The first thing I know is warmth. It feels soft and gentle, like I’m wrapped in something made just for me. Everything around me is dark, but it isn’t a scary kind of dark. It feels calm, like the world is letting me rest while it waits for me to be ready. I don’t know what “ready” means yet, but the feeling sits quietly inside me, warm and patient.

  After a long time—at least it feels long to me—the darkness changes a little. Light shows up through the shell in slow, steady moments. It comes and goes like someone far away is opening a door and then closing it again. I don’t know what makes the light appear, but I start to look forward to it. Each time it returns, it feels like a tiny hello from outside.

  The more I notice the light, the more I start to notice myself. I can feel parts of me curled close together, tucked in tight. I don’t know what these parts are called, but I can move them a little. When I try to stretch, the shell pushes back and keeps me still. It’s a little annoying, but it also feels right, like the shell knows what I should be doing better than I do.

  Time keeps passing, even though I don’t know how to count it. The light keeps coming and going, and the space around me keeps getting smaller. I can feel myself growing, even if I don’t understand how. When I shift, I bump into the shell more often. The tightness makes me want to push harder, but something inside me whispers that I should wait. I don’t know why waiting feels important, but it does.

  Then I start hearing things.

  At first it’s just soft sounds, like humming or gentle tapping. They’re muffled, like someone is talking through a thick blanket. I listen every time they come back, and slowly the sounds turn into voices. Four voices. Two deeper ones and two soft ones. They talk a lot, sometimes to each other and sometimes toward me. I can’t answer, but I listen to every word, even when I don’t understand them.

  The soft voices always sound warm, like they’re smiling even when I can’t see them. The deeper voices sound steady, like nothing could ever shake them. When they speak, I feel safe. I don’t know who they are, but I know they care about me. I know they’re waiting for me, even if I don’t know what they’re waiting for me to do.

  As more time passes, I start to understand tiny pieces of what they say. Not everything—just enough to know they’re excited about something called “hatching.” They say that word a lot. Sometimes they say it with laughter. Sometimes with hope. Sometimes with worry. I don’t know what hatching means, but it must be important.

  The shell keeps getting tighter. I try to push again, pressing one part of myself against the wall, but it doesn’t move. I try with another part. Still nothing. I twist a little, trying to make more room, but the shell holds firm. I don’t know how I’m supposed to get out of here. I don’t even know if I’m supposed to get out yet.

  Then something changes in the voices.

  One of the soft ones sounds worried. I can hear it in the way her words shake a little. She says the lumae should have hatched already. She says it more than once. The deeper voices try to calm her, but I can tell they’re worried too, even if they don’t say it the same way. They lift me more often now, turning the egg in their hands. Every time they do, my whole world tilts, and I have to press myself against the shell to keep from rolling around. It makes me dizzy, and I wish they would stop, but I know they’re trying to help.

  They call me lumae when they talk to me. I don’t know what the word means, but it feels warm and gentle, like a soft blanket wrapped around my thoughts. When they say it, something inside me feels bright, like I’m being held even though I’m still inside the shell.

  I want to answer them. I want them to know I’m listening. I want them to know I’m trying.

  I push again, harder than before. My whole body shakes with the effort. I press against the shell with everything I have, hoping something will happen. The shell stays firm and smooth, not even a tiny crack. I try twisting. I try pushing in a different place. I try again and again until I’m tired and the space feels even smaller than before.

  I rest for a while, curled up as best I can in the tight space. My body feels heavy, and the shell feels too close. I don’t know how much longer I can stay like this, but I don’t know how to leave either. I don’t know how to hatch. I don’t even know what hatching is supposed to feel like.

  The voices gather close again. All four of them. I can hear them talking softly, their words blending together. I don’t understand everything they say, but I understand the feelings. They’re worried. They’re hopeful. They’re waiting for me.

  I press one part of myself against the shell again, not to break it this time, but just to feel the warmth from their hands. It makes me feel less alone. It makes me feel like I’m not lost in the dark, even if I can’t see anything yet.

