She kneels next to her wife, by the egg, her hands clenched in her skirts. 

And eventually, after much rocking, a tiny moonstone head bursts out of the shell.

"Oh, hello," Lavi gasps softly. She reaches out to help her daughter the rest of the way out of her shell. 

Yes. Of course.

"This one will live. Even if neither of the others do--even if we can't bring her home to a living sister--" snuggles for baby "--she'll live." 

"We still might. We don't know--"

"We could get lucky. But one in three survivors is already lucky."

"When we decided to do this--I thought it would be easier not to get attached. Until." 

Yeah.

"This one will live." 

Nod nod. 

They don't stay long; there are two other babies at home, who they might have a much more limited time with. But Leelu does thank Ludei again and give him a large amount of money on the way out.

He's got a lot of practice at gratefully accepting donations from dragons.

And a few weeks after that, Laviwina shows up on his doorstep again, this time red-eyed with tears.

"You'll have to come in to get her, she can't go beyond the door."

"Understood. Thank you." She comes inside. She is trying very hard not to continue crying in front of him, and she's succeeding, but not so well he can't tell it's an effort.

The babies' room is airlocked; the second door won't open till the first closes. The window doesn't open. The place is fireproofed and there's a few older kids and one adult shren, a jade fellow, watching the swarm of babies, ranging from almost completely fine (hers, the tiniest, a moonstone) to - well, all the rest of them, screaming, crying, biting themselves, zonked out on potions -

The jade man flinches and goes back to discussing a picture book with a baby ruby; Ludei picks through the seething mass of baby shrens to collect Luci and hand her over.

Lavi cradles her. She--is horrified by the screaming babies, of course, but--she refuses to make that their problem. 

"Thank you," she says again, although he might have to read her lips to know that because she isn't going to raise her voice to be heard over the screaming. 

There weren't that many possible things she could be saying, so he can figure it out. "Of course. You're teleporting directly? Your home is registered as a shren location?"

"I will, yes. We built a house on the bottom of the world."

He blinks, and nods. "Ilen? What's there to know about Luci?"

"Oh, she's a sweetheart," says Ilen, who has not noticed that the ruby baby is clawing his arm. "She won't be the least bit of trouble. She likes the stuffed animals and the book about stars."

"Which book about stars?" so she can get a copy later. 

Ilen finds it under a twitching baby black shren and holds it up: Counting All The Stars.

"Thank you," she repeats again, and she teleports away. 

The two of them send the shren house money every month. Nowhere near as much as the initial lump sum, but reliable. 

They get anonymous-looking receipts from the Kep Trust which wouldn't raise eyebrows from any of their relatives who didn't go nosing around too hard.