A wet tongue traced meandering paths along Lily's neck and ears, taking with it the grime of her desperate fight and leaving a trail of cool saliva. It was a stark contrast to the warm, dry body around her, and the other warm shape clutched between her paws.
"If you meant to clean me before I noticed, you need a new plan," she said sleepily, digging her claws into the moss of her makeshift nest, or at least what remained of it once Beryl had helped her clean up the cave. Enough to still be comfortable.
"I was planning on the feeling waking you," Beryl hummed quietly. He was pressed up against her, curled up around her as she curled around the egg. "I was thinking this would be a nice way to wake up. Warm, rested, an egg to one side and your mate on the other, being caressed by his tongue, though he has only now realized you're covered in dirt and blood, and is regretting his choice of romantic gestures." His tongue left her, and she heard the distinctive sound of him spitting.
"Funny," she murmured, throwing her head back and knocking against his chest and neck. "Do I really taste that bad?"
"I don't like the taste of your blood, so yes, but you need to be cleaned, so I'm going to ignore it," he said. His rough tongue ran right across her face.
"I can do that part myself," she informed him idly, not moving her head.
"Yes, you can, but why should you have to?" He licked right across her nose. "I am feeling very, very protective, and more than a little guilty for leaving you here alone. Let me have this. You can return the favor later, if you want."
She was definitely going to take him up on that, but for now she was content to close her eyes and let him work. "No guilt. We didn't know." She should have, but there was no reason for him to even suspect.
"No, but we certainly took advantage of not knowing," he recalled wistfully. "I suppose we really will have to be more careful in the future?"
"There is still the plant, it works like I told you," she said. "I was not entirely wrong about that, just about my own situation."
"At least it was a good thing to be wrong about." He purred happily, pausing in his licking for a brief moment. "That egg is a sight I did not expect, but I could stare at it all day."
"I could too," Lily admitted. Though her staring was not unbridled, uncomplicated joy, it was a more tenuous mix of good and bad. Or it had been.
"You had quite a while to do so while I was gone," Beryl agreed. "Tell me what happened? I have a lot of things to tell you, but I want to understand why I came back after being gone for a few days, only to find my mate under attack by a bunch of bloodthirsty stomachs with wings."
"You are perceptive," Lily purred, always glad to see new proof her mate was her equal in quickness of thought. "Their stomachs and their vileness drove them to what you saw. It began a few days in, when the little dragons came to me in fear, and I stopped four of those other dragons from preying on them."
"And?" he prompted.
"They threatened me, and though I did not understand it, our egg." She knew he would ask the obvious question, so she went ahead and answered it. "They have good noses for eggs, and smelled it in me at the time."
"That is frightening," Beryl murmured, leaving his self-appointed task of cleaning her to rest his head on her neck, just lightly enough that it was not uncomfortable.
"It was scary once I understood what they meant, seeing the egg I had just laid." She shuddered, and convulsively wrapped her body a little tighter around the egg in her grasp. It was precious to her, so precious, even if she worried she would mess it up. More so, for that, because she knew it was not to be taken for granted in any way.
"And they came for it once you laid it?" Beryl guessed.
"No, not at first. They sent another raid against the littlest dragons, and sent one of their own, with the idea of forcing me to stay out of the normal raid. But when that one smelled and saw my egg, well…" She shrugged her wings, pushing up against his underside as she did. "The stomach took over, and I had to kill that one. That was what really started it."
"And I suppose you held out for a long time, until I returned. That would have been the end," he said quietly.
"It would have been," she agreed. "Thank you for coming back."
"Thank you for protecting yourself and our egg," he retorted. "My coming back was as inevitable as you choosing to fight instead of giving up. Neither was ever in question."
No, neither was. She was glad she had never even considered giving them the egg. That meant she could listen to him say that and not feel even the faintest hint of guilt.
"You killed quite a few of them," he said after a moment, resuming his systematic licking. Now he was on her frills and ears, which tickled. "I got rid of the remains, but I counted at least a dozen sets of horns. Well done."
"We did not get all of them, some may still be around," she said. A low growl rose in her chest unbidden. If they did return, they would get exactly what the rest had.
"I will be ready to crush them if they try again," he declared, moving on from her ears. "Close your eyes."
"Surely my eyelids are not dirty," Lily objected.
"Maybe not, but I am going to be thorough," he said lightly. "So let me check."
Lily obligingly closed her eyes. Almost immediately, Beryl grunted in surprise. "Would you look at that – or not look, I guess. They actually are stained. Hold still." His tongue went over one eyelid, and then came back around to get to the other. "There."
Lily could feel his saliva all over her entire head, now. "Maybe stop there," she requested. "We do not have the time or the plant to do what I would like to do next." She didn't think they would want to risk the time away from the egg it would take to mate right now, much less another egg. Crystal was proof that could happen if luck was not with them.
"That never crossed my mind," he said insincerely. "Now, moving on from those pebble-brained dead dragons, do you want to hear about my trip?"
