Chapter Nineteen: Egg of Fangs
Remy woke to the midday sun shining in her face. She had overslept, big time. But it felt so good to finally have a full night's sleep in a comfortable bed. Remy pulled herself from the thin blanket she had slept with. The Valley's humid air was warm enough that she couldn't take more than the silky gossamer sheet. Stretching and cracking her back, she turned to look out her window. The Valley looked as it always did. Lush and flourishing with life. Dinosaurs roamed the grasslands, and pterosaurs flocked the sky.
After pulling a set of clean clothes from the dresser, Remy walked through the small home. Everyone had left. She had the house alone to herself. Feeling grimy from the past few days, Remy wanted to wash first, so she headed to the bathroom. Not wanting to haul gallons of water into the tub nor having the ability to activate the heat runes carved into its sides, Remy settled with washing herself down with a wet rag and some soap. It wasn't as good as taking a shower in her home realm, but she could at least feel a little cleaner. As always, as soon as she got home, she'd have to take a nice, long hot shower.
Cleaned as best as she could, Remy slipped on her clean clothes and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. In the kitchen, she prepared herself a simple breakfast. The fresh fruit and leftover bread were delicious. Once she finished her simple meal, she washed her dishes and curled up in her bedroom, one of Ebrima's journals in her lap.
When she opened the book, it finally dawned on her that the remaining egg she and her friends had found was in an incubator. "Someone would have told me if anything happened to the egg, right?" She asked aloud, shutting the journal. "I doubt anything happened. The egg's probably a dud, or the hatchling didn't survive through the night."
Still, she couldn't help but climb out of her bed. It wouldn't hurt to look at the egg even if nothing had happened since last night. Cautiously, she walked down the hall to the small, dark incubating room. It was warm but not uncomfortable. The glow rune was still activated, casting a soft light into the incubator where the large egg was nestled in the soft bed of wood shavings, moss, and dried leaves.
But something was different. In the dark of the room where the silence should have settled, there was the distinct sound of chirping. Remy approached the incubator. Maybe the hatchling had survived after all, and they could make another family happy. Perhaps the baby belonged to the dome-head family. They would be glad to see their stolen egg returned to them as a healthy hatchling.
When her eyes fell upon what was in the glass and wood incubator, she froze.
"I thought Mushroom was a problem, but what am I going to do with this?"
The egg was indeed no longer an egg. The hatchling sat among their eggshells, crunching on one of the larger fragments. They hadn't noticed Remy yet, dark red eyes locked on a pillbug crawling across a dead leaf. They stopped gnawing on their eggshell and lunged, snatching the hapless insect in one gulp. Their dark green head finally turned to Remy.
They chirped, flashing a mouth full of sharp teeth, hungry for something a little more filling than a meager bug. Two fingered arms clawed at the glass as they pressed their chest to the glass. Thick, dark green downy feathers covered the hatchling's body, while their underside was dappled with dark yellow feathers. Only the top of their snout and their feet were not feathered, the scales underneath the same color as the feathers covering their body.
"You're not a…you're not what I think you are, are you?" Remy breathed, crouching in front of the incubator. She obviously knew the hatchling was a carnivore, but the two-clawed forepaws told her that this hatchling might grow into something massive and deadly.
"I know Heather said something about there being more than just Tyrannosaurus rex. There are lots of different Tyrannosauruses. You could be one of the smaller ones, right?" But she couldn't convince herself. The hatchling was rather large to begin with, and she had a feeling in her gut that they would grow fast and into something much, much larger.
"I never thought Tyrannosaurs babies looked so…birdish. You're covered in feathers, and you're nothing but legs."
The hatchling chirped, flapping their feathered arms and snapping their jaws repeatedly.
"Right, you need to be fed." She lifted the top of the incubator. "I hope Suri or her parents come home soon. I don't know what I'm going to do with you." She ran a finger down the hatchling's soft feathered head, careful so that they wouldn't snap at her with their sharp teeth.
"I wonder what your mom and dad are thinking? Gosh, I hope they don't come looking for you. Wouldn't that be a disaster? Two massive rexes in the Great Valley looking for their baby. But maybe they aren't because they don't know you're alive." She ran her finger down the hatchling's back. "At least it looks like you haven't been affected by the Shards like Mushroom was."
The front door creaked. Remy rushed out of the incubator room, breathing a sigh of relief when Suri stepped into the house. At least it wasn't her little brother. Lumi would have been no help at all.
"Suri. I need your help. The egg hatched, and I'm pretty sure it's a T. rex."
Suri looked up from her basket of herbs and paper of runes she had been scribbling on. Placing the items on the dining room table, she followed Remy into the incubation room. The dark green hatchling chirped, flapping their arms again, excited to see another face.
"It's…" Suri crouched to get a better look. "It is a bone-crusher sharp-tooth." She looked up at Remy, worry in her too-blue eyes. "You found the eggs outside the Great Valley, correct?"
Remy nodded.
Suri frowned at the hatchling. "I hope we can find their parents. The Great Valley will not want a carnivore raised in the Valley. If we can't find their parents or some other carnivore family to take care of them, we'll have to get rid of them." She looked up at Remy. "The Valley won't let a hatchling like this be raised here."
"How are we going to find their parents?" Remy asked, watching as Suri pulled the hatchling out of the incubator. "And what are they going to think, seeing us with their hatchling?"
Suri didn't answer right away, running her fingers down the dark green sharp-tooth's back. "I don't know. We've never had this happen before. I'll have to talk to my mom and dad about this." She held the hatchling out to Remy. "Why don't you take this little girl outside and find her something to eat. It's the best thing we can do right now. If worst comes to worst, I'm sure my parents can find a group of weavers that can take care of her."
"People are willing to take care of big carnivores?"
