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"

The ugly, chittering thing at your feet continues to squirm, rolling itself out of its eggy prison, gradually chipping its way onto the earth, into real life. You’re still not sure how you feel about it, even as someone else (someone new) approaches before you’re even sure how to perceive the little cotton balls at the corner of your mind. You have to admit, though. It’s intriguing watching this tiny chicklet struggle for life without once lifting a finger to help it. My, my, so cold you are sometimes. I’ll admit; I do understand it’s not out of any malice against the poor bird for you to care so little. It’s simply who you are, and also because you’re not quite sure what to do at this point. It hasn’t answered your question yet; you do not know if it’s cold.

My apologies, I mentioned someone had arrive and we’ve barely paid attention to him! Our mistake. Your golden gaze rises from the bird to see a deplorably marked little boy some moons older than you, slender in his legs and chest than you’d think he would be at such an age, for you’re quite sure dear Oizys is thicker and broader in both those places already. You don’t know what this means—that either Ozzy is fat or this child is small f or what he is. Does that make him weak? Does that make him hungry?. You eye the white marking blazing across his face like a skull, the uneven, unflattering red splashing across his chest. The bones that line his leg. Those red eyes gleaming at you as he spits words into your lap. Where did you get that?

You blink at him, large, golden blinks. You’re not quite sure how to answer him. “Right here,” you say rather bluntly, potentially missing some hostility on his breath. You decide anyway that the time is ripe for a taunt, and you scuff your hoof delicately upon the ground while casting your gaze demurely to the side. “I guess I got here first,” you sigh, wondering if you are rubbing salt on a wound. You know how it feels to be left out of the companion game, and yet you still cannot find mercy within your bones.

You smell her before you see her, that big-boned sister you had just been thinking about, and Ozzy’s pale, piercing eyes cut through the gloom of the forest as she approaches. Enyo’s eye is drawn to Ker upon her sister’s back—such a large creature now, so beautifully plumed out, so much larger even as a chickling than this gray blob right here. Sister touches you and lashes out almost in the same instant, against the slender boy. The click in your mind is instantaneous. “You know each other?” It’s a question bordering on a pout, feeling almost left out again, petty and angry that someone new and strange would know your sister without your consent. You wrestle with it quietly, and the cotton balls prod your mind.

You’re not sure how to take your sister’s congratulations; you smile at her quietly, a gentle sunbeam with your muzzle, and yet you feel more confused than ever. Cotton balls prod, they push. You lower your face near the little chick, and it nibbles the soft skin there. This is a bonding moment, y’know. Even if you’re not aware.


"talk talk talk"

The little beak scratching tickles--it brings a smile to your lips. A small, hesitant smile, and yet it’s a smile nonetheless, and you wish at that moment that the boy really would just leave. You’re done at the moment with interacting with strangers, and the cotton balls against your head are becoming seductive in their softness, their infectious curiosity. You wonder what will happen if you allow them in, but you do no dare give in to the impulse, because there is someone else here and they are strange and you’re not sure if you like them or not.

"I wouldn't want that anyway, little birds aren't fit for future kings. But I'm sure you two will be great together."

“Oh, thank you,” you say with a sweet, smile-less voice as you lift your head from the little beak-scratching, meeting his weird-colored eyes. The insult doesn’t escape you, and you wonder how to retaliate, if it’s even worth retaliating. He calls himself a king. He is already wrong. He does not know what you know. “I’m sure you’ll be as great of a king as your companion.” The thin air next to the boy, in front of him, surrounding him, becomes thicker as it is addressed, as though happy to be acknowledged finally.

"You could say that," they both say in unison. Your sister, and this stranger.

You’re mad, then. Livid. Furious. It comes across your eyes in a shadow, as though obscuring the dazzling, glamorous gold into something flatter and subdued. You hate what has just happened, that something could tie these two together in a way that never tied you or Sister like this. And you hate how he says—now they have even more in common, as though there were other things tying them together. You don’t like this boy. You don’t want him around anymore, you want him gone, you want him away forever. You want him killed; you wish he was dead.

You smile at him.

Sister asks about the cotton balls, and your theory is proven correct, that this was a thing that happens between bonded. “Yes, I feel it,” you say, and even though you speak with the same delicate tones as always, there is something shaded about the silks of your voice, “it’s really small.” You duck down to the chick again, for it’s beginning to wobble itself from the egg, throwing itself from the prison of it, wiggling to its feet and nibbling anything that comes close. Your nose comes close. It nibbles. “I haven’t thought of a name, though,” you confess. I didn’t expect to meet it today, of all days, at all times. Goodness, I’m –very- unprepared.


"talk talk talk"