"Tell me absolutely everything," Lily requested eagerly, snuggling into him. She was a little uneasy about what he had learned – scratch that, a lot uneasy if she let herself think about it – but she couldn't think of a better way to be told than this. She was warm, cozy, and safe.
"The flight was shorter than I expected, to start with," Beryl rumbled, his chest vibrating against her back. "Two days flying over the lake as you know it, one day over a dark stretch with no light and no fish, and then another to reach the pack's part of the lake. There were a few places I had to land and walk on the ledge, the ceiling was so low and jagged, but it was a simple journey."
"Only four days…" she murmured. He had been gone for ten in total, so had spent two with the pack. She was thankful he hadn't dawdled there; his efficiency had likely saved their egg, and also possibly her life.
"It is not an enjoyable trip, but it is not a long one, either," Beryl confirmed. "A little eerie, though that may have been because I was alone."
"You will not be alone next time," she said confidently.
"No, probably not," he agreed. "I certainly was not alone from the moment I arrived there. They have increased their watch on the lake entrance, and I was spotted before I could even get within roaring distance. They were… not exactly polite, but not impolite either."
"You have done nothing wrong," Lily grumbled, feeling discontent.
"They were wary nonetheless," Beryl said calmly. "I don't think it was entirely directed at me, though. They took me to Cara, who asked me all of the obvious questions about you that we anticipated."
"She didn't get tricky about it?" Lily asked.
"No, of course not," Beryl snorted. "I could have deceived her any number of ways, but there was no point. She was not satisfied with hearing that you have recovered and have no interest in retaking your place as alpha, so I did not bother telling her that you would be coming through. I intended to seek out Aven or Holly anyway."
Lily understood that; of the three sisters, Cara was almost certainly the least likely to agree to something she didn't like. It was better not to let her in on it until absolutely necessary, if at all. "How was Holly?" she asked.
"Recovered, with no apparent lingering issues," Beryl reported. "I'll get to that. Once I finished answering her questions Cara let me leave her little questioning nook in the wall." He chuffed loudly, for some reason amused. "And speaking of that, I pity whoever she conscripted to blast it out for her. It is a pitiful, cramped opening that probably took a whole moon-cycle to make."
Lily hadn't thought about where Cara would be doing her questioning, but hearing it was a dinky little blasted-out hole in the wall made her laugh. "What then?" she asked.
"Well, then I went to find out whether my family had left," Beryl said matter-of-factly, resting his head on the back of her neck as he spoke. "I didn't feel like asking Cara after how she talked to me about you. Most of them weren't around, but I caught Storm and Root coming in from a flight out in the caves beyond that bug-filled ravine, and they filled me in on what has happened since we left. Guess what?"
"Your family did not leave?" Lily guessed. It seemed logical to her that if Storm was still there the rest of them would be too… Though Storm might very well stay on her own, having connections to Root, Crystal, and maybe Thunder and Lightning… "No," she corrected herself just as he was about to answer, "not that. Some of them left and some stayed."
"I should have made you guess before I told you Storm was still there," Beryl grumbled. "Yes, apparently. Root gave me a very thorough recounting of everything that has happened. It turns out that of my family, Storm, Thaw, Spark, Thunder, and Lightning all stayed. Everyone else left moon-cycles ago, headed home."
The ones with no mate and the ones who had connections to the pack who wouldn't want to leave. With the addition of Silva, but Lily didn't find that at all surprising. Her patience for Diora's games and constant victim complex had probably run out. She nodded in understanding.
"There was a lot we talked about," Beryl rumbled. "Root is very good about giving context, but I will stick to the highlights. First, the Noxious Fumes pack has continued to agitate and poke at both light wing packs. Nobody has forgiven them for killing a fledgling, and they are on the back paw now, but there were a few skirmishes that have everyone very alert and aware of potential invasion."
"Has Holly made any moves to drive them out?" Lily asked. "With or without Rose and his Twisted Corridor pack." She was vaguely proud of herself for remembering that name after so long. If, indeed, she had remembered it correctly…
Either way, Beryl didn't correct her. "With him, tentatively," he confirmed. "There is something going on there, not a full-fledged merging or alliance yet. But from the way Root spoke of it, and from what I have seen, it is likely they will not be two packs for much longer. Aven spends all of her time over there, apparently."
"I still think she is going to try to make peace by example," Lily said somewhat sarcastically. "Or she just prefers the pack she can negotiate with by talking up potential mates."
"She would not be the first," Beryl added wryly. "Root got a jump on that with our own pack." There wasn't even a hint of uncertainty when he called it their pack, not his pack, and Lily knew he was making a reference to his family. She purred happily.
"He and Storm made it official?" she asked.
"Apparently, they did it not a moon-cycle after we left," Beryl confirmed. "And Whirl was not happy about it. That has not changed since then, so far as I know, and Storm is not the type to suck up to someone she does not feel she needs the approval of, so… That is a thing. Also, Dew has an egg."
Lily twisted around to crane her neck back and look him in the eye. "I may have made a mistake with reproductive mechanisms recently," she said primly, using Pyre's most complicated terms for that sort of thing, "but I am very sure that is not possible without outside help. Stop messing with me."