  I don’t know how to hatch.

  But I know I want to.

  And I know I will.

  I just need a little more time.

  The warmth around me doesn’t feel gentle anymore. It feels tight, like the whole space is shrinking even though I know it isn’t. I try to stay calm the way I did before, because waiting has always felt right. Waiting has always felt safe. Nothing bad ever happened when I waited. So I keep doing it, even when the shell presses against me so much that I can barely shift at all.

  The light and dark keep coming and going, but they don’t comfort me the way they used to. They just remind me that time is passing, and nothing is changing. I’m still here. Still stuck. Still being turned far too often by the hands outside. Every time they lift me, the whole world tilts, and I feel like I’m rolling inside myself. I wish they would stop. I wish they would leave me still and quiet the way things used to be.

  After many turns of light and dark, something new starts inside me. It’s small at first, like a tiny tug I don’t understand. Then it grows. And grows. And grows. It feels like something is missing inside me, like there’s a space that should be full but isn’t. I don’t know what “empty” means, but that’s the closest feeling I can find. It’s annoying and strange and it won’t go away no matter how I curl up or press myself against the shell.

  I don’t want to leave this place. It’s the only place I’ve ever known. It’s warm and safe and mine. But whatever will make this awful feeling stop… it isn’t in here. It’s outside. And I don’t know how to reach it.

  The voices outside don’t sound worried anymore. They sound… different. Their tones are sharper, quicker, like they’re talking about something bad. I hear the word lumae again, but this time it’s said with a strange edge. Then I hear another word I don’t know: bad. Bad lumae. I don’t know what bad means, but the way they say it makes my chest feel tight.

  Did I do something wrong? Is bad my name? Is that what they call me now?

  I sit still, trying to listen harder, but their words are too big for me to understand. One of the deeper voices says something about taking me someplace. I don’t know what “place” means, but the way he says it makes me feel cold inside. The two soft voices try to speak, but the deep one tells them to stay where they are. He says they shouldn’t see something. I don’t know what that something is, but it scares me.

  Then the world moves again—harder this time. Not a gentle turn. Not a careful lift. It feels like bouncing, like the whole shell is being carried too fast. If I had any room at all, I would be thrown around. I press myself tight against the shell, trying not to panic, but my heart feels like it’s beating too fast for my small body.

  A moment later, something hits the shell.

  Not a soft tap. Not a gentle brush.

  A hit.

  A loud, sharp sound that makes the whole shell shake. Fear rushes through me so fast I can’t process it. Something is trying to break my world. Something is trying to destroy me. I don’t know why. I don’t know what I did. I don’t know what’s happening.

  Another hit. Then another. Each one louder than the last. The shell trembles around me, and I curl up as tight as I can, wishing I could disappear into the darkness. I don’t want to be destroyed. I don’t want to end. I don’t want this.

  Then I hear cracks.

  Sharp, snapping cracks that run through the shell like lightning. Light slips in through the tiny breaks, brighter than anything I’ve ever seen. I squeeze my eyes shut, but it still burns through the darkness. More cracks. More light. Then suddenly—

  A flood of brightness pours in.

  My warm, safe world is gone. The darkness I knew is ripped away, and everything feels too big, too loud, too bright. My existence—everything I understood—is ruined in a single breath.

  I blink up at the world, shaking, terrified. Something huge is leaning over me. Its eyes are wide and staring right at me. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what it wants. All I know is that it broke my shell. It ended the only life I knew. This must be how I end.

  Part of it moves close to me—too close. I don’t think. I don’t plan. I just react. I open my mouth and bite down on the part nearest to me as hard as I can. My beak sinks into something soft and warm. The creature screeches, a loud, sharp sound that makes the air shake.

  And for the first time since the shell broke, something inside me feels good.

  The sound pleases me.

  It means I hurt the thing that hurt me.

  It means I’m not ending yet.

