Starchild

I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.

Chapter Nineteen: Cracking the Shell

Roy welcomed them back to the Falcon III with the air of a host inviting guests to his apartment; he fixed Marth and Eirika packets of juice even as he chided them for tracking lunar grime across the tidy interior of their floating home. Clearly he'd enjoyed his brief spell commanding the craft, loneliest human in the universe or not. Roy showed his engaging smile as he assisted them in hauling the trove of samples into the Falcon... right up until Marth brought the egg-case up through the docking hatch.

Roy's blue eyes seemed to go blank for a moment; despite the evident shock, Eirika sensed that Roy had a very good idea of what the mysterious object was. Roy's only question, blurted in an adolescent squeak, confirmed her suspicions.

"Are we going to be shot after this?"

"No," came the flat response from Marth.

"Are you certain?"

"Yes. Premier Hardin can't afford to lose us- not now." The argument was so simple, so cynical in its formulation, that Eirika found it more convincing than anything else that Marth might have said. The commander continued, without inflection, "Secure the payload, Major Gilleroth."

"Yes, sir."

"Eirika, power down the Heron."

Eirika murmured acknowledgement of the order and dropped down the hatch, feeling almost grateful for a few minutes away from her comrades and from the egg-case and its implications. It was calming, really, to shut down the functions of the Heron one at a time in the well-rehearsed sequence. So many months of her life had been spent in simulation of this moment, and now, once the last light on the control panel was dead and the fragile craft dark and silent, the Heron itself would be cast away, an empty shell floating in an infinite sea.

"Goodbye," she whispered, tracing one finger on the panel that had flashed so many warnings during their descent to the surface. "I think that I'll miss you."

But pilots did not have the leisure to shed tears, even for a worthy machine. Eirika went through the docking hatch for the last time, sealed it off, and then Roy pressed the button that cut the Heron loose. Eirika saw it tumble away, and she marveled again at how that little bubble of a craft with its spidery legs could have kept her alive in the lunar desert.

And now it was just the four of them cluttering up the Falcon III. The egg-case was stowed in one of their sleeping hammocks, which turned out to be where Eirika and Marth each spent most of the return journey. Whether it was the physical stresses of lunar exploration or the emotional peaks and troughs of the experience, it seemed that they'd both overshot the limits of peak performance, and the only remedy available was that they, like the abandoned lunar lander, shut down completely... if only for a few hours at a time.

Eirika woke from one of these naps to find Marth still asleep and Roy humming a tune to himself as he photographed the ever-increasing disk of Terra out their window.

"Sorry to be leaving you alone so often," Eirika offered him as an apology.

"It's not a problem. To be honest, I'm feeling... well, I've never been so grateful that this ship can fly itself if we need it to." Roy was looking pale and puffy-eyed, though Eirika knew the puffiness was only an effect of life in zero-gravity and ought to subside once they were home again. "Do you need anything to eat? There's still plenty of food."

"I'll have some soup, I guess."

So they each enjoyed a packet of beef-and-mushroom soup, though little conversation passed between them. Eirika felt herself grow steadily more alert during the meal, and she noticed that Roy's attention kept going to the egg-case stowed in the hammock that once had been his sleeping area.

"Old Athos would've given fifty years of his life to see this," he said, and Eirika heard a trace of sadness in his voice. She hoped that her comrade would volunteer more information about A and Project Fire Emblem, but instead, Roy said, "You know how awards are given out in the Elibean military? If the failure of your mission means you get shot, you get acclaimed a Hero if you succeed. If failure would get you life in prison, they give you a lesser medal. And so on."

"You're wondering whether this outcome counts as success or failure?"

Roy bit his lip, and Eirika noticed, perhaps for the first time, how a scattering of freckles stood out on his pale cheeks.

"I've been very grateful to the Programme for the opportunities it's given me. I've known that someone with... with my background... would face some limitations in the military, and I never expected to go this far. I wouldn't have, without the help of A and... and others. But I've seen the way that some people are viewed as... dispensable."