"I'm not, I promise!" he laughed, unable to keep a straight face. His ears waved wildly, and he knocked the underside of his head against her to push her back to where she had been. "Don't look at me like that, it is true. I did not see them myself, but apparently they were allowed to go tour the other pack. Presumably, the other pack has unmated males. Root said they did it intentionally, so… whatever works for them, I guess."
"Whatever works for them." She was now doubly thankful that she was not barren, else she might have needed to think about that sort of thing for herself, if only to be sure where she stood on the subject. She had dodged that blast of uncertainty, at least. "But why did Root even know about that?" She was friends – former friends, maybe, though she hoped not – with Root, and of course Pina was her Dam, but the two barely knew each other.
"It is connected to why my family left when they did," Beryl revealed. "Like I said, context. Here's some more. Honey can apparently smell eggs before they are laid–"
"She's not the only one," Lily muttered, remembering the little predators threatening her egg before she even knew about it. She would much rather have had Honey making that prediction for her. Maybe she could have, had she done things differently.
"She let Dew and Pina know that Dew was expecting an egg," Beryl continued. "They apparently had reservations about staying down below the ground at all, so they went to go talk to Pearl and Ember about where they might go above ground."
"That is unexpected," Lily murmured. Though she really wasn't surprised; some people likely wouldn't be able to stand never seeing the sun again, or flying in the open air… She was pretty sure she was one of said people, now that she had her flight back, and it was not all that surprising that Pina and Dew felt the same.
"I understand their decision, though," Beryl said. "I do not think they are the only ones who will leave for the surface sooner or later. They are just ahead of the curve. Later, after Ember and Pearl talked to them, Ember called a big meeting of everyone in or connected to our family, and asked what everyone wanted to do."
"So that is when they decided it was time to go?" Lily asked. "How many moon-cycles after we left was this?"
"Several, they were lingering for a variety of reasons," Beryl answered. "Storm and Root didn't plan on going anywhere, and Crystal did not intend to leave with our family anyway, which meant Thunder and Lightning were definitely staying. Thorn and Herb, on the other paw, were ready to go whenever everyone else was, and Silva was all for leaving immediately. Seems Diora managed to wear out her second chance."
"No surprise there," Lily snorted. "If there is one thing Diora can be counted on to do, it is aggravating anyone she feels she is owed something from." That Diora had gotten a second chance was all she deserved; Lily felt no pity for her if she squandered it and learned nothing. She was Holly's problem now, and good riddance at that.
"There is a reason Silva was volunteering for the longer patrol flights beyond the pack's territory," Beryl said knowingly. "Or so I was told. She was very insistent. Ember and Pearl, for their part, wanted to go up and give Dew and Pina a bit of an extended lesson on surviving on their own. Spark said he was okay going wherever, and Thaw said the same, so it was a fairly even split."
"So those who wanted to go did, and those who did not remained with the pack," Lily summarized. "I'm glad Pina and Dew are in good paws, though." She remembered Danda and Ash, how they had left… So long ago, really. Before she was even alpha, before Claw's death.
She hadn't so much as thought of them in season-cycles. Hopefully they were thriving somewhere out there, safe from the many dangers of the world.
"Root said Ember was talking about pointing them toward Berk," Beryl said quietly, seemingly lost in his own recollections, just as she had been. "I wonder how they're doing over there. It has been a long time."
For a little while, all that could be heard was the occasional lapping of water on stone, and their breathing.
"We should visit them at some point," Beryl abruptly declared, shaking his wings out and jostling Lily quite a bit in the process. She clutched her egg all the more carefully. Her stomach gurgled uncomfortably at the sudden movement, and she was suddenly aware of several fairly urgent needs.
"Right now, I think I need to visit a waste pit," Lily said bluntly, pushing his tail away with her own. "As much as I would rather sit around all day, I think this is my limit."
"Oh, go, I'm not holding you here," Beryl barked, standing and giving her room to move as quickly as he could. "I'll watch the egg."
"Ideally you would sit with it, not just watch it," she quipped, pushing away a sudden surge of nervousness. She stepped away from the egg long enough for Beryl to take her place. He nestled down on her now somewhat crushed moss nest and sat with it against his chest, boxed in by his paws and head.
"I've got this," he said confidently. "As easy as sitting on a rock."
Lily nodded and quickly leaned forward, flaring her wings and stretching her back. Something popped between her wing shoulders, and she huffed contentedly before taking to the air. It was such a relief to have Beryl back; she could spend more than a few heartbeats relieving herself, and she could fish for more than the first thing that she saw.
She could stall and avoid hearing the rest of what Beryl had to say. The thought didn't come to her until she was searching the mostly placid water for a suitable meal, but once it did she couldn't dismiss it.
He hadn't spoken of how anyone important to her had taken the news of her recovery. Or her messages to them, as hollow and insufficient as they might be. Maybe he was just going over things in the order he had learned them, but she suspected he was keeping that back until she asked about it…
She had to know, but she didn't have to know now. For as long as she spent stretching her wings and casting about for suitable fish, she could remain oblivious. Much like how she had pushed painful memories to the back of her mind and refused to think about them, except she was physically avoiding the uncomfortable topics now, not just in her own mind.