  The part of the creature I bit pulls away fast, like it’s scared of me now. I see something green coming from the place where my beak was, and for a moment I feel sure that means I won. I don’t know what winning is, but the green stuff feels like proof that I did something right. The creature makes new sounds I’ve never heard before, sharp and strange, and they make my skin prickle in a way I don’t like.

  Before I can bite again, something wraps around me. It’s another part of the creature, holding me tight so I can’t reach anything with my beak. It’s warm, but not in a good way. Not like my shell. This warmth feels wrong, too close, too strong. I try to make noise—loud noise—because I want it to stop. I want everything to stop.

  Then I breathe.

  Air rushes into me for the first time, and it hurts. It burns in a way I don’t understand, like my whole inside is waking up too fast. I cough and cry out because I don’t know what else to do. The noise that comes out of me is loud and sharp, and I don’t even know how I’m making it. I just know I want the creature to let me go. I want my old home back. I want the darkness and the warmth and the quiet.

  But instead, the creature carries me somewhere else.

  The light is softer here, but still too bright. I blink and squint and try to curl into myself, but the creature keeps holding me. There are three more creatures in this place, all shaped like the one that broke my shell. They look big and strange and wrong, and fear rushes through me so fast I can’t hold it in. I scream again, louder this time, hoping they’ll all go away.

  The creature holding me shifts its grip, and suddenly I can reach part of it with my beak again. I don’t think—I just bite. Hard. The green stuff comes out again, and the creature yells. It drops me, and I hit something hard. The landing hurts, but I don’t stay still long enough to think about it.

  I can move.

  I don’t know how I know how to move, but I do. My body scrambles and twists, and I push myself across the floor as fast as I can. The creatures are too big to follow me into the small spaces I see around the room, so I run toward one of them and squeeze myself inside. It’s dark and tight, and it reminds me of my shell just enough to make me feel a little safer.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  The creature I bit twice keeps making those strange, uncomfortable sounds. The other three make different sounds—lighter ones, almost like they’re happy. I don’t understand why they would be happy. Nothing about this feels happy.

  Then one of them comes closer.

  It doesn’t reach for me. It doesn’t try to grab me or pull me out. It just kneels down and starts talking in a soft, gentle way. The sounds it makes don’t hurt my ears. They don’t feel sharp or angry. They feel… warm. Like the soft voices I heard through the shell. Like something meant to calm me instead of scare me.

  I don’t know why, but the sounds make me want to move. Not to run away—just to look. Just to see. I inch forward, slow and careful, watching the creature the whole time. It doesn’t move toward me. It just keeps talking in that soft way, like it’s trying to tell me I’m safe.

  I don’t know what safe means yet, but I want to.

  I crawl out of my hiding place and look up at the creature. Its eyes are wide, but not in the scary way the other one’s were. They look gentle. Curious. Kind. I feel something inside me loosen, like a knot coming undone.

  The creature puts one of its appendages on the ground, palm open. I don’t know why, but I crawl onto it. It lifts me slowly, carefully, like it’s afraid I’ll break. Then it wraps me in its arms in a way that feels warm and soft, almost like my shell used to feel. I relax without meaning to. I didn’t know I could feel this way outside the egg.

  Another creature hands it something—a small hard thing with a little opening. The one holding me moves it gently, and after a moment it brings the opening close to my beak. I don’t know why, but I open my beak without thinking. A warm paste touches my tongue, and I swallow it. The empty feeling inside me disappears almost instantly.

  I didn’t know how much I hated that feeling until it was gone.

  Warmth spreads through me, soft and heavy, and my eyes start to close. The creature holding me hums something gentle, and the sound wraps around me like a blanket.

  I fall asleep before I can be afraid again.

  The stabbing feeling wakes me so fast that I don’t even remember falling asleep. It’s sharp and sudden and wrong, like something inside me is being poked with tiny burning sticks. I don’t know what pain is yet, but I know this isn’t how things are supposed to feel. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever felt, and I’ve only been alive outside the shell for a very short time.

