Ashi was mother of three, and she whispered this to herself in the night.
Mother of three, mother of three, mother of three.
She murmured it into the shell of each egg and felt a little squirm inside, though perhaps she had imagined it. The night was cold, the stone was damp, and the sky was dark except for the stars that scattered the dark blanket above. Sounds of the night filled the ice-cold winter air- a scratch of something deeper in the small crag she had wedged herself in, a chirp of some nameless insect, the gentle touch of a harsh breeze, bringing with it a layer of frost to coat her scales. The eggs were clutched close to her chest, each slightly larger than a duck egg, they filled her claws and forced her to hold them tight lest one roll away or be dropped. But Ashi was their mother and she would never leave them behind.
Ashi's crest dropped in fear as a breath of wind whipped up the air and brought with it the sound of leather wings in the distance. The flock was making its way towards her, little specks in the distance now, barely more than shadows blocking the stars and a prickle of magic in her chest but on a warpath towards her. Ashi tightened her magic, balling it up around herself and her eggs, hiding them carefully so no leak of their presence would seep out. The hunt was all for show, that injustice burned hatefully in the back of her mind as the flock drew nearer. They didn't know where she was just yet, so the dozen or so Faes began to spread out.
Ashi was Normal. Her scales were matte and plain, with no pattern or gloss. Her eyes were Normal, her crest was Normal, she was a grey little Fae fresh from the hatchery. The Mirror she had mated with had been Normal too. But that in itself was a problem, Ashi mused bitterly. Her first mating had been to an outsider, a Normal one at that. And while it was never expected for a Normal to lay a patterned or glossy baby, it was expected that the first attempt should be to try. Ashi hadn't tried.
She rested her chin on top of a pale green egg and held the other two below it in the crook of her arms. The feelings of terror she had when she fled the colony settled into a dull pain and a sense of resignation. If the flock caught her, she wouldn't be killed, but her eggs would be dropped from the Great Home, the tree whose branches Ashi had learned to fly on, who's fruit attracted the insects the Fae dined on. They would be dropped to smash on the hard-packed soil below and Ashi would be forced to watch, then assigned a mate, one who's patterns and colors would be low enough that she might birth a higher ranked hatchling than herself.
She shrunk back into the crevasse as two members of the flock passed overhead, their wing beats barely audible. She wondered if she would recognize them if they flew close enough. She wondered if they would remember her too.
The crack in the cliffside went deeper and turned a corner on the inside. The air within was cold, colder and damper than the air outside, and she dreaded the retreat to it. But the dragons were getting closer and her protection only blinded their ability to sense magic, not their ability to see. So Ashi backed around the corner as the flock strafed past, and began squeezing down the tunnel.
The stone was slimy and wet as she pushed deeper into the cave. She thought many times of turning back to see if the flock was gone, but she didn't want to risk walking into a trap. It was difficult walking, her legs and feet were meant to grasp branches, not stand, but the tunnel pressed tight around her and forced her wings to the back of her body and her crests against the back of her head and neck. Ashi moved on three limbs, using her arm to hold her eggs up and away from the wet rock as she crawled. The dark was suffocating and hunger that had been boiling in her stomach began to be the only sensation that connected her to reality, as the walls pressed her down on all sides and the dark made it seem as if she was trapped within an egg herself.
A subtle stink began to pollute the air. Slowly at first, a small whiff caught at the end of a deep breath but growing stronger as Ashi pushed forward. It smelled, at first, like rotten eggs, and an instinctive fear rose up in Ashi as she thought to her eggs. The next smell that mixed with the first was of something dead, long dead, worse than anything ever smelt near the Great Home. Then came the scent of fermenting plant matter and infected wounds, and Ashi's hunger dried up as she fought the urge to vomit. The stench, which developed further into realms of disgust Ashi didn't even have names for, grew stronger.
Light began to flood the cave as Ashi rounded a corner, and a hot breeze melted the frost from her shoulders as she crawled into a large opening. Squinting hard against the light, it took several moments before Ashi could see well enough to move towards the mouth of the cave and look out at where she was.
A huge crater stretched out before her, stretching to the horizon and kissing the lands beyond. It blocked the sun which had just begun to rise, but the source of the light came from below. Ashi looked down, stretching her neck out far over the edge. In the distance, far below her, lay a lake. It roiled and hissed like an angry snake with a fluid of viscous orange and heat. Spines of rock ruptured the ground surrounding the pit and curled inwards, giving the impression of a misshaped mouth gurgling puss. The stench was so powerful that Ashi's nose and tongue nearly went numb.
