All characters are storylines are (c) Heather Farthing and may not be reproduced or redistributed in part or in whole. All rights reserved. (C) 2016

Soundtrack: Bring Me to Life, Male Version--Dan Vasc
Red Right Hand--Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

Chapter one

I am a merchant, coming home after a long shift at work, to find my mate has surprised me by bringing our children over with dinner. They are beginning to molt, and the males have my coloring, the females already so tall and strong.

“Here,” I say, holding out a chunk of ice from the ground. “It’ll taste like ash, but it’s all we have right now.” My younger sister squirms and turns her nose up before giving the ice a lick, wrinkling her nose in distaste.

The herds are restless. Something bothers them, but I don’t know what. The big male, the bull, bellows and stamps his feet, and then charges without warning. He has never charged at me before. The first massive, flat foot plants on my spine, and then there is nothing.

“What’s that?” I ask my mother, looking skyward. A streak of orange pierces the sky.

“It’s just a flying star,” she replies, a touch of excitement in her voice. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

I shift my feet, unsure. Something about it is wrong, it’s too big, too close…

I stand in front of the incubator, watching for tiny eggteeth and the sound of peeping from inside the shells. Not today, not yet, maybe tomorrow. A bright light from the window draws my attention. What could that be? It’s too early for dawn.

Light.

Bright light.

Red light.

Seeping in to my dreams.

My eyes slide open, not for the first time. I see red light. I see shadows. Nothing ever moved before, but now they do. The shadows. They pound against the glass. Why? Let me sleep.

I close my eyes again, but something has changed. The umbilical attached to my belly disengages, retracting into the top, and now I am alone and my chest hurts.
I am in the trees at the edge of the beach, watching a bright light out at sea. As I ponder what it could be, I realize the ocean is receding, fast. Marine reptiles are beached in the water’s haste, a fortune in fish and edible kelp exposed to the cloudy skies. My heart sinks, because I know as quickly as the tide left, it will come back even quicker.

I rumble to the rest of the House and neighbors, sending out a deep, resonating word into the trees from my chest: run.

I bring up the rear, watching over the House’s young ones, counting them over and over again, leaping from branch to branch. Beneath me, the water begins to rise, and now the animals are running, a thunder of feet, predator and prey side by side.

My grandson, barely old enough to shed his juvenile down, slips from his mother’s back, plummeting to the current below. I make a dive for him, and I miss, looking skyward as he hangs from his mother’s tail.

I plunge feet-first into the salty, brown water, and can’t fight against the raging current. I feel myself slipping, battered by massive legs and broken trees. My lungs burn burn as water feels them.

I can still feel the water in my lungs.

Instinctively, I kick hard at the shell, butting it with my nose, scrabbling at it with claw and tooth. This substance is harder than eggshell, meant to drain and then open at the sides instead of being picked apart by tiny claws and an egg tooth.

There are figures on the other side of the synthetic shell, three. Two pound against the shell, sending shock waves through the thick, embryonic fluid and my eardrums. The third stands at the side, a series of neural wiring plugged into something mounted onto their wrist. One of the figures stands back, looking down at a similar object on theirs. The third leaps to the top of the giant, synthetic eggs.

My chest hurts and my limbs feel heavy.

I remember breathing. I remember cool air in the lungs, in and out, and I remember inhaling water, and I remember the times I drowned.

Please, I beg silently, as the big shadow assaults the top of the egg, and then scrambles down again. Please, I don’t want to die here. I don’t want to die again.

When the big shadow comes back, it carries something long and and slender, raising it over its head, sending the other two shadows scattering. The object is held high, and I realize what is going to happen just in time to bury my head and face under my arms and tail, nose to my knees.

The glass shatters like starlight, sending me and the blue embryonic fluid cascading, cold and sticky, onto the floor, landing in a patch of glass.

Everything hurts. The circle of ten attachments when my umbilical attached, the rent skin that slid across glass, still poking into my hip, my chest.

Something’s wrong. I can’t get air in or out. Blue spills out of my mouth and nose, my belly muscles clamped and cramped. I burn inside.

“He’s not breathing,” a female voice whimpers, and then there is another at my side, banded fingers holding open my mouth, a warm, fanned tail wrapped around my back, stroking the sopping, sticky down.

“Get it all out,” she whispers. “Pi, get my bag!”
The bigger shadow pulls me away from the female, angling me face down. The position seems to work, and there is more blue, and a deep, wheezing sound, cold inside my lungs.

“Good, good,” the tall figure, a male, mutters approvingly, thumping my back. “You’re strong. You can make it.”

The third shadow brings a white leather bag, which the female with the banded fingers digs through, pulling out a tapered tube she fits over my snout while the third straps it to the back of my head. Blue comes out in torrents, splattering onto the floor, and then air is forced down my lungs, and again, and again, and repeat, until I’m drawing ragged, shaky breaths on my own.

