It’s small and squawking and it’s uglier than you expected. You’ve been standing there watching it hatch, unblinking, and you’re beginning to feel the burn in your retinas for it—but it doesn’t stop you from staring. It’s pale beak is smaller than you expected, after watching Father’s and Sister’s giant birds wing their way about. Its body is naked and bony, and it scares you slightly. But it’s such a numb scare, such a dull one, because what you mostly feel is…blank.

Anticlimactic, almost.

You’re not sure how you’re supposed to feel.

You remember how you cried that day you tried to face the wolf; you remember your Sister’s triumph, the blood hanging in the air like a pungent cologne, and how she won her Ker that day. She had spilled blood, taken a life, conquered. And what did you do, little Enyo?

You…stumbled upon it. On accident.

It doesn’t feel whole to you, it doesn’t feel right. You always imagined this moment would come when you have finally faced your fears bravely, snarling in the eyes of your opponents, becoming a monster in full as you were always meant to be. Redeeming yourself of the sniveling, the bold, ugly crying you had displayed upon the hill. You did not expect to find an egg so soon, while you were still like this, the crying so easily accessed behind your eyes, the fear still alive in your breast. All that has changed is that the tears can fall now on command, the fear can be shuttered carefully, glazed over with a mask you have been learning to polish and polish and polish into a respectable, believable gleam. But monsters don’t wear masks, and you still feel the fear, and tears do not live in monster eyes.

You have not grown at all like you wanted, and you do not feel as though you are anywhere near ready for an egg such as this. And yet here it is before you, cracked open and stinking with a new baby who is alone, who looks at you and meeps so pitifully. You feel something touching the edges of your mind, soft cotton balls rubbing themselves against your temple, abrasive until you decide to allow them in, and you haven’t yet. You’re still staring down at this pale, too-ugly, too-small chick, and it’s almost like looking in a mirror, except you’re not so pale.


“Are you cold?” you ask—for, remarkably, you feel very little as you observe the chickling before you. But you feel as though you must say something to it anyway, display some sort of caring for a babe that’s been abandoned by the world. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to be, anyway?

The cotton balls are still there, prodding, prodding, and you’re still not sure whether you should pick up the phone. 

"talk talk talk"