  I open my eyes as quickly as I can, and I see one of the two larger creatures leaning over me. Its face is close, too close, and it looks like it’s biting at me. Every time it does, the stabbing feeling gets worse. I don’t understand why it’s doing this. I don’t understand anything except that it hurts and it needs to stop.

  So I bite it.

  I bite it as hard as I can, sinking my beak into the nearest part of it. The green fluid comes out again, and that makes something inside me feel a little better. Not good, but better. Like I’ve pushed the bad thing away for a moment. The creature yells and drops me again, and I land in a messy, painful heap on the floor.

  It starts using those strange, uncomfortable words again, the ones that make my skin crawl. I don’t know what they mean, but I know I don’t like them. I look around quickly, trying to find the gentle one—the one who didn’t hurt me, the one who held me softly before. I spot her and rush toward her as fast as my tiny body can move.

  She scoops me up right away, holding me close against her chest. Her warmth feels right. Not too tight. Not too rough. Just warm and soft and steady. I press myself against her and try to hide from the larger one who hurt me. She speaks in a calm voice, telling the other one that they were being too rough when “preening.” I don’t know what preening is, but if it means stabbing me with pain, then yes, they were too rough.

  I decide right then that I want nothing to do with the two larger ones. They break shells. They squeeze too hard. They stab me with pain. They don’t know how to hold me or feed me or do anything right. If biting them makes green fluid come out and keeps them away, then biting is a survival skill. I will use it whenever I need to.

  The two smaller ones—the gentle one holding me and the other soft?voiced one—seem safer. I hope they stay that way.

  As time passes, I listen to everything they say. Learning feels important. If I can understand their words, maybe I can tell when one of the larger ones is about to squeeze me or do that awful preening thing again. Their language starts to make sense faster than I expect. The sounds turn into meanings, and the meanings turn into ideas I can follow. Soon I can understand most of what they say, even if I don’t know all the words yet.

  Then I see one of the larger ones pick up two things. One looks like the thing that made the empty feeling go away before. The other looks strange, but something inside me wants it anyway. The larger one—the one I only bit once—puts a piece of the strange thing into its beak and chews it. Then it spits it into a cup and hands it to the gentle one holding me.

  I don’t know what eating is, but I know I’m about to do it.

  The gentle one brings the cup close to my beak, and I take some of the mushy stuff inside. But it’s not smooth like before. It has chunks in it, and the chunks feel wrong. I try to swallow, but it’s too hard. The gentle one made it easy before, but this larger one clearly doesn’t care if I choke. I cough the whole mess back up, and it splatters on the floor.

  That feels right to me.

  The gentle one makes a soft sound, warm and light, and I think she might be laughing. Or something close to laughing. She takes the cup, chews the food herself for a moment, then tries again. This time it’s smooth, and I can swallow it without trouble. She knows how to do this. She knows how to help me.

  As I eat, I glare at the larger one. I don’t know what glaring is yet, but I do it anyway. And from the way the larger one shifts uncomfortably, I think it understands exactly what I’m doing.

  The room fills with conversation while I eat. The gentle ones talk softly, and the larger ones talk louder, but not in a scary way this time. I listen to every word, learning more and more. The gentle ones seem to know what I’m thinking, because they scold the larger two often. Apparently the larger ones make many mistakes.

  Good.

  They should know they’re doing things wrong.

  And I should know how to protect myself from them.

  The gentle one keeps holding me close, warm and steady, and for now that’s enough.

  As I sat there listening, the sounds around me kept turning into clearer shapes. I didn’t understand everything, but each time one of them spoke, another piece of the world made sense. Some words clicked right away. Others took longer. But I was learning, even if they didn’t know I was.

  I heard lumae again, and since no one used anything else for me, I assumed that must be my name. Or maybe bad lumae, since that had been said once too. They didn’t repeat either word much, so I held onto both just in case.