“See there?” the big one smiles, clicking his teeth. “You’re a tough guy.”

“How’s he doing?” asks the second male.

“Blood oxygen is rising,” the female replies, sounding relieved. “Blood sugar’s low, iron’s low…everything’s low.”

My eyes focus past the breather, onto the blue-smeared floor. I see hands, fingers. They move when I move my fingers. They flex and bend and leave clawmarks in the blue.

The coloring is…strange.

All newborns are covered in black and gray and white speckled down, like dark ash. It is the same for one who cracked shell with tooth and claws, and one born from glass and blue. Adult coloring comes later, when the juvenile down is shed, replaced by fine filament and beautiful display. Newborns have no spots or stripes or decorative coloration…but I do.

I have stripes. They’re blue and run along my fingers and hands in oblong shapes, meeting at a series of blue squares at my wrist, and then longer blue along my arms, like…bone. I look like a skeleton laid over shadow.

“You can admire yourself later, Runt,” the big one says, unbuckling the breather from the back of my head.

The female and the second male each take an arm, rising to their feet.

“No, no,” says the big male in an authoritative tone. “He’s big and strong. Let him do it on his own.”

“Brute,” sighs the female.

“Trust me,” the big male replies. “Give him a chance.”

Three sets of feet back away from me, the female leaning over, hands on her knees. The big male strides to the end of the room, stepping on a floor button, causing a pillar to rise from the spot, supporting a vessel.

Only one? But hatchings are done in groups, just like in nature.

A terrible, stabbing pain pierces my belly, causing me to double over and whimper.

“Brute!” growls the female.

“As soon as he gets his slurry, he’ll be fine,” the big male, red and black, answers causually.

“But the vessels are—” starts the second male, cut off by a growl from the red male.

I want that vessel more than anything.

“There’s glass,” snarls the female.

“You’re going to patch him up anyway. You may as well do it all at once.”

I need to get my legs under me. I need to get my torso up. I remember how to do this. Knees, elbows, glass poking into my skin like hot embers raining from the sky.

I remember crawling under branches, under furniture, playing games as a child, chasing prey through the woods, hiding from larger predators. I remember the feel of the motion, first one arm, then one leg, the glass in my palms and knees, tail dragging sluggishly through the blue.

“See? You’re a survivor, aren’t you, Runt?” the red male asks kindly. The female gives a disapproving scoff.

Food, hunger gnawing at my belly. I remember the fullness of a good meal, dinners spent with the House, the joy of blood, still warm, spilling into the mouth while something dies. I remember weeks of hunger, cold biting at the limbs, cramps in the belly, getting harder to get out of the nest every waking cycle.
Inch by inch, foot by foot, painful, muscle-aching drag by drag, the vessel of slurry gets closer and closer. I remember how good it feels for an empty stomach to get filled, for the warmth inside, and it keeps me moving.

When I am next to the pole, I am on my knees before the red male. His feet, the end of his tail, and left arm are blackened, like he waded through the thick ash looking for survivors. His body is red with blackened stripes and spotting, his muzzle black with iridescent red striping like clawmarks, the coloring of a leader.
I reach up for the vessel, but it’s too far, and look up at the commander. His eyes are a shocking, incongruous blue, with thin, slitted pupils. His mane of black, irredescent display feathers hangs beneath his shoulders, long and wild.

Red. Red like blood, blood spilled after a shower of stones, flesh split by flying glass, burned by cinders raining from the sky.

Red like the Imperial House, Dracomimus. Of course they would pay homage to the imperial bloodlines in the commanders. Strange, a male commander. Not unheard of, but unusual.

“You want this?” he asks, taking the vessel from the stand. I nod, tossing my head, reaching my hands out like a child, grasping at the air with my fingers. He holds it above my head, way out of my reach.

“Show me what you’re willing to do to get it,” he orders in a stern voice. “Stand up.”

“Brute, stop being a jerk and just give it to him,” sighs the other male.

“He can do it,” Brute retorts. “Can’t you?”

I nod, bobbing my head and clicking my teeth, and notice the railing around the stand, the places for other vessels to be. On my knees, I can’t reach them, but if I can get my feet under me properly…

The world spins, like tossed around in a tsunami. I waver, catching myself on a cold, sticky hand, edging my feet beneath me. I remember standing, walking, I remember the placement of the legs and the feel of the muscles. One, two, three…

Too fast! Way too fast! The world spins and I’m grabbing the stand for balance, holding it tight and shivering, coughing specks of blue and retching.

“See?” Brute asks smugly, holding out the vessel.