That was a mistake she had no desire to make again. She blasted a small group of pale fish, dove to scoop the largest three out of the water, and wasted no more time on the endeavor. Beryl received one of the three fish, deftly snatching it out of the air when she tossed it to him, and she downed the other two in a few large gulps.
"Tell me what they think of me," she requested the moment her mouth was clear. "Root, Crystal… Not Pina, I guess. The pack as a whole. Holly. Everybody."
Beryl nodded seriously. "It is about as mixed a reception as I had thought it would be," he said solemnly. "Root was perhaps the easiest, in that once he believed me, he was relieved for your sake. He wants to speak to you himself, of course, but he says that even if you took two steps forward and then one step back, that still comes out to be an improvement."
Lily absently settled down opposite Beryl, her mind on the mostly positive words sent from someone she really didn't think would have felt that way. "Really?" she asked plaintively. "He is not disgusted, or resentful... "
"He is not happy about what happened, but like I said, he is very good with context," Beryl confirmed. "I provided that context."
"Does Crystal feel the same way?" she asked hopefully. She hadn't let herself hope, but now at least one person had exceed her morose expectations–
"To be honest, no," Beryl said bluntly, meeting her gaze with a solemn stare of his own. "I will not presume to speak for her as I am not sure I understand everything she is feeling. She certainly didn't tell me directly. I gave her your message and the truth of all that has happened, and she flew away without responding."
"Oh." She appreciated him giving it to her straight – and that he had led with good news – but it still hurt to hear. Of course, Crystal wouldn't be okay with any of what had happened. She had suffered under Claw, been right there when Lily spoke of being better. What had happened would bother her immensely. Maybe in a way that could not be repaired, if Lily's actions had reminded her of Claw.
All of which she had thought before, in one form or another. But she hadn't been sure; not knowing was as soothing as it was maddening, at least in retrospect.
"I still think you should try to talk to her once we are safely past the pack's territory," Beryl added with a soft hum. "You two know each other very well, far better than I know her. I don't think messages passed second-paw should be the last interaction between you."
"No, they should not," Lily agreed. Not that she knew how such a meeting would go… Just that it needed to happen.
"I could not deliver your message to Pina, for obvious reasons," Beryl continued after a moment. "The pack as a whole… Well, that is tied up in how Holly sees you, and how she encourages everyone to think of you. I met with her, right before I left on my return journey."
"What she says and what she thinks will be two entirely different things," Lily warned. "She is alpha, and she knows what that means. Her personal opinion may not be one she feels comfortable sharing."
"Yes, and I had to dig to get to the personal feelings," Beryl readily agreed. "In general, in front of others, she is casting you as…" He grimaced and shook his head. "I think the most descriptive term is 'unfortunate inevitability.' She speaks of you as her predecessor who tried her hardest but could not fully move on from her trauma, culminating in the event that led to your being exiled. The idea is that you were doomed to do that, because of all you had gone through, but that you did your best to not fall to your own nature."
"That is complete and utter waste," Lily snarled. It was clever waste, a way to irreparably dirty her reputation without smearing her personally to the extent that the people who knew her would object. Talking about her like it wasn't even her fault that she was doomed to ruin things, and that it wasn't under her control.
It was a clever lie because it was, in theory, indistinguishable from the truth. She had suffered trauma. She had taken over the pack. Her paranoia and other failings had pushed her away from her friends and family. A sickness that stemmed from outside her might have brought her down in the end, but much of it was self-inflicted, to an extent. Only, it was not inevitable, and it was not a persistent issue she could not help but fall victim to.
She drove her claws into the shallow soil of the cavern floor in front of her nest and ripped a few furrows in it. The insulting part of Holly's spin on events was how it portrayed Lily herself as helpless, as incapable of failing or succeeding on her own merit… if she was doomed to do what she had done, then her own choices were worthless, good or bad. And that was how the pack was going to remember her.
"Does everyone believe that pile of rotten duplicity?" she asked angrily.
"I think most prefer it over thinking that you were just bad and tricking them from the start," Beryl said gently. "I don't think it's fair, how they see you, but what happened left a lot of bad feelings. Worry, fear… You set yourself up as an example, and they believed in that example. Seeing you fall so suddenly and so thoroughly scared them."
His words tore at her, but she could find no fault in them.
"They would rather believe you valiantly struggled to be better," he said, leaning forward to bump her face with his own. "Which is not untrue. It just is not as dramatic as Holly has made it seem."
"And she made it that way so I could never come back and act apologetic," Lily grumbled, forcing herself to look at it logically. Holly had tainted any approach she might make to her former pack members with an insidious form of doubt; they would think 'she might be genuine, but even if she is she cannot help but fall back into being like Claw.'
"That was the intention, and she told me as much when I called her on it," Beryl admitted. "I doubt she will ever admit as much to anyone else, but she did to me."