  When I looked around, I saw the two males had bandages wrapped around their fingers. I knew the word fingers now because they kept saying it while complaining. One had two bandages. The other had one. I wished it were more. I would get more chances. I would take them.

  They must have sensed my thoughts, because both males shifted whenever I looked at them. Their shoulders tightened, their eyes darted away, but there was something else there too—something like wanting attention. Wanting approval. Wanting something from me I didn’t understand.

  Time passed—an hour, they called it—and they talked about everything. My late hatching. How worried they’d been. How they feared I might be “bad.” They said the word casually, like it was something that could happen to a lumae who didn’t hatch on time. I didn’t know what made a lumae bad, but they didn’t sound angry anymore, so maybe I wasn’t.

  They talked about roles too. Sira and Tovan said things that made it clear they were my parents. The sitter and her husband talked about “their turn with the egg,” and “keeping the shell warm,” and “making sure the temperature stayed steady.” They didn’t explain any of it—they didn’t need to. They already knew what those things meant. I learned by listening.

  Sira fed me whenever the empty feeling started to grow. She always seemed to know the moment it began, even before I did. She held me close, warm and steady, and I stayed awake this time, watching their faces and listening to their voices.

  Near the end of their conversation, the twice?bitten male cleared his throat. “Should I check her wings?” he asked. “Might give us an idea how she’ll take to hunting later.”

  Hunting. Another new word. They said it like it was something important, something expected.

  I flexed my jaws, preparing to bite him again the moment he got close. My beak clicked sharply. He froze, eyes wide, and took two steps back.

  Both females burst into laughter.

  “She warned you,” Sira said, her voice warm with amusement. “That beak?flex means she’s ready to snap.”

  “I wasn’t even touching her!” he protested, hiding his bandaged fingers behind his back.

  “You asked to touch her wings,” the sitter said. “That’s close enough.”

  Wings. I felt the folded things on my back twitch when she said it. I didn’t know what wings were for yet, but they were mine, and I didn’t want him near them.

  Tovan rubbed his fingers. “We do need to check them eventually. She fell hard when she hatched.”

  “You’re not doing it,” Sira said. “You’re the reason she fell.”

  “I was preening her,” he muttered.

  “You were poking her,” the sitter corrected.

  “I was not poking—”

  “You were,” both women said at once.

  The sitter crouched beside Sira, her voice soft but not slow, not simplified. “She’ll need proper preening later,” she said. “But not today. Not until she trusts the hands doing it.”

  I didn’t know what trust was yet, but I knew I trusted Sira’s hands. And the sitter’s. Not the males’.

  The sitter’s husband pointed at me. “She’s glaring at me with that beak.”

  “She’s learning,” Sira said. “And you’re very easy to learn from.”

  I clicked my beak again, and he flinched.

  The sitter laughed. “She’s not going to bite you.”

  “She absolutely is,” Sira said.

  I didn’t know which one was right, but I liked the way they talked. They weren’t confused. They weren’t explaining things for each other’s sake. They were just speaking the way adults speak, and I was learning by listening.

  The sitter leaned closer. “Sira, do you want to see her wings now? I can show you how to unfold them without startling her.”

  Tovan perked up. “I can help—”

  “No,” both women said at once.

  He sighed and sat back down.

  Sira shifted me gently, turning me so my back faced the sitter. “All right,” she said. “Show me.”

  The sitter moved slowly, her hands warm and sure. “These are her wings,” she said, touching the folded shapes on my back. “Good structure. Strong base. She’ll glide well when she’s older.”

  Glide. Older. Structure. I didn’t know all the meanings yet, but I held onto the words.

  She unfolded one wing just a little. It didn’t hurt. It felt strange, but not bad. Like stretching a part of myself I hadn’t known was there.

  “Perfect,” the sitter said. “No cracks.”

  Tovan leaned forward. “Really?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But you’re still not touching them.”

  He slumped again.

  I clicked my beak once more, and both females laughed. The twice?bitten male groaned.

