sometimes they come back again; famine & any

[feast]

feast.

death inspires me,

like a dog inspires a rabbit.

Feast had deviated from the main path back to Pangea, and in the course of his unknown deviation, he stumbled upon a cleverly hidden treasure: an egg, an overly large egg. He assumed it held something as magical and fantastical as a dragon and what colt wouldn’t want a pet dragon to have for his own? So Feast bumped and rolled the large egg home with both his nose and his front legs. It was slow going, until the egg gained speed and nearly outpaced him! Then he had to slide to a stop in front of it and slow it down, then bump it along easily until he managed to get it over the sandstone lip of Pangea’s putrid puckered border.

He stood there momentarily, proud and puffing from the exertion of having to maintain safe travel for his treasure. His hard black stare scoured the landscape before picking a lesser walked trail through the badlands, and he began bumping his nose against the egg towards a cave he was all too familiar with - Famine’s haunt. Feast supposed that there his egg would be safest, and he might share his prize with his more sickly looking sibling. But Sinew stopped him midway to the cave, her eyes as black as his and sharp as they flicked over him like a pair of whips and he felt flogged and flayed open to the bone - it was such a severe look that he felt like cowering but knew that would only earn him a sharper nip from his mother, so he straightened his spine and regained some of that natural born pride that he’d felt moments earlier.

“What do you have there boy?” Sinew asked him.

“It’s mine!” he said in a heavy boyish pout, as if she was challenging his claim to it.

“I can see that it is yours and whatever is in it will be your responsibility as well.” Certainly not mother of the year, she bared her teeth at him and tsked as she stalked off, presumably in search of their father, the goat-king to tell him of their son’s latest misadventure.

“Mine,” he repeats in a naked harsh whisper as he rolls his egg further on towards Famine’s cave.

Once there, the egg naturally rolls to a stop in a slight crevasse before the cave and Feast ducks his head beneath the shadowy overhang. “Brother!” he calls, assuming that his twin is laying down and miserable as usual. Feast feels a momentary pang of brotherly affection for his sickly twin, thinking of how much time they’ve not spent together spreading terror across the land. “Come Famine, I have something for us.” and the last is drawn out in a sibilant hiss as he goes back to the egg and rolls it forth into the cave. “Behold!” he practically shouts, listening to his voice echo back through the deep cavern blackness.

As if in response, the egg rattles and shakes for a few seconds then subsides into a premade nest of rat droppings, dry grass, and bits of horsehair and fur (from Famine, from Sinew when she checks in on him from time to time, and even from their older half-sister Burnt who has taken to spending time with the sicker colt). Feast even plucks the dirtiest and most ragged of feathers from his broken dragging wing to decorate the egg’s nest with. “There,” he steps back to eyeball his handiwork and thinks it is befitting his prize. “Now we wait.” But the nest is warm, and the cave warmer still from all the body heat trapped inside it. Burnt creeps close, mindful of her own wings that smoke and singe her skin as they lay flush against it, spilling embers that sizzle against the stone floor.

“Did you ever think it might not be something as fantastical as you want it to be?” She remarks snidely to Feast. “Not all eggs carry dragons or basilisks, some carry very large snakes that might be extremely hungry and looking to eat small colts who think themselves indestructible.” Burnt is more cautionary now, and the egg starts to shake again as if amenable to her words. Neither she nor Feast can take their eyes off of it as the shaking grows more agitated until --

Crack!

A tiny crack though, a small seam that opens in the egg’s side and nothing more than that. Feast can hardly contain his excitement and he begins to nose the eggshell in a less than nice way. He pokes at it, trying to get the seam to split even more and give up the dragon he knows is inside but the egg is stubborn - it is not quite ready to hatch and so, he must wait and he pulls back, temporarily defeated.

“Soon,” he says, black eyes shiny with knowing.

“It will hatch soon.”