"Because you cannot be seen as a neutral party, and if you reveal what she said she can just lie and say you have been convinced by me," Lily growled. Beryl was, to the average light wing, not a trustworthy source of information. Which was ironic, because in reality he was the most trustworthy source they could possibly have, even more so than she herself was.
"Pretty much." Beryl looked down at the egg between his paws, then back up at her. "I certainly could be said to have been compromised by you."
That made Lily laugh despite her dismay. It was a good reminder that she didn't need to care quite so much about what the pack thought, or what Holly had done to ensure she didn't come back… So long as Holly's efforts didn't poison her attempts to make up with the people she cared about, it didn't matter.
"I did not plan to show myself to the whole pack and give a speech anyway," she said firmly, pushing her anger down. "It doesn't matter. What does Holly think, personally?"
"She said she would rather it not have happened that way," Beryl revealed. "She wishes you would have led for a few more season-cycles and then voluntarily passed the position down to her. I got the sense that she really meant it."
"Of course, she did," Lily said cynically. "Because that would have given her what she wanted without anyone getting hurt." She was inclined to believe Holly was being genuine, if only because it was not exactly a flattering preference. If Holly was actually altruistic and didn't care for power, she would not have specified only a few more season-cycles before she gained power in the ideal sequence of events.
"She also warned me quite directly about bringing you into her territory," Beryl added seriously. "She said she cannot let you go anywhere near her people without being forced to do something neither of you would want."
"What did you tell her?" Lily asked.
"Thankfully, she told me that before I asked about bringing you through her territory to get to the other side, so she does not know we intend to do that," Beryl huffed. "They are on guard against possible incursions, but much of their planning is directed at keeping out enemies they can see. I do not think we need her cooperation to get you through."
"You have a plan," she said confidently. She could hear it in the way he spoke, how he did not inject even the slightest hint of uncertainty to his explanation.
"I had a plan," he snorted, "but then I found out that it is not just you we need to smuggle to the other side." He stood and carefully picked the egg up with his mouth, toothless gums going around it. More than a little white and grey eggshell showed even when he had it securely in his mouth, and his jaw was open far enough that it would be obvious to anyone looking at him for more than a heartbeat or two.
Then he put the egg down again and sat with it against his side, much like she had held it while sleeping. "That might make things harder," he said conversationally. "My idea was simply to guide you through their territory while you were camouflaged. I used up most of a day just watching everyone to make sure I knew what they had changed about keeping watch over the cave."
"If I carry the egg, it will be obvious to anyone who looks that something is going on," Lily hummed, warming to the challenge of the problem presented. "They do not know I can fly, but a floating white and grey egg following you is not exactly going to be a difficult puzzle to solve."
"It might not be all that visible from below," Beryl added. "I am not sure how your camouflage actually works in that sense… But your back will make this more complicated anyway. I think the best plan is to have me fly high, and you fly above me with the egg. Anyone looking at me from below will not see you, and nobody will be looking down at me."
"That assumes we will get through without issues," Lily said. "What happens if they catch you with an egg? It is yours, so far as they know." She couldn't imagine anyone from her former pack going up to Beryl and demanding he hand over an egg they had only just seen for the first time. That just wasn't something one did. "You could say any number of things to keep them from knowing it was yours with me."
"Doing that would fuel the rumors for the next season-cycle, but it could work," Beryl said thoughtfully. His tail wrapped around to rest his fins on top of the egg, partially hiding it from sight. "Better yet, I need not come up with any story at all. If I'm carrying it in my mouth, they cannot exactly demand I answer, can they? Not until I put it down, and if I act urgent enough they will err on the side of caution and let me through."
"So I will fly through first," Lily said, seeing the plan as it would need to unfold, simple and adequate without getting too complicated or risky. "I go through, wait on the other side of the bug-infested passage, and take the egg when you get there. Then you go back and tell them whatever, and maybe bring Crystal out to see me. Or Root. Or both." She stood and began to pace back and forth, full of undirected energy. Her various scrapes and scratches from the fight the day before twinged whenever she took a hard enough step – they hadn't bothered her on her flight, because she wasn't using her legs for most of that – but she ignored the minor pains. They truly were minor compared to what she had lived with in the past, barely worth acknowledging.
"That does not solve the problem of you being fairly obvious with your back, even if you are camouflaged," Beryl remarked. "I am not comfortable letting you go through without any backup. My plan to keep you from being seen by flying directly below you still has merit."
"But I cannot be there to take the egg and free you to go back and do your thing if I am not going ahead of you," she pointed out with a swish of her tail. "And you cannot leave the egg alone on the other side of their territory, so someone has to be there." They were trying to avoid both her and the egg passing through at the same time, so that Beryl did not have to choose which one he protected, but that meant that the egg could not go before her, or with her, so it had to go after.
"Not either of us, though," Beryl retorted. "Storm owes me several favors, and Thunder as well, for that matter. Either of them would be trustworthy and willing to watch our egg. They could wait for me outside of the pack's territory."