  “She’s judging me.”

  “She should,” the sitter said. “You’re terrible with newborns.”

  “I’m trying,” he protested.

  “Try gentler,” she replied.

  I nestled deeper into Sira’s arms, letting their voices wash over me. The world was still confusing. But now it had meaning. And I wanted more.

  The next day began the same way the first one had ended—warm, pressed between my parents, with my father pretending he wasn’t afraid of me and my mother pretending she didn’t notice. I woke for what I guessed was the third or fourth time since hatching. Time still felt strange, like it stretched and folded without warning, but I knew it was morning because the light was bright and my mother shifted beside me.

  I had only bitten my father twice during the night. That was his fault. He kept leaning over me to nuzzle my mother, and every time he did, his face got too close. I didn’t care if he was showing affection. I was protecting her. She was warm and gentle and fed me when I needed it. He was… less gentle. And he had fingers. Fingers were meant to be bandaged. That was simply how the world worked.

  When the light grew stronger, I stayed awake longer than usual. My mother fed me again—smooth, warm Veska fish, properly chewed this time—and kept me tucked against her chest. The other two adults weren’t here. I wondered if they lived somewhere else or if they simply vanished when not needed. The world was still too new for me to understand where people went when I couldn’t see them.

  While I thought about this, I watched my father tending to his fingers. Three of them were wrapped now. He had seven more. I wanted to see all of them bandaged eventually. I was patient. He would slip up again.

  After breakfast—prepared by my mother, thankfully—my father left the house. He said something about “getting materials,” but I didn’t know what that meant. He was gone for what they later called three hours. I didn’t know how long that was supposed to feel like, but it felt long enough for me to nap twice and eat once more.

  When he returned, he carried sticks, cloth, and something soft that smelled faintly of feathers. He set everything on the floor and began building something. My mother called it a nest. I knew the word nest from their conversations, but I had imagined something larger. This one was small. Too small for all three of us.

  My father stepped back proudly. “There. She needs her own space.”

  “For your sake,” my mother said, crossing her arms.

  “For everyone’s sake,” he corrected. “She can’t sleep between us forever.”

  “She’s too young for her own nest,” my mother replied. “She needs warmth.”

  “She’ll be fine,” he insisted, and before my mother could stop him, he scooped me up.

  I clicked my beak in warning. He ignored it.

  He placed me in the nest.

  I bit finger number four.

  He yelped, dropped me, and I landed in the nest with a soft thump. At first it wasn’t terrible. Then the cold crept in. It seeped through the cloth and into my down, and I didn’t know what cold was until that moment. It felt wrong. Empty. Like the shell had cracked again but this time there was no warmth waiting on the other side.

  I voiced my displeasure loudly.

  My mother swooped in, scooping me up before the cold could swallow me completely. “Tovan!” she snapped. “She’s freezing!”

  “She needs to get used to it,” he said, cradling his bitten hand.

  “She needs warmth,” my mother corrected. “She’s a day old!”

  He muttered something under his breath, but he didn’t argue further.

  My mother carried me around the home—her word, not mine—as if showing me something new would calm me. She pointed to a small room with a hole in the floor. “This is the restroom,” she said.

  I stared at the hole. I wanted nothing to do with it.

  She carried me to the bedroom next. I recognized it immediately. We had slept there. I wondered if she thought I had forgotten. Maybe her memory was slipping. Or maybe she assumed mine was.

  Then she took me to the living room, as if that was new too. It wasn’t. I had been here yesterday, listening to them talk and learning what words meant.

  My father finally spoke up from across the room. “Do you think she’ll remember the layout at her age?”

  I blinked at him.

  My mother hesitated. “Probably not. Most lumae don’t.”

  I thought about that. I remembered everything. Every sound. Every word. Every finger I had bitten. I remembered the shell, the darkness, the warmth, the cold, the nest, the hole in the floor, the way my father flinched when I clicked my beak.

  I wondered if they were both dense.

  Or if I was somehow different.