"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
One might think growing up in an egg would be vastly different than growing up in a womb, but to be honest, there are a lot of similarities. He’s warm, and floaty, and cramped. But there are a lot of differences as well. For one, he doesn’t move very much, because he’s not sidekick to his mom for nine months; no, his incubation is very still, his egg cradled in the hole in the volcano exactly where his mom left it. For another, it’s not dark and it’s not as noisy. There’s been at least a little light filtering through the shell for weeks now as it gets thinner and thinner, and the only noise the colt hears inside is the hum of the volcano deep below and the voices of occasionally visitors. Two of whom were his mother and his father, but a few others have noticed the oddity and talked near it - or just talked as they passed him by.
He has been content to exist curled up in his nest, but progressively it’s gotten less and less comfortable, and more and more light inside; and just the past few days, he has sudddenly gotten the urge to go. To be out. It just seems the right thing. So he gives a few experimentally kicks just to see, br subsides when nothing happens. Sleep, kick, repeat.
Until something happens. The world cracks under one of his baby-soft hooves, and bright light filters in in thin streams. Excited, the boy shifts and then he kicks again, and is rewarded with more cracks. Struck by the urgent need to be out now, he flails with all six appendages and his little head and is startled when the world falls apart completely, tumbling the foal and the membrane he’s encased in to the warm rocky ground, amidst large pieces of his demolished shell. Some further struggling and flailing frees him from most of the sticky membrane, and then he looks up at the blue sky and the red volcanic stone beneath him, and realizes he is utterly alone.
Another few minutes of effort have the boy scrambling to his feet, his coat already beginning to dry a creamy chestnut color, and his feathers beginning to fluff as they dry also. When he’s standing on shaky legs, wings half spread, the boy gives a plaintive little whinny but and takes a few bumbling steps, contemplating the wide path he finds himself on, but also the fact that it’s on a mountain. Now would not be a good time to fall down.
During the last stage of her pregnancy it had become impossible for her to climb the volcano. She had missed it, as Amorette was used to make the trek on regular base. Not to exercise or to stay fit, and neither just for the great view only. She likes the challenge, both physically and mentally, but most of all she feels nowhere more one with the volcano than near her fire spitting mouth itself.
Byrne and Arden are safe and sound under another’s watchful eye. The ebony and now ombre golden mare does not like it that she isn’t the one watching over them, but she had simply not been able to ignore her desire to climb the mountain again. She’d left early in the morning, before they woke, to safe them all from saying goodbye for the day. It was not as if she wasn’t coming back.
What she hadn’t imagined was her climbing down the volcano with yet another child under her care.
She first notices the champagne colt as she tears her gaze away from the horizon, if favour of enjoying Tephra’s view. ”Don’t move, stay where you are!” she calls out in horror. In her rush, and worry for his safety, Amorette ignores her own.
By the time she reaches him, rocks and dirt rolling down the mountain side, her knees are scraped and burning. She disregards her own inconveniences, and instead lowers her head to press her lips against the golden boy. ”I’m here, all is okay now” she murmurs, her own heartbeat loud and rushing in her ears. Little does she realise that she is more worried about his wellbeing than he is himself, too young to actually be aware of how grave the danger is.
”Are you okay? Where is your mother?” are the first and second question that spill from her lips, unable to wrap her mind around how he had been able to even get this high upon the mountain, with nobody else in sight. Why had she even allowed him to endanger himself like this. ”I’ll help you down, I’ll go slow, and you can lean against me.” I will keep you safe.
Amorette
Quand on n'a que l'amour.
OOC: I know this thread is already a couple of weeks old, but it gave me muse so I replied anyway
He’s about to try and take a few more steps when a shout stops him in his tracks; he freezes, shivering just a little, and tucks his wings in tight to his sides before he looks around and then down, putting eyes on the dark mare scrambling up the volcano towards him. Excited, he gives a high little whinny and leans towards her, though he obediently doesn’t move his feet. His tiny nose returns her inquisitive touch when she reaches him, and he inhales but is disappointed that it’s not familiar. Of course, it had been hard to smell through the egg shell, so maybe his mom wouldn’t be familiar? But the voice isn’t right either.