Delighted, I pull open the lid and find nothing inside.
Hunger grips my belly, endless shadowy days and dark nights of falling behind panicked herds, scavenging on feral animals slowly starving to death.

I look up again at Brute, his mane hanging into his eyes, around his snout.

“The feeders aren’t working, but I believe Atrissa brought something for you,” he admits kindly.

“You’re cruel,” the female growls, pulling another vessel out of her bag.

“He’s learning his own strength, aren’t you?” he asks, turning from her to me.

Cold, sticky, shivering, and starving, I glare at him, but imagine still being on the floor, in the glass and the blue. My muscles protest, shaking, painful, but I am standing.

“Here you go,” the female offers, handing me a vessel of pureed meat and blood, baby’s first meal, easy to digest and gentle on a stomach that’s never digested anything.
I drink deeply, choking on blue and slurry, slurping. She grabs the vessel away from me, me grabbing for it, stumbling when I lean away from the stand.

“Not so fast,” she chides. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

She holds the vessel for me, controlling how fast it spills by the angle of the tilt. She has the tawny coloring of a female, browns and creams that make them invisible in the trees. Alternating tan and white stripes band her fingers and her plain, unadorned tail, the fan in a pleasing, symmetrical pattern. She is lovely.

When the vessel is empty, I grab at her bag, looking for more.

“That’s it, love,” she replies, pulling away. “You’ll get more when I check you in at Medical.”

“Is he that bad?” asks the second male.

“He’s all scraped up and wheezing,” she explains. “I want him under observation, too.”

“Can you fix that incubator?” the commander asks, looking past me.

“If I can get the materials, maybe,” the second male answers. “Circuits are blown, but the connections are still good. It might not be what it was.”

“It can’t be helped,” the commander purrs, turning to me. “The showers.”

The female holds out her hand. She has delicate fingers, for stitching wounds and finding unseen injuries and ailments. They’re probably very touch- and heat-sensitive, too.

“No, no,” Brute says again, intercepting her. “You can do it yourself, can’t you?”

I click my teeth in affirmation, taking one painful, hesitating step, and then another, before letting go of the stand and wavering, nearly falling. I remember walking, I remember paths through the trees, the backs of big herbivores, a big carnivore. My tail knows where to go for balance, but I miss having primaries on my forearms.

“See?” Brute asks gently. “He doesn’t need your coddling. He’s strong.”

The female growls softly.

Past the feeding stations, into the next room. Like the hatchery, it’s a vast place, walls lined in rows, with spouts hanging near the top. I know what to do, find one, stand under it, step on the button. The first three don’t work.

That’s strange. There wasn’t food ready for me, and now the water wasn’t working. That shouldn’t happen.

On the fourth shower, the blast of cold water hits me like an avalanche, my breath catching in my throat, cold lungs hacking blue and snow. It shouldn’t be cold, not this time of year. The seasons are all out of whack, since…

The female grabs my arm, pulling me out of my memories. I am in a dimly lit room full of showers, standing under cold water.

“The heaters are out again?” Brute hisses, turning towards the second male, yellow-green with a blue snout covered in yellow, branching striping, like a slice of brain tissue, the mark of a technician.

He holds up his arm, where a crustacean shell runs from wrist to elbow, a slit in the outer side letting the yellow primaries free.

“Yes,” he whines. “The whole sector. My clan is already solving it.”

“Sorry, Runt,” the red commander sighs apologetically. “It’s the best we can do for now.

Sweet-smelling soap spills from the guttering spout, dissolving the blue, unsticking my down. I scrub it in quickly, but thoroughly, finding white under the blue, white like bone.

When I’m not sticky anymore, I step away from the shower and the water slows and stops. I shiver in the emptiness, sopping down sticking to my body, tail wrapped around me for warmth and modesty.

“Over here,” the technician calls from deeper into the room.

I take slow steps toward him, and find him pulling a plain blue set of clothing out of the wall, and a blue towel folded nearby. The female wraps it around me, and my heart skips a beat at her clean, sweet smell, like tiny flowers blooming in the night.

She holds me close, wrapping the towel tight and holding me close, wrapped in her arms and tail, her hands rubbing my shoulders to help soak up the water. Her body is warm and she smells good.

When I am warmer and reasonably dry, she helps me into my clothes while the two males discuss power outages and failures. The Nest is on a geothermal vein, which should make such things impossible, but they’re talking like this sort of thing happens regularly.

The commander looks up at me, looking me over from head to toe. All three of them have adult plumage and markings. That shouldn’t happen, either, unless I’m the last of a later hatching. Did everyone else already pass through before, with the older hatchings waiting on me?

“Are you ready to meet the team?” the red male asks.
Clicking my teeth and tossing my head, I nod.

Chapter two