Easter Egg Gather 2008 The place: Healing Den's entertainment room The time: Right freaking now The invitations: went out to everyone who could stomach a sickeningly sweet smelling card delivered by a hyperactive sugar-rushed flitter |
Baeris watched as her daughter gleefully ran around the Den and greeted people. There weren't all that many, and there were probably going to be plenty of eggs left after this. So... maybe there would be experiments in the works. Maybe Kalkin was rubbing off on her, because that was so something he'd say. It was Spring, still having just begun a few days before. Ivo had been absent, though his kids were still fluffy and still slinking around with Baeris' own. It wouldn't be too soon, in her opinion, to have a new season to replace all the pastel crap that dangled around the place. Even after only about three weeks - it was just about too much for the long-suffering healer. She did recognize several familiar faces - not outright, but a couple of people she really felt somehow connected to, but didn't know why. Dragons and shifters and humans and aliens alike all gathered around, not particularly organized. Kali squealed that they needed to start getting the eggs before they hatched! Baeris actually doubted they'd hatch right away, after all they'd hardly moved after that weird bump in the middle of the night. Eerily, they hadn't moved. They didn't look like they were stuck down, or fake, or anything. And they were pretty warm. But they didn't wobble and bump like normal eggs of either flitter or dragon-kind. She caught darkness in the corner of her vision, saw that a couple of the lower-level dwellers were there. Good, maybe they'd come and pick up a few for themselves. Baeris drew in a sigh and watched as her son half-heartedly picked up one or two eggs, stuck them in his dark-blue and black colored basket (the only one he would accept because it looked more 'masculine' than all the girly stuff with bows and pink ribbons) and then came over to her side. Kalkin was ... somewhere, wandering around maybe upstairs. He'd said there were eggs up there too - maybe he was having his own strange egg hunt... She giggled at that, and to cover it, put her arm around Baelin and grumbled with him about the whole cheerful mess. At some point one or another of the eggs did hatch before her eyes. A gleeful squeal came from her daughter as ... something... broke shell. There were a couple different creatures, their builds distinctly different. And then something occurred to Baeris. She looked around, sure that she'd see something specific, a darkness glancing across the ceiling. "KEDOK!" She suddenly yelled, scaring the pants off Baelin and startling everyone within earshot. Which was 'the whole room'. "Is THIS your doing?" The dark-bodied xenomorph came down from the darkened corner, looking a bit apologetic. Almost the way he had when she'd first met him. But that was almost ... what, more than half a decade ago, surely, and he'd grown up a bit. But he couldn't meet her gaze, even with those queer blue lidless eyes. "Um," he said, "I... I don't really know, because they're not mine, really..." In the background, three other xeno-creatures hovered along with several visitors. They could be seen gently glowing with their luminescent 'eyes' and tail-bits. They bore a striking resemblance to the glowing parts of the hatchling dragonets which would otherwise have appeared to be gentle bunnies and chickies. One of the odder things that had hatched, a third variation, slipped across the stone floor, from its colorful egg. It didn't really look appealing in any way shape or form. "What in the nine Hells is that?" Baeris pointed at it. It tilted its ... head... at her, and scampered off. Suddenly one of the other locals which had been wandering through to maybe capture an egg or two herself, gasped. "Oh - oh, oh no," she hissed. "Oh.... um... nothing! Nothing!" But Baeris had heard her, and didn't even need to move an inch to get the girl to come by. Nor did she have to even speak to elicit a explanation. "Well you see - they've ... well that spotted mushroom creature that always slinks around, he - well you know that he's edible, and we've been using his spores to cook with for years, Mistress!" The girl looked positively petrified. Baeris' blue eyes narrowed by a margin, and her jaw very gently slid a bit. "And - and so, well we - I think we've eaten some of those things too, they ... I think they burst out of the spores." The girl bolted, bravery finally exceeding the terror from standing before Baeris. "Eating. Them." Baeris said, and glanced around carefully for her daughter. She noted her son was stifling a huge giggle - it was turning out just like he expected, if his sister liked something enough it would all turn weird without fail. "Well." Baeris spoke carefully, not really addressing anyone in particular but loudly enough that the whole room could hear her. "It seems we have had a little bit of an accident with a breeding experiment that our dragons were performing without my permission. But no matter - as long as these eggs are cleared out of here by this time tomorrow, everyone involved will be allowed to remain here." She paused, letting that sink in. Kedok didn't want to have to leave, this had been his home forever, and he knew that she'd forgive him - they were really neat offspring anyway, and not really his fault. Even Kedok didn't know how it had happened when the big 'thump' hit the Healing Den. But it was at that time when one of his Hive had gone missing for a bit. He was positive that it was the submissive female, the dominant one didn't want to interbreed with other species. He just wondered what in the world the thing about spores meant... |