"And sometimes you will get animals who, just from their shape and size, will in fact inflict some damage to your... well, not now, but whatever clothes you are wearing at the time, if you don't take that into account and try to pin them first."

Giggle.

“Right, that makes sense. I’ve just been killing harmless herbivores that couldn’t do any real damage to anything I’m wearing. If I were wearing anything. … do all animals taste this bad, because. Wow this is bad. If I didn’t know better I’d think that I’d be sick from them later.”

"None of them taste good but herbivores tend to be the worst. Carnivores are the least bad."

“Eugh. Okay. I guess I’m glad I set my baseline that low to start.” Then, to herself: “It’s for the horrible burning sensation, not the taste.”

Off to kill and drain more deer, in rapidly improving efficiency and neatness! She is going to be so good at killing deer, and then also have to learn the precise efficient way to kill other animals all over again.

After deer number five she makes another face. “Yeah, no, I’m good. Do you know where I could wash up while you go get me some new clothes?”

"Stream that way. ...I'm not sure how much I trust your amazing supernatural self-control here if you do smell a human and I'm not around to stop you, though."

“That is very fair! You can take me there, and I won’t breathe while you’re away? Do you trust my amazing supernatural self-control that far?”

"...yeah, sounds good."

That-a-way!

She follows! After a large newborn-strength leap to catch up to him so she can hold his hand while they run. Because she wants to, and she can.

James grins at her when she does and squeezes her hand—oh, look, he feels neither cold nor unyielding, not that she hasn't already had extensive opportunity to explore this fact, but handholding is "new"—and leads her to said stream.

Stream! Where she can wash up! Presumably!

"Last chance to get me messy before I send you off to fetch clothes," she teases brightly as she begins cleaning up.

...well he can bridal-carry her if he takes her by surprise, he bets. "That so?"

He can! She gives a surprised squeak that is very reminiscent of the same sort of sound she made when she was human, and then giggles.

"Mmhmm! When my clothes are on I will then have to be terribly responsible with them. So."

They can be messy one more time, then. Or... maybe multiple times.

Being a vampire is nice like that.

Yvette is delighted with this state of affairs!

... but she is nonetheless the one to gently wind things down, teasingly dancing out of his arms after she's finished distracting him.

"I love you," she sighs fondly, giving him her gorgeous vampire smile. "But! My dearest darling, we are still parents."

Hooookay he needs a second or two here to recover, laughing.

"And you need to meet our gorgeous, amazing, perfect daughter," he says once his brain is back online. He looks at one tree they damaged there as he gets back onto his feet and starts putting his clothes back on. "I shall be back soon."

"I will wait, breathless, for your return!"

And then, obligingly, she sits down on the ground, folds her hands on her lap, and waits.

James is good on his word—almost like he didn't even have to look for clothes for her and had already separated them out beforehand—and is back soon.

Clothes! And then they can go see their daughter!

Blair brings their daughter out of the house, because this is probably not an indoor activity, and he was informed of his sister finishing her turning by James showing up for her clothes. He would have checked on them if they took another day to come back, or something, but. Kind of more important to keep eyes on their little gremlin.

Little gremlin: excited to meet her mother! She leaps out of her uncle's arms and directly at her mother to express this excitement!!!

James is still in high-alert newborn mode, despite everything, and he tenses a bit at Aurene's sudden movement—but Yvette has incredible self-control so maybe—

Yvette freezes with surprise, but there isn't a trace of defensiveness in response. Then, she carefully catches her very small, very comparatively breakable daughter out of the air like she's handling the most delicate and precious relic in all of the world.

"Hi there, sweetness, aren't you bigger than when I last saw you..." she coos.

Predictably, Aurene finds and bites her hand, affectionately.

This earns a tiny wince, but nothing else.

"Somebody has picked up some bad habits while her mother was away, hasn't she, hmmmm?"