did have a random fixation on the teenage mutant ninja turtles a few months ago, constantly begging his parents to put it on so he could watch the same few episodes on repeat for hours — and strangely enough, much preferred documentaries of all things. He was big into the history ones and, of course, the bird ones. The last time his best friend Luz had come over, she'd practically been forced into watching an endless list of animal documentaries the entire time. Evelyn sympathised with the poor girl but to her credit, she did get quite passionate about the snake one. She still had the broken vase to show for it.

Evelyn was pretty surprised by how compliant Hunter was to sit and watch the movies that didn't involve birds but she supposed he did squirm about a bit as he tried to get comfortable until eventually, he settled down with his head resting in her lap.

As some typical action scene played out, men in big, clunky metal suits punching at each other and yelling catchphrases, her hand drifted over to play with Hunter's hair.

And as soon as her fingers brushed through the strands of his hair, she learned that that had been a bad idea, terrible idea even, because he launched himself up, tensing up with his shoulders hiking up to his ears as if he'd been faced with a threat.

"Woah! What happened?!" Evelyn questioned, looking around frantically for whatever could have spooked him. Ultimately, she found nothing.

Hunter hesitated, staring down at her hand as if it were a viper about to strike out at him if he even dared to look away. After a few seconds, he blinked and shook his head, seemingly trying to dislodge whatever thought had come up.

"Sorry. You, um... pulled my hair." He muttered, pausing as if unsure of what he was even saying. He tucked his chin behind Flapjack by his chest, partially hiding behind the bird and pointedly avoiding looking at her eyes.

Evelyn was pretty certain she hadn't pulled his hair, she didn't think she'd felt any tugs, especially any that would cause that sort of reaction? But she wasn't sure what else could have caused him to jump up like that...

"Oh! I'm sorry baby, I didn't mean to." She apologised anyway. Even if she hadn't pulled his hair, it had been something she'd done that had caused him to react like that.