"That could work," she conceded. She didn't feel great about the idea of someone aside from herself or Beryl watching over her egg, but that was an irrational fear she would stamp out if need be. She had cared for Crystal's egg… At that, she would rather Crystal be the one waiting out on the other side to take her egg for safekeeping, but that wasn't possible.
"So we approach, you stay far enough back that the guards don't know you're out there, and you keep the egg while I go in to tell Storm what's going on. Then I come back and get the egg and fly through without answering any questions, while you wait there. I pass our egg to Storm, then come back through again and give whatever excuse gets them off my back about it. I fly around a bit, maybe get Thaw and Spark and anyone else I can to fly with me, and you fly above us, using us and your camouflage as cover." He took a deep breath and held it for a long moment before letting it out with a loud huff. "I am reminded of a logic game Ember played with me and Thaw about a river and some animals and a floating log, only this is more tedious. That is a lot of back and forth."
"I would prefer tedious to risky and potentially fallible," she said. "This way, no matter where it goes wrong, it is recoverable." If Beryl was stopped with the egg, then they had no reason to take it from him, and he could probably talk his way out. Or she could fly in and steal it back. If she was caught passing through, then Beryl and the rest of his family would be there, ready to escort her out by force if need be. The plan was long and drawn-out, but very open to modification and improvisation whenever necessary.
"Well, it works for me, even if it might be tedious," Beryl agreed. "Now…" He flicked his tail on top of the egg. "Do you want to come take over for a little bit?"
"You go do whatever you need to do," she hummed, stepping over to the egg as he moved away from it. "We're going to have to get good at passing this back and forth, might as well start now." Not to mention they would need to do it on the move, though that wasn't happening just yet.
"You did not dig a waste pit around here somewhere while I was gone, did you?" Beryl asked. When she shook her head, he took off, flying out over the underground lake.
Lily turned her back to the lake and curled up around her egg. This was, in some ways, the first time she had felt safe getting a good look at it. There was no lurking danger she would need to fight off–
She abruptly looked up, examining the bare stone walls around her, just in case simply thinking about being safe was enough to make it not so. There was nothing to see, no signs of a renewed attack, and Beryl was still flying within sight out over the water… He was protective, she doubted he would get too far away.
That recurring fear appeased, she looked down at her egg. It was still beautiful, and she could appreciate it much more easily now that there was no immediate complication with keeping it safe.
Though there was still the complication of her needing to take a paw in raising the little hatchling who would come out of it. She still wasn't sure whether she would be any good at that. Beryl would probably tell her that she would be great, once he remembered that she had expressed doubts on the subject, but she didn't want him to.
This was one thing she needed to get over for herself, baseless worry or not. Maybe, when the time came, just doing it would ease her fears.
And if not, then he could help her. She just hoped she didn't need his help, for once. That she could do it on her own, without needing reassurance or pep talks.
The warmth of her egg was comforting, a stable source of heat that she was contributing to even as it warmed her. She hadn't messed up yet.
O-O-O-O-O
Lily had meant to thank the tiny dragons for their timely intervention on her behalf, but it slipped her mind in her long talk with Beryl. The rest of the day, which was spent alternating with the egg and generally relaxing, she barely thought about her unlikely allies. When she did think of them again, it was because they were coming straight for her.
"What is this?" she asked pleasantly from where she lay with her egg, hiding the little jolt of fear she had felt when she first noticed tiny dragons flying under an archway and into the little subsection of the cavern she had claimed for the time being. They were coming by the dozen, and all together they had posed just large enough of a shape to remind her of the little predators.
They were lucky she hadn't reflexively blasted at them, at that. Maybe they didn't know what it had looked like; it was not as if any individual one of them was imposing, so they would not be thinking about possibly scaring anyone.
That said, she was still glad Beryl was around. Snoring by her side, his wing draped over her, but there nonetheless. If this was important she could wake him in an instant.
The masses of tiny dragons, at least three score in total, remained silent save for the buzzing of their overactive wings. They swarmed very much like bugs might, flying around in a rough sphere in front of her.
"We have come to thank you," a familiar, high-pitched voice volunteered from the crowd. "You did more for us than any of us could ever hope to accomplish."
"I wish I could say I did it solely because I wanted to be altruistic," Lily said. "But if this is a thank-you, then I accept your gratitude and return it with my own." They had intervened on her behalf. It was not as if she had done everything.
She felt the stirring at her side that meant Beryl was awake, though his lack of further movement or announcing his awareness meant he didn't see any need to advertise it, so she didn't say anything.
"You will be leaving soon," the tiny dragon announced with an air of certainty. "Wherever you go, know that we will remember you."
"That is very nice to hear," she said tentatively. She didn't particularly care about being remembered, but at least it would be for something they considered good.
"Safe travels," the tiny dragon said solemnly. A single buzzing shape separated from the cloud and flew up to her, flying around her head twice before returning to the group. The rest followed the same path, one at a time in an impressively tight and coordinated stream. Lily held herself perfectly still and tried very hard to not think about sneezing until they were all done.
