“I hope she has your eyes,” she had said in those last weeks, swollen and exhausted and excited. He had hated hearing her say that – her eyes were beautiful – but he knew why. It was the same reason she had stopped speaking her language after they moved to Bevelle; his mastery of it had begun to fail when there was nobody else to practise with, and regrettably, he had had to follow. It was the same reason she had changed the clothes she wore, covering up her lovely body to fit in with Yevonite fashions. If they had stayed at Home, he would have been the one changing his ways to fit in with those around him, and he would have made those sacrifices as gladly as she had. But still he lamented how quick she was to hope none of her appearance would be reflected in their daughter.

And then when their beautiful girl was born, their darling Yuna, he took the tiny creature in his arms and lifted her up. They were new people now, he told himself, Mother and Father, and Mother deserved a moment’s rest. So he held Yuna and counted all her perfect fingers and toes, and then he thought to look at her eyes: one blue, one green. No Al Bhed spiral, the shape of a Yevonite eye, but – green. One blue, one green.

He laughed.