Eirika recognized the hesitant confession of the bright and courageous young pilot as an admission that, yes, Roy's background had to contain some non-human blood. The thought had already occurred to her, and so she instead decided to let the confession pass, and focus upon Roy's immediate concerns.

"But don't you-"

She saw Roy's eyes widen, and for a moment feared they'd left an open communication link with the ground control during the conversation. But then Eirika heard the "thump" of something knocking against the cabin wall, and she quickly realized that the movement hadn't come from their commander.

Thump!

The being inside the egg-case moved so violently that the case itself jumped in the hammock, hitting a second time against the wall. This knock was loud enough to wake Marth, who sat up in his own hammock.

"Marth, the case is starting to crack," Roy called out.

Peace's commander extricated himself from the sleeping restraints and floated over to the source of the commotion. A third thump sent the egg-case moving again, and this time Eirika could also see the cracks in the case as something tried to burst it from the inside.

"So, the high priests and scientists of Terra will be denied the awakening of their goddess."

He did reach for poetry at the oddest times, Eirika thought. Then a glimmer of memory surfaced, a scrap of verse scribbled onto the back of a calculus assignment. Eirika brushed that memory aside- not away entirely, but aside, to bring up when the immediate crisis was over.

And it did feel like a crisis unfolding there in the Falcon. Eirika had seen chicks and ducklings hatch, not in nature but under the bright lights and glass of an incubator, and the violence of egg-birth had surprised her. This was much the same, though the shell was more leather-tough than brittle. As the hatching progressed with one abrupt heave after another, fragments of casing floated off. Roy began to chase them down, like a child chasing butterflies.

Eirika expected to see glimpses of claws, of a tail, of scales or feathers. What she saw through the cracks looked a great deal like pink human skin. Pink skin, and the soft limbs of a human child. And, with a final momentous heave, those limbs broke free of the casing, and the Goddess of the Moon lay entangled in the sleeping hammock.

She was clothed, Eirika realized with a shock. This was not a hatchling newly birthed, but a little girl, the size of a human child of six or seven. She was clothed in scraps of iridescent fabric, and the tendrils of her hair, pale as ashes, floated around her.

Marth grasped one of the support straps on the bulkhead with one hand and reached out with the other hand to steady their passenger, who was still flailing inside of the mesh. The dragon child grasped at his hand- like a newborn baby, thought Eirika. Once the hatchling had something solid to hold, the flailing ceased.

The child's eyelids began to flutter, and then, after a few frantic seconds, the eyes opened, and Eirika saw a flash of silver, the color of a droplet of mercury. Eirika was the witness, not the agent, when the eyes of the newly-awakened goddess looked into the eyes of a human after eleven centuries of sleep.

"Hello, Luna."

That cautiously advanced greeting from Marth caused the child to smile. She emitted a gurgling sound that sounded a little like laughter, then tugged sharply on his hand, bringing it to her face. She nuzzled it, sniffed it, and even- to Eirika's shock- licked the human fingers with lunar dust under their nails.

Eirika, too tired for surprises and yet too surprised to speak, watched wordlessly as the Hero of Space and the Goddess of the Moon shared a moment that recalled the bond of a boy with a new puppy.

"Roy, tell the ground that we'll consume oxygen and water at rates higher than expected," Marth added, as though this were just another technical detail. "They'll notice."

"Yes, sir," said Roy, sounding rather like a cadet thrown unprepared into the field. His hand hovered above the communication button for a moment. "Are you sure we won't be shot after this?"

The happy gurgles issued by the Goddess of the Moon had to serve as their answer.

To Be Continued...

Author's Notes: Luna is neither Tiki nor Myrrh nor Fa nor Idoun nor Yune, but is intended as this AU's embodiment of dormant divine female power. None of the canonical little goddesses were an exact fit.