Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 66904 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66904 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
I sit down, and I find that I am particularly glad to do so. Being pregnant is hard work, and on this occasion, I am feeling quite faint. Sitting down doesn’t help immediately. I am uncomfortable. My stomach and lower abdomen keep cramping.
“Shan? I think something is wrong.”
I get the words out right before a wave of contraction hits me. My body feels as though an external force is squeezing through me. It’s not my choice. It’s not even a natural sensation of pushing or muscular reaction. It’s like I am a tube of toothpaste, and the universe has decided to empty me.
“Shan!” I call for him again, and he is instantly by my side.
But there is absolutely nothing he can do. He is the strongest, most powerful creature I know, and he is helpless against what is taking place inside me. I writhe, trying to get into a comfortable position, but there isn’t one. I find myself squatting, holding onto him, staring into his black eyes as nature uses me like a puppet. I have never felt less like a person. I am not a separate entity, I am part of it all. I am the sky and the water, I am the trees and the leaves. I am a channel, and I am opening.
What logical remnants of my brain remain tell me that this is too early, that a human gestates for much longer than six months. But this is happening, and there is no force on this world or any other that could stop it.
Something is emerging from me. Something that does not feel like a baby. It is too smooth. It does not move. It certainly does not cry. In the midst of that strange, sweating, cramping intensity, I momentarily lose my mind. I cannot do this. This will kill me. This will end everything I know. This will…
Suddenly, there is relief as something slides from me. The stretching of my newly elastic nethers allows a smooth opalescent… egg to slide from me. I look down and I see it there, a pearl-like, thick-shelled object sitting on the ground as if it has always been there. It looks like a larger version of a bird egg, or I suppose, a smaller version of a saurian egg — not that I have ever seen one of those.
“What the…”
The internal ache remains as my body attempts to restore some kind of physical equilibrium. My mind is likewise scrambling to accept and understand what has just happened. Of all the outcomes, I was not prepared for this. Nobody ever mentioned that a human woman carrying a saurian pregnancy would not have an actual baby.
“You did it!” Shan picks me up in a careful embrace. “You’ve laid an egg.”
“Humans don’t lay eggs. Humans have babies. This isn’t possible. That’s not mine.”
“Of course it’s yours. It just came out of you.”
Shan
“It’s not mine. I don’t lay eggs. It’s not mine. I don’t lay eggs.”
She keeps saying that, burying her face in my neck. Her entire body is shaking with the effort of having laid. She is in shock. It is not an entirely unpredictable response. Seems to me that plenty of saurian females don’t bond with eggs either. That’s why they are left to the nursery to be incubated and raised by the nursemaids.
I cradle her until she stops shaking quite so hard and pulls her head away from my shoulder to look at the egg which is still sitting nearby, unperturbed by its mother’s reaction. It is truly a very beautiful egg. There is a pearlescent shine to it in the dappled afternoon light, and it is a good size. I know that the little life contained within is happy and safe. My job is to attend to Lettie, who clearly expected to have a live baby emerge from her. Privately, I am very glad that did not happen. The process of live birth sounds very messy and dangerous to me. I cannot imagine seeing a woman go from a single person to having another person emerge from her whilst they are both yelling. Lettie has told me many stories related to birth, and none of them sounded good.
“When is it going to hatch?”
“In its own time,” I tell her. “Could be weeks, could be months.”
“What are we going to do with it until then?”
“We are going to look after it. We are going to keep it warm. We are going to ensure no harm comes to it. We are going to wait. And we are going to build a nest.”
“A nest?”
“The egg will need to be kept somewhere safe and soft, near the inside fire. You’ve seen the nests of flying creatures before, I assume?”
She looks dubious. I know that she is probably sore from the ordeal of laying the egg. It is not a small object. At its widest point, it is almost five inches in diameter. Her body has been through a great deal in order to bring our future baby to this point. It is my turn to do the work.