not a crown but a hood
The world is warm and dark. For days now she has sensed it, the subtle shifting of light across the pale walls of her shell. Sometimes, she can feel the vibrations of the Mother or the Father, the jostling as the nest is rearranged just-so. Sometimes, she imagines she can hear the movement of her siblings. There are many of them, but none like her. (Even a snake may know it is meant for more than slithering on its belly along the earth).
Oh! She is tired of waiting, of sleeping, of growing with no room to stretch out and a membrane between herself and the world. Every day she is a little hungrier, a little less patient. Every day she is a little more aware of the fangs in her mouth and more curious of what they might be for.
When the day comes the sun is high and hot. It is warm even in the shade of the nest, carefully hollowed in the leaf-litter. The first of her siblings emerges and she only knows it when she hears its flickering tongue tasting the air for the first time. If it were possible jealousy alone would free her then, a mad drive to be free free free -
And then. And then she hears the slither of the Father as his scales glide over the sand and rocks and leaves, hears the Mother go to meet him, heard them speak in their whispering tongues. From further away (but close, too close) there rises a shivering, yipping, laughing sound, a cry from many throats. She can not guess what they are, the African wild dog pack that comes bounding and sniffing and hunting over the grass, but she knows they are monsters. Enemies (most everything is an enemy to her people; she knows this still a small, curled thing in her shell).
There is nothing she can do. There is nothing she can do, as the Father spits out a warning and rises to spread his hood and the Mother strikes lightning-swift and one of the dogs jump back. Everything is shifting shadows, light growing and receding. Everything is feeling the earth quiver with each rapid movement and listening to the snarling and spitting and knowing they will eat her, they will eat her and her siblings, and yet she still must hatch, she longs to be out, to taste the air -
A new sound rumbles like thunder, new footsteps shake the ground. Bigger, heavier, than the ones that came before. She is heedless of these dangers; she is striking the soft membrane of her shell, the outside light is bleeding through the cracks. She is tasting the world, loamy and hot. Her head is free, the world is too bright, the sunlight glistens off her opalescent skin. She has no siblings left; the other eggs are smashed or empty. There is no sign of the Mother or the Father. There is a shadow looming over her and she tips her chin to see, she spreads her marvelous, beautiful hood, and she rises, defiant, to return the stare of a unicorn.
@Jahin might have been drawn by the sound of the hunting, wild dogs. Or maybe he was only looking for water to wash the desert sand from his skin. But not matter his reasons for coming to the oasis it is not dogs, or water, that he will find.
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