When they had gone, she slumped back down to rest her head on the ground.
"That was unexpected," Beryl rumbled. "But it does mean we do not have to worry about finding them to say goodbye when we go."
"Yes…" Something occurred to Lily, and she sighed. "Though they should probably learn to not openly admit they spy on us like that."
"At least we have not done anything I would be bothered by them watching," Beryl grumbled sleepily. "It will be good to go back to the above."
Lily followed the logic of his sleep-addled thoughts with relative ease. "I would say something about males only thinking about one thing, if I was not looking forward to that for the same reasons." Flying beneath the stars, feeling the breeze, seeing endless possibility on all horizons… but that, too.
"I can't wait to show you and the little one around… There are no extra caves in our home, so we will need to do something special to make a place for ourselves," Beryl continued absently. Lily would not have been surprised if he resumed snoring mid-word at any time. "Ember will help break the rock… Smooth it out… No more endless twilight…"
"I think it is a lot easier to live down here when one does not know what is missing," Lily agreed. She was not exactly wasting away for want of sunlight, but neither would she ever have been happy going without it for the rest of her life.
And wasn't that a strange revelation, given it meant her plans to bring her pack down here had always been doomed to some level of failure. Or maybe she would have forced herself to remain, miserable for the rest of her time as alpha, however long that would have been.
Or maybe it was inevitable that she would have been ousted, by her own mistakes or by someone else's plotting.
"Do you think the pack will stay down here?" she asked Beryl.
Beryl responded with a low rumble and gurgling snort. He was asleep again.
"What about you?" she asked, looking down at the egg currently nestled against her chest. "But you don't know anything about that…"
The egg obviously did not answer, but she felt better all the same. Maybe her little one didn't know anything, but innocence – not ignorance, she was not going to call her child ignorant even if it was true – wasn't a drawback. It was a good thing. If she did things right, her little one would get to be innocent a lot longer than she had.
Looking at it that way, she wasn't so worried about being a Dam. She had a lot of practice protecting people, protecting her fledglings… Though it had been a while since she last applied that label so literally.
She was still nervous about actually doing it, but in a way, she had been doing it for season-cycles, and with scores of 'fledglings', not just one hatchling.
One hatchling who was going to be hers…
She eyed her egg and tried to stop thinking long enough to fall asleep.
O-O-O-O-O
Back when her pack had been fleeing Grimmel's forces, Lily had considered the potential problem of mated pairs carrying eggs. She had been assured that it was doable, not a problem in the slightest. It was the older hatchlings who couldn't fly and were too big to be carried that would have really been trouble, though thankfully there were none of those at the time.
As she and Beryl set off across the underground lake toward her former pack, she learned what, exactly, she had dismissed as 'not a problem.'
Her egg was round and prone to rolling if set on a slanted surface. It was heavy enough to be a noticeable strain to carry in any way, and she constantly worried about it going cold. If she carried it in her mouth she had to deal with the strain to her jaw, and if she clutched it with her paws, the deep, instinctive fear that she would accidentally drop it into the dark waters below. When Beryl carried it, she suffered from the same worries but on his behalf, and without the knowledge that carrying it herself granted, the self-assurance that she had it under control.
In short, going anywhere with an egg was a nightmare in the most literal sense of the word, a long, anxiety-inducing sequence of events that felt like they took both no time and all the time in the world. She and Beryl were on top of the issue at all times, of course, but that did nothing to make her feel better.
It might have been where they were flying that made her nervous, too. The water was, in practice, no more or less deadly than a normal stone floor when it came to the results of dropping an egg, but where a stone floor was known, she didn't know what was below her at any given time. Just distant lights and shadows.
And then, for one extremely nerve-wracking day's flight, not even that.
The 'dark part' of the journey Beryl had more or less glossed over on his recounting of his travels was a sea of pure black, undiluted by distant light of any kind. The crystals that had up until then regularly dotted what she presumed was the bottom of the lake petered out over the course of a short flight, going from a multitude of colored stars to absolutely nothing.
Much like with the icy territories, the lack of light also brought with it a lack of life, or possibly the other way around. There were no fish swimming in the pitch-black depths, not even when she sent a few shots into the water anyway. The light of her fire – or Beryl's, when he used his – was a sun in the empty blackness, but only for a moment, and revealing nothing aside from water and stone.
Suffice to say that Lily had a hard time thinking about anything positive or lighthearted that day. She clutched her egg close when it was her turn to carry it, flew hard and fast, and generally just tried to follow Beryl's lead when she could barely make him out despite him flying right in front of her. When lights began appearing in the distance, she almost roared out of pure relief.
But the return of the light meant they were close to the pack's territory, so she held her tongue. One final night's rest on a narrow ledge, an egg held tight to her stomach, bare stone on one side and Beryl on the other, and they were off.
She didn't know for sure whether her nervousness was because of travelling with her egg, how close they were to her former pack, or both.
O-O-O-O-O
For all that she had been alternatively anticipating and dreading it, Lily almost didn't notice when they flew within eyeshot of their destination. Thankfully, Beryl was on it.
