All night long Chiaki jumped every time an ice chunk struck the ground or worse, when it sounded like it had hit something other than dirt. Their house was spared. The yard though was pitted deeply by morning.
"With as hard as these are frozen, I don't think they'll melt until spring." Chiaki glanced at the sky, it was clear after the long Ice Fall storm. She put a glove covered hand on a chunk of ice the size of her head. "We should take these into the cellar under the house and make an ice box."
"An ice box?" Winston questioned.
"Yeah, we'll section off a tiny part of the cellar and layer the ice there, if we get a chance to hunt between snow storms, we can keep the meat close to frozen with it."
He nodded. It was rare to get a hunting day between cold-season storms, and every male would be out on a day such as this in an attempt to boost their food stores. "Should we go hunting then?"
Chiaki shook her head. She was sure they had enough food to last the long Winter. But the ice was delivered to their front door... literally. She wouldn't let the chance pass, even if it didn't get used. After they dealt with the ice they made sure the birds in the coop were fine and collected the few eggs there.
Chiaki spent the next several days working with Skye, Winston, and Bai Di to make several other games. It turned out that Bai Di was a master at wood craft and not only were the wooden boards much better that the quick one she'd made with Qianhuang, Bai Di built her a stool to sit on in the Kitchen, a set of shelves to hold all the finished but unused furs and leather, and a simple trunk for her to keep her clothes in. Winston made game pieces out of stone as well along with Skye making them from horn, bone and tusk. Each material gave the pieces a different color or texture, so they could tell them apart.
Checkers, chess, dice, a tic-tak-toe set where the pieces could be reused instead of being drawn on paper, all of these were crafted in the first few weeks the family was snowed in.
There was also the near constant rotation of horny males she had to contend with. Though Curtis tended to doze off for most of the day, he would rouse up long enough to check on the egg and eat a small meal with everyone each evening. Qianhuang also seemed to be refraining from asking her to mate as often as the other four males. Chiaki quickly realized the males had came to an agreement that one of the four offspring-less males should father her next pregnancy. She sighed in relief when her next period arrived on time.
Early Winter passed in relative peace. The season was longer and colder than the year before, but the food supplies lasted and without thieves breaking in, not even Curtis had to go hungry.
"Chiaki!" Curtis called from the Kitchen, then he appeared in the open doorway with the sand filled pot in his hands. "The egg is shaking around! our offspring is about to hatch!" His voice cracked despite his age as so many emotions warred with-in him.
Together they sat, Curtis brushing the sand away from the egg. It began to show stronger signs of movement. Soon she could hear a tiny sound and saw the first real crack appear in the shell. "Is he healthy?" She asked.
"He sounds fine." Curtis said.
"I can't understand him..." She said as she listened to the pip-pip noise the young snake was making inside the egg.
"He's not really saying anything, it's more like snake grunts."
It took a couple of hours for the tiny snake to wrestle himself free from the eggshell. When he finally broke his head through the shell, he stopped and slumped over in relief. He rested like that for several minutes just breathing the air for the first time without obstruction.
Curtis picked the shell fragments off the sand as they fell away, sticky and just in the way of the hatch-ling. Finally free the tiny snake glanced at Curtis and coiled himself up. Chiaki wasn't sure if he was trying to look bigger or smaller, but it really didn't matter considering he was only as thick as her smallest finger.
What surprised her though were his markings, mostly red like Curtis but with random patches of bright orange scales scattered about his body. She wanted to touch him, but looked to Curtis for guidance. He hissed at the newly hatched snake, causing it to sway it's tiny head around. Of course, Chiaki had understood the hiss.
"Dare to bite me and I will eat you in one gulp!" He had told his son.
She curled a hand into a fist and bopped him on the head. "You will not eat him!"
"Of course I wont, but otherwise he would try to bite me when I did-" He scooped the tiny snake up into his hand, "this!"
His son hissed at suddenly being picked up, a sound of surprise mixed with anger. ~Hey!~ The hiss roughly translated and Chiaki laughed at such a rough expression being the first word from Curtis' offspring!
Curtis brought him to his face and they flicked their tongues out at each other, learning each others scents, though Curtis realized the baby smelled more like egg goo at the moment more than anything else. ~I am your father.~ He hissed. ~This is my mate!~ He hissed a little more aggressively. He held the newborn up to Chiaki and their son flicked his tongue at her too. ~She is the female that birthed you. She is your mother.~
~Mother... and father.~ The hatch-ling tested these words. After a moment he nodded, not entirely sure what was wanted of him. This large male was frightening. What was a mother? A father? What did those words mean? Still it seemed like his nod was the reaction the male wanted.
"And your name will be... Copper." Chiaki said as she touched the bright orange scales on her tiny son.
