It wasn’t what I had expected.
I had expected…. Oh… the usual things. Clouds of smoke, maniacal laughter, some monstrous being… they were always monstrous, whether fair or foul of face.
It is already hatching, a jagged opening showing in the greyish, mottled shell. Even as I watch, small pale hands show, gripping the edge and breaking another piece of it away.
When I approach the egg and look down into it, I see a child. I would have guessed her at eight or nine, if I wasn’t seeing her hatching before my eyes. If I didn’t know she was Rek’na reborn.
When she sees me she lifts her little arms to me, like a toddler wanting to be picked up. “Help… pl’s…” she says pitifully, her voice wavering and uncertain. Are they her first words? They must be. Even though I know what she is, they pull at my heart. This is a child. I have never harmed a child, even one that might grow to be the darkest of goddesses. When she looks up at me, I know I can’t do it now.
I open the egg a little further, so the sharp edges won’t scrape her soft skin. When I lift her out with gauntleted hands, I try to be gentle. There were preparations made for her hatching, I can see… lengths of silk cloth to wrap her in, dishes of raw meat and bowls of what might be wine or blood. The priests and priestesses had their plans.
But they are dead or fled, and I wrap the child in my cloak and cradle her against one shoulder. She wraps her small arms around my neck trustingly, and I carry her out of the hidden temple to where I hid my horses. There I dress her in a spare shirt – four of her would fit inside it, for I am big and she is very small – and feed her her first meal. I don’t have fresh meat, and am not sure it would be wise to give it to her if I did, but I feed her bean porridge with salted meat, and a round of dry journey-bread, and she eats it eagerly.
I know I should destroy her. But she is a child.
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