"Here's where we stop," Beryl remarked, turning back so abruptly Lily kept flying for a few moments before realizing what he meant, seeing the distant stone wall in front of them, and leaning into her own, much wider turning circle. When she caught up to him, egg still firmly in her grasp, he dropped down to the ledge and swiped his tail over a space next to himself.
She landed where he had indicated, and carefully set her egg against the wall, blocking it in with her paws and tail for good measure. "This is it," she said.
"I'll head on over and let Storm know," Beryl said. "Remember the plan?"
"No, I forgot," she said sarcastically. "I think I'm going to go divebomb the next light wing to come out fishing, latch onto their back, and steer them into walls until they promise to obey me." She was proud of being able to joke about such things without even a pang of guilt or dismay, and the bemused look she got from Beryl only made her prouder.
"Maybe do not break out the dark jokes with anyone else for a while," he said dubiously.
"I don't know what you mean, I was being totally serious," she deadpanned.
"Ha, ha, ha," he growled in monotone, leaping up from the ledge. "Don't forget to camouflage yourself while I'm gone."
"Don't forget to flap your wings while you fly," she sniped back as he left, unwilling to let him have the last word. Then, just to make sure he had nothing to mock her about later, she–
Sat there and thought for a few moments, then groaned. "I can't flame myself without leaving the egg, and you left before taking it for me so I could do it," she said to Beryl's distant retreating figure. She was not confident enough in the safety of leaning the egg against the wall or something, or of flaming the wall and trying to press herself against it… Those just seemed like ways to invite disaster.
So unless she wanted to call him back and potentially alert any guards that there was another light wing around, she was going to be an easy target, stationary and out in the open. Not that they could see her from the pack's little section of ledge way in the distance; they had stopped well short of being anything but pinpricks of shadow in a shadowy expanse, and not even that unless someone had extraordinarily keen eyes. It was probably riskier to call Beryl back than it was to just hunker down and wait for his return.
Though she was definitely going to tease him about how the weak link in their plan had been his impatience, not hers.
Lily let her tail drift in the water for a bit as she sat awkwardly on the ledge, rearranging herself so that the bulk of her body was between her egg and any possible path to the dark depths. The water was cold, and she vaguely feared something unknown from the depths coming up and biting her tail, but it was something to do that wasn't sitting around counting her own heartbeats.
She would have been keeping a watch on the distant entrance to her former pack's territory, and by extension anyone fishing around it, but just as she was too far away to be seen, she was too far away to see anything. The same went for hearing; someone could be roaring over there and she would be lucky if she heard a little whisper on the edge of comprehension.
She looked anyway, once trailing her tail in the water got boring. Sure enough, Beryl was a rapidly receding black shape, and as far as she could tell he was less than halfway there. Maybe within the range of the guards, but–
Even as she thought that, she saw him turn and slow in the air, his wings visibly flapping out and up like they did when he was trying to slow down. She definitely stood no chance of spotting a camouflaged light wing, but Beryl stopping could only mean one thing.
As she watched, he flew around in circles for a little bit, his silhouette going side to side and making no progress toward the cave entrance. Presumably talking to the guard…
Then he was flying back, toward her, his shape slowly growing instead of shrinking.
Lily had ample time to wonder what he was doing. There could be any number of reasons for him coming back without ever making contact. For all she knew, he had encountered someone he trusted, like Thunder or Lightning, and passed the message on to them, saving himself some time.
Or he was being forced to lead a whole group of camouflaged light wings right to her. Either was possible. She held her head high and sat with her egg – she couldn't do anything else, but she could make herself look calm and collected – and waited.
Beryl drew close. He didn't look all that worried, though neither were his movements as open and carefree as she had come to expect of him. He didn't call out to her when he drew near, so she could assume it was not so urgent that he would discard any chance at secrecy to warn her beforepaw.
All she could do was guess, deduce, and narrow down the possibilities as he came closer. That didn't mean she knew for sure what was going on, only that the worst-case scenarios weren't happening just yet.
Then a light wing faded into visibility behind Beryl, before flying out in front of him to take the lead. They could definitely see Lily; she would have been able to see their glint, had there been better lighting in the cavern. They were tense if she judged by the way they flew, flapping hard and inefficiently. Maybe even bordering on angry.
It was Crystal. She knew it before she saw anything to actually prove the wild thought; it fit far too well. Angry, tense, but coming out to meet her alone, with Beryl, against the plan… She had probably been on guard duty, seen him, and somehow deduced through what he said or did that there was more going on. It was a leap of logic, but... The only person in the pack who could figure it out and wouldn't immediately go to Holly was Crystal.
Thus why Beryl wasn't totally carefree; he knew this wasn't the plan, and he knew she had expected to have more time before meeting her best friend once more.
But if it was to happen now… She would embrace the opportunity. It was likely she wasn't going to get another chance to set things right.
Author's Note: Evil, evil cliffhangers… he said prematurely. To be fair, this chapter is already pushing on long and had plenty of talking in it. Crystal deserves her own moment, doesn't she?