She asks him a few rapid questions and the colt looks around their feet, setting green eyes on the large remains of his egg around them, drawing her attention to them. “I’m ok,” he says brightly, but then rustles his wings and tilts his head. “I don’t know where mommy and papa are. They always visited when I was inside but they weren’t here when I got out.”
He leans against her for a moment, taking a few hesitant steps, but children are fearless as the mother probably knows and as they get closer to the ground, and he gets steadier on his wobbly legs, Grye darts forward suddenly after a butterfly, using his wings to keep his balance. When it gets away – of course- he prances back towards her. “I’m Grye! Can you help me find my momma?”
The adorable little whinny makes her heart clench. With herself safely between the colt and declining mountain side she runs her muzzle across his entire frame. Amorette finds nothing. Just a newborn colt that somehow had gotten himself this high upon the volcano, with the danger of falling and sliding down at full speed.
When he speaks to tell her that he is okay, she barely hears him. Her dark eyes are locked on the fragments at his feet. ”What’s this?” she murmurs out loud, without really meaning too, as she dips her head to touch one of the bigger ones. An eggshell? This big? Mentally putting the pieces together it crosses her mind that the egg must have been big enough to hold a foal. “Oh.” Well that is something new. Amore’s eyes are on the colt again. He really had been about to take his first steps in life.
“I am sure they are close, even now..” she murmurs, her lips pressing against his back as she allows the realisation set in. Not something you came across every day. Amorette does not allow herself more than a couple of seconds, now was not the time. She’d to get the golden winged boy to the ground safely first.
He thinks too little of the decline, and Amorette too much. She watches him worriedly, and oh, if it had been Byrne of Arden this high up the volcano, she’d called them right back to her side. Instead she holds her breath, and hurries after the colt, to find relief once they safely reach the ground. And – thank the lords – the colt comes right back to her. Instinct makes her draw him close, though it is more for herself than for him. He does not need the support, nor soothing, as he had been oblivious to the danger he had been in. “Of course I will try to help you find your mother” she tells him, pulling back with a smile upon her lips. “What do you remember of her visiting you?” Yes, she’d admit that it sounded crazy, but hey, the colt had hatched from an egg, how much crazier could it get?
The ebony woman does not know where to start, other than that they have to start somewhere. Probably not too far away from the volcano, but as she glances around she notices no one that would match the description. Slowly her gaze moves back to Grye, playfully flicking his poll, as she steers him to the right.
He, of course, has no notion that it’s not normal to have hatched from an egg. For one so young, his reality seems to be the only reality, and his reality is the egg, and the voices. But he likes her as well – the dark mare who is his so-careful escort down the mountainside, and he basks in her motherly touches. It’s new, the touching, and he finds he likes it, pressing himself to her side whenever he comes back to her. She asks about their visits, and the creamy-colored boy finds himself tilting his head and considering the question, and finally responding with perhaps more eloquence than one might expect of a newborn, but he’s had months to absorb language skills from his parent’s daily visits.
“Well, papa has a big voice, even when he’s whispering. All rumbly-like.” The memory of his father’s voice is deep and soothing, in even tones and slowish words. “Mommy talked a lot,” he flicks a bright smile back at the mare, winding his way around her kind of like an overgrown cat. “She sounded more like the birds. All ups and downs and no rumblies. I heard her a lot, papa only really talked at the end right before they left.” The colt has, of course, absolutely no idea how unhelpful describing the sounds of their voices is to an adult who’s probably never met his parents, and he eagerly sets off in the direction she points him.
“Are you a mommy? Did you have to find your babies when they came out of their eggs?” he looks back at her after inspecting a particularly large rock, and then frowning a bit and circling it again. “This kind of smells familiar. I guess.” Perhaps mommy and papa had leaned on this rock one day after coming down from the mountain? A flicker of bright color catches his eye and he rears unsteadily to reach for a long blue-and-gold feather stuck into a crevice in the rock at just the right height where a grown pegasus might have been scratching. Retrieving it, he brings it back to her because it’s just so pretty.
