Page 23 of Breed

“Is it just his eyes?”

“I don’t think so. There’s something about him. He’s not one thing or another. He’s not a predator. He’s not a tank.”

“Must have been an interesting mating.”

“His egg was left on the doorstep. A home-lay.”

“There’s a lot of home-laying at the moment.”

I listen to them prattle to one another, not understanding most of what they say, but knowing that everything about me is weird, and strange, and bad. It is a heavy burden that makes a dark weight sink from my chest to my belly. I don’t know what the feeling means either, but I know it’s bad.

The others are playing, running around and shrieking their heads off. I am sitting still. I don’t run unless there’s a reason to, and no reason is not a reason.

Most of the other whelplings are little chunky creatures with round bellies and generous arms, big heads atop their bodies. The nurses pick them up regularly and play with them often. A little yellow-scaled female saurian with a flare on her head and short little nubs of horns running over her forehead has been carried around for hours it seems.

I am taller than the other hatchlings. I do not have their rotund build. I am short, but I am already broad shouldered and covered in muscles. I can climb out of all the pens and partitions they try to keep us behind. I can run faster than all the other whelplings, even those who were hatched in earlier incubations.

I sit still and I wish that I felt some kind of warmth. There are heat lamps, of course, but it’s not the same as being held. The nursemaids pick up the others sometimes, but I don’t know why they never seem to want to hold me.

One of the nursemaids is passing, so I stretch out my arms to be picked up. We must all take our turns. That’s what they are always telling us.

“No, Shan,” Nurse Marnie says. “It’s Elva’s turn.”

Elva is a little purple-winged saurian. She has bright violet eyes and she giggles readily as the nurse scoops her up.

“Up! Up!” I have limited verbal skills, but I know how to tell her what I want.

“Wait your turn,” she says curtly.

I have not been picked up in more than three days. I ache with loneliness. Sadness quickly turns to something else: anger. Deep anger. More anger than I can really fit inside my body. Sometimes the other whelpings scream and shout and cry. I don’t do that. I never have. Maybe I cried once, a very, very long time ago, but I don’t think it did me any good.

Nurse Marnie walks around the corner and I hear her talking to the Matron. Matron is kind, but old. She has overseen the nursery forever. She walks with a hunch and we all know that her knees and back hurt. She is kind in a way no others are kind. It goes deeper.

“Black eyes is complaining again. We should have crushed that egg.”

“We incubate all eggs, regardless of provenance. And we tend to all young, regardless of their appearance.” Matron sounds disapproving, but Nurse Marnie doesn’t care. She keeps talking in that tone the nurses use when they think we aren’t listening or just don’t understand.

“I don’t like touching him. He gives me the creeps.”

My hands ball into fists.

Two predatory hatchlings come running past. They are slightly unsteady on their big feet. Their jaws are open as they pretend to fight with one another.

I am angry. I am angrier than anybody else. They are happy, and I hate them for it. The feeling is a big red ball inside me, and it moves from my chest to my stomach and emanates throughout me.

I let out a roar, but it is not a playful shriek like theirs. It is a full roar, a sound that comes from somewhere deep inside me, maybe even beyond me. It is so fearsome, both of the other hatchlings stop in their tracks. I throw myself at them, following rage and instinct. I don’t know what I am doing. I have never seen a fight before, but my body knows what to do. I start to hit the others. I hit them with all the feelings that appeared inside me when I heard the nurse talking about me. I hit them and I hit them.

They start to shriek and scream, unable to defend themselves because they have never been hurt before. I am the worst thing that has ever happened to them. I feel like the worst creature ever to be hatched on this world. I become exactly the thing the nurses think I am. Unworthy. Evil. Wrong.

“Easy, easy! Little man!”

Large hands sweep me up off the ground as Matron picks me up. She is soft in a way none of the other nurses are soft. She has a long neck and very large eyes that always seem to be lit with kindness. I can hear the popping and cracking of arthritic limbs as she lifts me to her bosom and carries me away. Later I will realize that holding my hefty frame must have caused her pain, but she picked me up because she saw that I needed to be picked up.

I am shaking and I am crying, and I know I have been very bad, but she does not say a single cruel word, or censure me in any way. She takes me to the kitchen and she sits me on the counter, and she makes me something to eat.

“There is nothing wrong with you,” she says as she offers me a spoon of mashed meat and grain. “There will never be anything wrong with you. You are special, and you have your place.”

In that moment, she cements this childish outburst into a memory I will never forget. She teaches me that it is possible for some saurians to see the good in me even though I don’t see anything good in myself.

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