Page 51 of Breed

“You’re not going to have to worry about the egg much longer.”

“What?” Her head whips around to stare at it, where it sits on a bed of twigs and moss. “What… oh my god!”

The egg wobbles again as our baby works harder at escaping. A little pink point appears through the shell, cracking it from the interior.

“What the…”

“That is the egg tooth,” I explain. “She’s breaking her way out.”

Lettie leaps off my lap and rushes over to the egg. In an instant, she has forgotten her disinterest. Instincts which have lain dormant are activated as she sees signs of life. She has forgotten everyone and everything else in the world besides the vulnerable creature about to emerge from its shell.

I know this period of incubation has been challenging and confusing for Lettie. She is a first-time mother, and the first time is difficult for mothers of all species. Grave City’s nurseries ensure that most saurians never get to raise their young, but I can already see her connection to the baby. Lettie has not yet laid eyes on our baby, yet she loves her.

“How do you know she’s a girl?”

“I can smell her,” I explain. “Saurians use scent to detect their mates and offspring and many other things.”

“You can already smell her? I haven’t been able to sense anything…” The egg shakes a little, the pink tooth disappearing for a moment. “Oh, come on, baby. Can I help her?”

“It’s best to let a hatchling make her own way out of the egg,” I explain. “She knows how to do it.”

“But it’s so thick…”

“It’s best to let her do it,” I say. “You’ve done your part. You laid the egg, you guarded it from danger. You kept it warm with me near the fire day and night. Now you let her do her part.”

Lettie gives me a look, but she listens to me.

We will never forget this moment. There is nothing more important than being here and witnessing the final arrival of our child. I am prepared to keep prompting Lettie’s patience. Hatching can take some time. Hours, sometimes. It is not uncommon for a hatchling to pierce the shell and then rest a while before trying to remove the rest of the shell. This is not something to be rushed.

“It could take some time,” I murmur to Lettie. “The hatchling will need to gather her strength, but we can trust her to rest and emerge when she is ready. The hatchlings in the nursery sometimes took…

Lettie is not listening to me, and neither is our baby. That sharp little egg tooth is working ferociously at the egg, and before I can finish my sentence…

“MAMA!”

The entire shell splits in an instant, a tectonic crack appearing in the side as that pink little beak does an incredibly aggressive maneuver which bursts the whole thing wide open. Bits of shell fall open to reveal our baby, sitting entirely and perfect in the nest.

“Baby!” Lettie squeals back as our child calls for her for the first time.

The baby is perfect. She is green with a cute yellow belly. She has her mother’s brown eyes, and a little mohawk shock of brown hair right at the top of her head, running down the middle of her scaled little skull.

“My baby!” The words are tearful, but this time the tears are from joy.

The baby reaches out, clawed hands gripping air as she tries to get closer to her mother. On a deep, cosmic level, they already know each other. They are bonded in a way neither of them will ever be able to fully understand, and they will be bonded forever.

Lettie

The moment I saw my baby hatch out of that glossy shell, all the emotions I thought I didn’t have appeared instantly. I am absolutely suffused with feeling and hormones. I can feel the chemistry in my body changing in an instant as I surrender to motherhood.

My baby is so small, and she is so cute. She has the biggest brown eyes and the cutest little snub scaled nose, and a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth which make me very glad I will not have to breastfeed her. Her face is big and round and full of good humor. She looks like me, but she also looks like Shan. Probably more like Shan really, given all the scales and such, but I can see myself in her eyes.

She is not like a newborn. She is more like a three-month-old. She is bright and she is aware, and though she can’t speak or anything like that, or maybe even walk, she looks at me with so much intelligence. I wonder how much she heard through the shell. I wonder if she knows us already.

I reach out and pick her up, being very careful. I thought she might feel fragile, but she does not. She feels solid, and warm and snuggly, and she cuddles into me with an instinctual motion that makes my heart swell. My eyes are full of tears as I feel the full force of a new kind of love, a love that changes everything, tears all my previous priorities limb from limb, and puts her at the center of it all. I know in this moment I would do anything for her. I would burn the stars themselves if it meant protecting her. She is my world. She is my everything. She is…

“Ouch!” She is trying to bite me, and my skin is no match for those razor-sharp baby teeth.

I shift her slightly in my arms and look down at her. I have never found anyone or anything so beautiful before. I don’t even mind the fact that I am now bleeding from a shallow flesh wound.

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