She does not know what she had been expecting to hear from him. She has just realized the colt had hatched from an egg, how could he know anything from his parents? It was not like Byrne had known anything about her from during the time she’d carried him. Nothing substantial at least. Amorette is about to mentally facepalm herself when Grye does reply. Not that she is able to tell who the boy’s parents are on the description of their voices, but it is a start. At least Grye would be able to recognize them. Or so she hopes.
His antics make her smile, and bend her neck to playfully nip at his crest. How could she not? Her motherly instincts are raging, there is nothing more she wants than reunite this boy with his parents. “I can’t say I know who they are, but we will try our hardest to find them, won’t we?” she offers light and easy. Amorette wants him to keep hope, and so does she. If they had truly abandoned him, they wouldn’t have come to visit him while he was still in the egg.
The ebony woman has to still a chuckle as the golden boy skips away, following him behind closely without a rush in her step. “I am a mother,” she tells him with a smile as she nods her head ever so slightly. “My son is called Byrne, but he didn’t hatch from an egg, darling, you’re rather unique in that matter.” One of the many magical secrets Beqanna has to offer. And she has to admit, the idea of not having to carry a child to full term does sound kind of ideal. Not that Amore had wanted to do it any other way, carrying your own child has something magical too, but damn, she would so not miss the aches that came with it.
“It does?” she asks, only closing in on Grye and his rock once he plucked a blue and golden feather from the rock. For a moment her eyes focus on it, only to look at Grye with a smile. “That’s a beautiful feather, Grye, you’re lucky to have found it,” she tells him as she lowers her muzzle to reach out to him. Once that’s done, the velvet of her muzzle follows the feather, watching it as the sun casts her light upon it. “Does the feather smell familiar to you too?” It would be sure as well easier to find one if his parents if this blue and golden feather belonged to one of them, it wasn’t a color scheme you saw every day.
Her dark eyes slowly move to the rock, studying it as she takes a deep breath of air. “The scent is rather fresh, the owner shouldn’t be too far away.” Aka, if this feather did belong to either Grye’s father or mother, they must be close. “Did they visit you every day?” If so, they would sooner or later today notice that the egg has hatched, and Amorette cannot imagine that they wouldn’t try to find their son right away.
She affirms that she is a mother, but then says her son didn’t hatch from an egg. Shocked, unable to contemplate how that could even be, the little pegasus whirls around, blinks, and circles back to the dark-colored mare with an openly curious look. “But if he didn’t hatch from an egg, where did he come from?” He’s blissfully unaware of the intricacies of the body and how babies are made, so he doesn’t know what kind of can or worms he might have opened.
Thankfully, his attention span is short, so Amorette only has to come up with the most cursory excuse before he’s off to the rock and the feather, bringing it back for her inspection. He puffs up to his full (not so tall) height when she praises him, but runs into logistical problems when she asks about how the feather smells, because he can’t sniff it and carry it at the same time. Another blink of his big green eyes and he comes up with a solution; he tosses the feather into the air and then half-rears to thrust his nose after it, inhaling deeply. Unfortunately when he inhales, the feather is sucked in and stuck to his nostrils. A startled snort and exhale makes it flutter up again, and then he inhales and it’s stuck – this cycle repeats a couple of times before he nearly trips over his own feet and it falls to the ground, and he turns to her with another giggle. “Yeah, it smells like them. Momma, I think.”
Grye glances regretfully at the feather but he’s realized he can’t carry it and talk, so he leaves it behind. Presumably, mommy has more – as many as he has fluffy wing-feathers of his own. She investigates the rock herself and declares the sent fresh, and they strike out a new direction he’s assuming means something to her. A chirruping sound distracts him, and he darts off, barely hearing the question. The frog escapes, of course, so he trots back and considers the question with a little frown before asking tentatively, “What’s a ‘day’?”
