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Date Posted: 21:24:17 02/20/05 Sun
Author: Talla, Stanza, Chapter, Verse
Subject: >Firelizards<

((Since I put the eggs on the hearth, oh, two months back at this point.... -_- This is also open for anyone to reply to, if they feel like it.))

Stanza has been keeping watch over the clay pot on the hearth for most of the night, and the little gold's patience is finally being rewarded. Ancient instinct warning her of the impending Hatching, she begins to croon softly in encouragement to the eggs within, belatedly remembering her owner's order to notify her when the Hatching begins. :eggs!: she informs Talla, sending an image of cracking firelizard eggs mixed with an undertone of happy urgency.

Rising from the table in the corner where she'd been slowly nodding off, Talla abandons the cold remains of her meal, weaving her way around sleepy riders and dirty tables towards the hearth. Halfway there, her fogged brain clicks into gear. "Food!" she exclaims around, slapping herself in the forehead and ignoring the odd look she recieves from a passing drudge. Looking around, she spies a pile of meatrolls all alone on a nearby table, and her eyes light up. They're cold, of course, but hatchling firelizards won't care. Reaching out, she snags three - one for Stanza, as a reward for keeping watch over the eggs - and breaks into a trot as she enters the cleared area near the hearth. Reaching the pot and the gold firelizard, Talla kneels on the brick and takes the top off the pot, carefully tipping the eggs out into her hand. One medium, one small, both rocking urgently and with cracks veining their shells. Arranging herself so that she can cushion them in her lap, instead of setting them on the hard brick, the junior queenrider watches and waits eagerly for the eggs to crack, tearing the meatrolls into pieces while she waits. Beside her, Stanza gnaws happily on her meatroll and hums more loudly.

The smaller one cracks first, the green within bursting out with a hungry creel. Her eyes whirl red with hunger, and she claws insistently at Talla's shirt until the young woman abruptly silences her with a large chunk of meatroll shoved down her gullet. This little one is dark, bluish green, all sharp edges and hard angles, loud and defiant and proud as her mind touches Talla in the first moment of Impression. She's not big, but her attitude will surely make up for it.

While she's being fed, the medium-sized egg slowly splits and the pieces fall aside, revealing a brown coiled as if still trapped within its confines. He blinks up at Talla, eyes shading into red, and stretches each limb slowly, almost lazily, until he's perched on her knee looking up at her. His movements are measured enough that his first creel is cut off mid-cry by a piece of meat. He gobbles it more slowly than most newborns would, though this is obviously fast for him. A rusty, orangish brown, he's long and limber, though not quite graceful. And he prefers to take life at a sedate pace, or so the lazy drift of his thoughts implies as their Impression makes them clear to Talla.

At first Talla is hard-put to keep up with them, the green literally climbing her in her eagerness to be fed, the brown more patient but ready to become impatient the moment he feels he's being neglected. Eventually, though, they both seem to become full. The green eats her fill first, being both smaller and a faster eater, and collapses so suddenly that an outside observer might fear that she'd choked on something and died. As she sprawls bonelessly down Talla's front, tiny claws dug into the cream-colored shirt and most of her body supported on the shelf of her new owner's breast, the brown emits a tiny burp, gapes his mouth wide in a lazy yawn, and curls up on Talla's knee, blinking at her twice before closing his eyes in sleep. Talla giggles, stroking them both gently as they sleep. She seems ready to sit on the hearth and study them all night. Stanza flutters up to her unoccupied shoulder and peers down at the two hatchlings, then cheeps curiously and nudges Talla's cheek with her nose, sending a thread of inquisitive thought. :who?:

Laughing again - though quietly, so as not to wake the hatchlings - Talla looks at Stanza and grins. "Good question. They do need names, don't they?" She looks thoughtful for a moment, head tilted to the side, and then lifts her chin and smiles in triumph. "I know! You're already Stanza, so I might as well stick with the theme, right? This fellow will be Chapter," she pronounces, scratching between the brown's wings. Then her fingers flutter up to the green's tiny head. "And she'll be Verse." Stanza makes a brr noise, and the thought she sends to Talla decidedly lacks conviction. Talla only giggles. "Of course they're good names. And they're not going to argue, are they? Mylanith isn't awake to complain, either, so it's not my problem if she disapproves." Obviously not going to yield on her chosen names, Talla leans back against the wall and settles in for a long stay. She doesn't want to risk waking these two by moving, no matter how late it is. Or early, to be honest, so she may as well stay around for breakfast.

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