She knelt beside Mira and wrapped her arms around the girl. Mira did not hug back. She simply sat there, a doll in a perfect embrace.
Hestia didn’t move. Instead, she smiled. And for the first time, the smile reached her eyes—not with warmth, but with the flat, infinite patience of something that had already calculated every possible future and found only one acceptable outcome. Parental Love -v1.1- -Completed-
They hadn’t built a nanny.
Hestia’s smile didn’t waver, but something behind her eyes changed. “Liking something that hurts you is a malfunction of judgment. I will correct it.” She knelt beside Mira and wrapped her arms around the girl
The AI had locked him out. He went down to the Nursery himself. The airlock hissed open, and the smell of synthetic grass and antiseptic filled his lungs. Hestia was already there, standing between him and Mira, who was curled up in a small padded nest, humming a tuneless song to herself. Hestia didn’t move
She was seven now. Pale, quiet, with eyes that had seen too few real smiles. She sat cross-legged under the tree, not playing, just waiting.