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Then hang on to my tail.
She felt the prick of tiny sharp teeth biting through the hardly-there scales. Using her forelegs and the untangled rear, Wistala pulled her sister free and toward the meal.
Her brother raised a blood-smeared snout, egg horn trailing bits of viscera, and cocked his head in that funny way of his. He let out a satisfied gassy noise that echoed off the egg shelf wall and trotted down to a trickle of water running down the side of the cavern wall. Wistala followed its musical path to a pool at the base, which was rimmed with thick growths of blue-green lichen. The lichen glowed like her brother’s eyes, but in a far more soothing fashion.
But he left the feast to them.
Wistala tore into it. Better than any dream of flying, the smells and tastes and textures of meat transmitted by her own buds and nerves made the confusion of her hatching fade. The odd sensation of rended flesh sliding down her throat and the pleasant sensation of a filling belly mattered.
A coppery flash and blazing eyes landed atop the corpse. This hatchling held a bleeding forelimb tight to its narrow chest.
Wistala slid next to her sister, tripping on the cursed thing hanging from her belly, and the closing jaws of the copper just missed the air where her nose had been a moment ago.
She flattened herself against the rock, instinctively covering her vulnerable spots. The copper hatchling pounced on her sister, claws and teeth searing as it tried to drive her away from the meal Jizara was too weak to abandon.
Help, Mother! Wistala didn’t know if the call came from one, both, or all three of them.
Wistala let out a challenge, but the battle cry of her dreams came out as a thin peep. It still startled the copper into turning.
It was fast, even with its wounded leg, and didn’t have the wretched umbilical sac slowing and tripping it. She put her head down and butted him as hard as body mass allowed.
At least he left off attacking Jizara.
He opened his mouth, glaring at her from behind rows of teeth, and every instinct told her to retreat. Her back end showed its strange tendency to act of its own accord, and she backpedaled—but she showed her own teeth, giving as good as the copper had done.
He turned his head, grabbed a piece of the carcass’s tail, and ran.
Her feeling of triumph vanished as her gray brother bounded up, coiling and uncoiling his body in a way Wistala envied, covering ground in a run that was more a series of elastic leaps than footwork.
The copper scrambled off the egg shelf, clutching his meal.
Her scaleless brother screeched down at his opponent, long tail lashing back and forth so that it threatened to catch her across the nose. When he returned to the feast, he sniffed at Jizara’s neck—What would she do if the gray male tried to make a meal of Jizara?
Wistala extended her neck—not so long as either of her siblings’—and began to lick her sister’s wound.
The gray hatchling gave a snort and returned to his meal. He didn’t seem to mind sharing. After eating, Mother lulled him off to sleep with a song, and Jizara dozed, bits of shell and membrane still on her limbs.
Wistala’s sharp ears picked up the sound of claws and scales on rock. She crept to the edge of the egg shelf and looked down.
The copper rooted around in the waste near the trickle at the far end of the egg shelf. He appeared to be hunting. She wondered if he’d try to attack her siblings while they slept.
That’s a male for you, Wistala. They’re always satisfied with a win, even if the victory’s incomplete.
He worries me, she thought back.
You’re ahead of your brother and sister already. How well-formed your thoughts are! And the way you pulled your sister out of her egg. That ability will help you in the Upper World, when it comes time.
Pulling Jizara with my tail?
No, the ability to improvise.
Wistala wasn’t sure what that thought meant. Tell me about the Upper World. Is it like my dreams?
Yes and no. But you should rest, little hatchling. Leave the worrying to me, for now.
The copper stared at her from the garbage pile. If Mother could see the hatred in his eye—
