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03-06-2014, 12:47 PM
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Frostfall was not a good time to be an egg. Moniz, unaccustomed as she was to worry, fretted sleeplessly over the little rusty egg she had discovered in the caves. When the darkness receded, she had pushed it cautiously to the opening of the sanctuary with gentle nudges of her black velvet muzzle. It was slow going, but eventually the rays of the Frostfall sun reached down and stroked the fragile shell with their bright, warm fingers. Finally enjoying the benefit of natural light, the reddish coating sparkled happily – the color of a wet clay riverbed sprinkled with wide swaths of glittering silica. And it had one little pony mare totally captivated. Moniz did not exit the caves in very good shape herself. The ill-advised fight with that dappled Spanish bitch had left her body aching all over, and she still was not sure if her left hind leg would ever work quite the same. She had learned no lesson, and had already vowed that she would take her revenge. But the pony was not fit for that now. Besides, she had more pressing matters to attend to. The sounds of an icy, churning river drew Moniz to this meadow, slowly rolling her egg through the thin blanket of wet snow. She stopped frequently to lie down and pull it close to her, a behavior that served two purposes: one, it warmed the egg, and two, it allowed her to rest her weary body. Together, they made their winding way towards the water. Some gnarled old trees shaded the freezing stream, and Moniz devised a surprisingly clever plan: she had seen plenty of bird nests in her time. They were twigs and leaves and horsehair all woven together into a wild bed. Twigs? Check. Horsehair? Check. Leaves? Well, they were dead and buried in snow, but they would have to do. She gathered the supplies she needed from the trees, building a large pile with mouthfuls of bitter old leaves and hastily snapped off twigs. To pull out her hair, she rubbed her tail against the jagged edges of bark, breaking it off until her dock was almost fully exposed to the biting cold. All told, it took most of an afternoon and ended up looking like quite the haphazard creation, but given her injured physical state and the urgency of getting a warm place for her egg, it should get the job done. She rolled the egg to the middle of its bed and lay beside it, hidden by the meadow’s dormant grasses and shrubs. And she waited. She lost track of how long she waited. The egg rested in stubborn stillness as the sun started to disappear in a dull Frostfall setting. Until finally, under the last dying glow of daylight and slowly falling flurries, a quiet scratching sound caught Moniz’s attention. A solid black nail pierced the exterior shell, which cracked in veins that stretched across its surface. The pony stared, unable to move, as another nail joined the first, enlarging the hole. It seemed as though she held her breath through the whole process. It was under a crescent moonlit sky when at last a fat, thick-skinned scaly lizard appeared in the debris of cracked eggshells. “You don’t look like a dragon…” Moniz spoke to herself, appraising the yellow and black animal suspiciously. Sure, it had claws and scales, but the shape was all wrong, and where were the wings? Maybe they grew them later. I’ll ask Tyradon the next time I see him. The gila monster – for that is what he really was – breathed rapidly, clearly tired from the exertion of hatching, but he turned his head and saw the pony who lay over him. He greeted her with a series of slow blinks and a curious flick of a small pinkish tongue. Moniz could not help herself. Whatever questions she had about his identity disappeared from her mind, and she was smitten. “Never mind that,” She spoke dismissively, lowering her nostrils to the strange reptile. Seeking the warmth of her breath, he dragged his tired little body towards the soft nose before curling into a tight little ball of gold and black scales and promptly falling asleep. “Darco,” Moniz declared before granting herself the tremendous pleasure of watching his immature body rising and falling with each breath, finally safely alive. Whatever he was. OOC: Egg hatching for Darco. @[Confutatis] and open if anyone wants to join in. Sorry this is crazy long! |