"They aren't as uncommon as you might think. Some weavers live like my family does, in a permanent place with dinosaurs. Others are nomadic, moving from place to place. Some live among dinosaurs. Those are the ones we are looking for. We want to find a weaver tribe that lives with some type of large sharp-tooth. It'd be best if they lived with bone-crushers, but any large sharp-tooth will do."
Suri stroked the hatchling's back, still lost in thought as she continued to speak. "The weaver tribes that live among herds and packs are different than my family. They are much more interconnected with their dinosaur companions. They learn their culture and form powerful bonds with the dinosaurs they live with."
Remy sighed, the hatchling staring up at her, dark red eyes filled with curiosity. "The biggest issue will be finding a weaver tribe willing to take her in, then?"
Suri nodded.
"Well, I guess we can't do anything about this right now. I better go find something for her to eat. See you later, Suri."
Remy carried the newly hatched sharp-tooth to the grove she and her friends had been keeping the other eggs. The hatchling ran around, snapping at dragonflies that zipped through the air or beetles that scuttled on the ground. It seemed she was already a semi-decent hunter, having caught several insects while Remy set up her fishing equipment. Still, that was nowhere near enough for the hatchling.
The hatchling followed Remy to the stream that fed out of the hidden waterfall. There, the girl sat, waiting for a fish to catch while the sharp-tooth ran around. Sometimes she would stand on Remy's lap and let the girl pet her head. Other times, she zoomed around sniffing and snapping at anything that moved. By the time Remy caught a fish, the hatchling had her featherless snout shoved into a hole a mouse-like rodent had scurried down. After a few more fish were caught, Remy got to work cooking them. The hatchling finally wandered back over to her, enticed by the smell of fish.
Remy offered a raw fish to the hatchling. She sniffed the fish twice and didn't need any more encouragement. The small carnivore devoured it in a few gulps, leaving nothing behind. It was good that raw fish bones were softer than cooked fish bones, so it'd make it easier for the young one to digest.
Remy continued to watch the somewhat independent infant zip around the grove as she cooked her meal. The hatchling returned after Remy began eating her own fish, a hungry spark in her dark red eyes. Without a word, Remy offered the other small fish to the hatchling. She gobbled it up just as fast as the first one. It kind of reminded Remy of when Ghost caught a mouse. He refused to let it go, so Remy had to let him eat it.
Once their meal was finished, Remy took the hatchling on a walk through the Valley. The little carnivore could easily be confused for one of the small, feathered sprinters that ran around the Valley. As long as no one looked too closely, they would be safe. It might not have been the best idea to allow the hatchling to run around in full view of the Valley residents, but Remy couldn't keep her inside Suri's home or even the grove for too long.
No one seemed to notice the dark green feathered newcomer as Remy walked the less populated areas of the Valley. At some point, she and the hatchling found themselves at the edge of the Sinking Sands.
Remy stared in thought. "I wonder how those kids are doing?"
Out of the corner of her eye, Remy saw the sharp-tooth leap onto the nearest stone, her dark red eyes locked onto a bright blue butterfly fluttering just in front of her snout. She leaped again before Remy could grab her. Still firmly planted on another stepping stone, the hatchling took no notice of the danger around her. She jumped again, jaws nearly closing around the butterfly. This time, however, the hatchling missed the next stepping stone and fell into the quicksand.
The infant shrieked, the sound shrill to any of the nearby listeners. Remy hopped onto the next stepping stone and quickly pulled the screaming sharp-tooth from the thick wet sand. Wiping some of the sandy mud from the hatchling's body, she rushed back into the trees.
"You're far more trouble than Mushroom was," Remy whispered under her breath as she crouched among the trees. She tried to hush the shrieking hatchling, fearing that adults would come running and find out who was making the noise. Nothing would end well if that happened.
When the hatchling was finally shushed, and the earth didn't shake, nor did shouts echo into the air, Remy carried the hatchling back to the grove. Once there, the girl began cleaning the young sharp-tooth's sand-covered feathers. She didn't seem to mind. She chirped and trilled, nestling into Remy's lap as the girl cleaned her feathers.
The sun dipped lower into the sky, and Remy considered going back to Suri's house. The hatchling was as clean as she would get her without soap, water, and a rag. When Remy stood up, the hatchling awoke with a loud yawn. She climbed to her feet, and the sleepiness immediately vanished when she spotted a lizard. Before Remy could stop her, she sprinted after it. A heartbeat later, the dark green hatchling strutted out from the foliage, the lizard clasped in her jaws. It was as if she was showing it off, saying, 'Hey Mom, look what I caught."
Remy could only smile and pat the hatchling's head. The sharp-tooth knocked her head back and swallowed the lizard whole.
"You're a hungry one, aren't you?"
"Remy?" Littlefoot's voice echoed through the grove. "Remy?" His head burst through the leaves. "There you are. I couldn't find you at Suri's house. I thought you'd be there. How's the other egg do…" He trailed off, staring at the dark green feathered dinosaur crouched next to Remy.
"Is that it? Did it hatch?" Littlefoot stepped closer. "Is it some type of sprinter?" He lowered his head to get a better look at the hatchling.
As the massive beast approached her, the hatchling lowered herself closer to the ground. She bared her sharp teeth, a fearsome hiss slipping through her bloodied fangs. When Littlefoot did not back off, confusion shining in his russet eyes, a shrill sound came from the back of her throat. She was shrieking again.
Littlefoot pulled back his head, the pieces still not falling into place that this wasn't a sprinter. He hadn't moved far enough away, and the hatchling leaped. Her sharp teeth caught the end of his nose. He wheeled back, eyes growing wide with horror. The hatchling hissed at him again before retreating behind Remy.
"It's a sharp-tooth hatchling."