Weak from hunger and exhausted from her frantic flight from the Great Home, Ashi scooted back from the edge and limped back into the mouth of the cave where the air was cooler and laid down, resting her eggs on an outstretched wing to give them some sort of protection from the oily earth. Putting aside the revulsion the air itself produced in her, Ashi let her eyes fall shut, dreaming of a golden colored nest and the flight of her children.
Something skittered in front of her face, a familiar sound of a jointed shell clacking against itself. Ashi's eyes flicked open and she saw an insect a few inches away. It was red and black and shone with a layer of grease on its shell. Under normal circumstances, Ashi would have been disgusted, but starvation was imminent, and instinct was powerful. She darted forward and snapped up the beetle-thing almost without thinking, gagging slightly as it cracked between her teeth and spilled a mass of ruptured tubing down her throat.
Coughing, she collected her eggs which had rolled off her wing when she attacked the beetle. They were undamaged and warm, a layer of condensation on their surface. The little pulses of magic beneath their surfaces was growing slowly, and Ashi felt a flash of pride at the strong growth of her children. They were surviving, no, thriving.
Mother of three, she thought, and the warmth she felt towards that reality temporarily distracted her from the soreness in her body.
But the sensation grew throughout the day. Driven by a need to eat near constantly, Ashi wandered the cave and eventually flew around the steep cliff side. She decided that, though the taste was horrific, the beetles were at least edible, and luckily plentiful. But as the day wore on with her darting from outcropping to cave entrance, the ache deep in her bones intensified, and soon a pulsing in her head began to mimic her heart beat. Ashi landed in the cave one last time and nearly collapsed. Her skin felt like it was on fire and nausea threatened to eject her hard work hunting out onto the floor. She laid down next to her eggs again as the world spun around her.
The fever hit hard and fast, and with it came shadows and shapes darting along the walls, dancing in the haze the lake produced. The dragon twitched and called out to the shadows, calling them names from her past, flinching in fear as they approached. The pain intensified, and she screamed herself hoarse at figures that shouldn't exist, and her anger built in a flood before dissolving into sorrow and delusion. In between miserable flashes of pain and sickness, Ashi came-to, mouth dry, craving water, with a deep hunger in her gut. She crawled to the cave's mouth and licked the condensation on the walls, the cold stone offering a measuring of relief, though it was lost again as she swallowed and her throat sent flashes of pain in response. She rested her head down again and stared at her eggs, which she had rested in a nest of soft sand she had clawed up some time before. Sadness filled her as she looked at the sad state they were in. Sand and dirt stuck to their surfaces, which bore surface scratches that scared the new mother near senseless. They lay crooked in a nest of a pale red like the rock beneath them, not at all the magic-spun sap they should be resting in. The sickness agitated her as she watched them and flooded her with anger.
How dare they.
She crawled onto all fours and stumbled to her eggs. They stole everything from her. Her mate was cast out, sent far away under threat of death, she was forced to flee the only home she knew, and for what? Swaying in the humid heat, a hot breeze threatened to knock her over. Ashi grasped one of the eggs in her claws. If she had just let them take the eggs, she could have stayed, she could have done well for herself, made up from the mistake she made, live the best life a Normal like her could expect to live. Work for the colony, live for the colony, build the colony. The things inside the eggs would have known nothing, their small, dark universe would have vanished in a crack at the bottom of a tree, strengthening it from the living, breathing colony above. Was that such a bad thing?
She tightened her grip on the egg. Maybe they would take her back, maybe if she proved she had destroyed the eggs they would forgive her.
Ashi stared long and hard at the shell held tight in her hand. She could bring pieces of it back, yes, that would be proof enough. She could smash the shells if she squeezed hard enough and bring pieces back. She coughed hard and retched, the world spinning in a sickening twirl. Doubling over, she vomited up the remains of the beetles, their black and red shells scraping her throat on the way up and making the convulsions worse. Ashi recovered slowly, staring at the spreading puddle beneath her, then looked back at the egg she held. A crack ran down its surface. The fog of fever pushed aside as something oozed from the shell. "No, no, no, no," Ashi whispered out loud, stumbling back from her vomit and back to the nest. She placed the egg down quickly and tried to nestle it in the sand, but the crack remained, oozing red and clear liquid. She quickly shifted the other eggs around the broken one, but everyone she touched shifted and hairline fractures grew. Her crests plastered themselves against her head as horror filled her.
The crack shifted on its own.
Ashi's heart pounded as pieces of the egg she had clutched in her fist began to shift, and a shard fell off, exposing a papery inside and a thin network of blood vessels. A dark flank of scales, so small they looked more like soft leather, exposed itself to the flickering light, clicking and hissing softly within the shell.
Ashi stared down at the first of her young and cried.