'Hate is such a strong word,' they say, but after stumbling around in the thickening dark under the trees for hours, tripping over roots, the occasional random item of who-knows-what, and some cracks in the ground while calling loudly for her friends until ominous snuffling rustling stomping or growling nearby made her stop, even that word wasn't strong enough for Kiah's opinion of this place. She managed to hold her tounge- barely- for the sake of the young one possibly listening in nearby, but her mental dialogue was purely uncensored R-rated wrath directed at this bloody dimension and it's every stinking feature.
Finally, admitting to herself that looking for any longer when it had gotten this dark would only risk getting her monumentally lost, Kiah had to face the question of what to do next. Zeke and Rais had always made a very serious point of sleeping at least a few yards away from the treeline and of keeping a fire going in order to avoid the unknown random creatures this place spawned.
But mightn't that be just a little paranoid? the very understandably exhausted Kiah hoped. I've been stomping around all day and nothing's really happened, even though I've heard some animals pretty nearby lots of times.
And so it was with stubbornly optimistic spirits that Kiah nestled down in a mossy spot between a couple of raised tree roots to sleep off this nasty, nasty day. Surely she'd find Zeke Rais and Shiva tomarrow once she had a full day's worth of sunlight. The only stray upsetting thought she allowed while quickly drifting off was that, no matter how many times she checked, her egg seemed bent on remaining indigo-blue. But surely it'd fade back to normal once whatever warning she'd gotten wore off.
Half an hour later Kiah was awake and listening to the night air tingling ominously around some hissing noise that got closer, and closer, and closer. Fifteen minutes more found her huddled up in the branches of the tree, bruised and scratched from the hazards of climbing in pitch dark. She managed to soothe her battered nerves back to sleep some time after that, only to be woken again when something she couldn't see slithered over her leg, passing by without hurting her besides the fact that she almost cracked a molar gritting her teeth while holding still against the urge to scream and flail.
She didn't do a whole lot of the sleeping after that. Lesson concerning sleeping arrangements throughly learned.
And the next day sucked, too. More blundering, more yelling, an added dash of getting lost every now and then for variety. At one point some random dark eyed woman in battered living-outdoors-24/7-type clothes stepped out from somewhere to shush Kiah before dissapearing silently again. The skin on the back of her neck kept crawling after that, thinking about all the who knew what kinds of people that knew what they were doing well enough to live out here and the fact that they might be watching her or drawing a bead on her with a poison dart or something.
When day three began drawing to a close with no accomplishment in sight besides the fact that Kiah was posative she was finding her way back out of the trees, she had to admit through her denial that Zeke and Rais just weren't being found. Adding insult to injury, her egg also seemed stuck on indigo. She cuddled it fretfully now and then, often carrying it in her arms instead of her bag now- three days of confusion and near total solitude make a person take what company they can get- and kept sloging onward to the treeline. As much as every inch of this world sucked, Kiah was of the definate opinion by this point that the forested part sucked more.
But then what, huh?
Either shut up or go back to being irritatingly sensable.
Kiah stopped and shook her head to clear it. "I'm talking to myself now. Mmmm. Great." As if reacting to the sound of her voice a tense silence followed by rustling and intent snuffling noises started up nearby and on the right somewhere. To Kiah's newly crash course trained survival senses it sounded like it was slowly working it's way closer, but that was no big deal. Hiding silently and waiting for things to pass had become routine, and nothing so far had tried very at all hard to find her. She found a battered, rusted, totaled old car of all things to hide behind and settled in to wait. Soon she could hear whatever it was sniffing around, loosing interest and starting to wander away.
Crk!
...you've got to be kidding me.
Crrrrrrrrk!
The egg was starting to fidget in her arms, and while she couldn't see any cracks in the shell yet it was clearly getting ready to go. Panic threatening, Kiah dared lean around the front of the car to peek at whatever she was hiding from and guess if she could outrun it-
-and almost cracked up to see that it was some kind of clawless, fangless ridiculous looking four legged furball thing that just happened to have kind of a big long nose. She gave a shout and waved an arm at the thing, and it only complained with a bleating noise and ran away.
"Heh! Well that was silly. Crisis averted! Or one crisis, anyway." The egg was still fidgeting uneasily, and she was sure she could sense a feeling of eager impatience besides her own. Kiah looked around helplessly for a moment, wishing more than ever that Zeke and Shiva were around, and ended up making a quick run to familiar rocky but clear ground where she spread the old 'coal' bag out on the ground like a blanket and set the egg on top of it to do it's thing.
"Allright kid, it's all clear. C'mon out whenever you're ready." And she started to settle in for what she figured might be a bit of a wait, when-
CRACK!CRACKCRACK!
A line of three purple-black spines, pointed as spears and gleaming, came shooting out through the shell like knives.
"AAAGHHH!", shouted Kiah unproductively while getting a mental image of what would have happened to her if she'd still been carrying the egg. "What in blazes!? Demon egg!" Instantly and in a cartoonlike dustcloud-leaving fasion, Kiah was on top of the nearest tall rock and peeking down with only the top of her head and her eyes showing.
Crackcrack!, continued the egg almost as a confirmation, two more spines breaking through and begining to wiggle and twist along with the first three, trying to break the rest of the shell open and free it's inhabitant. A long, deep crack started to form down the middle, connecting the holes already made. Kiah gulped, trying to stay calm.
Okay, this clearly is not a good sign. What do I do? Might he really be a demon or something? He sure hasn't felt evil, and Zeke fed him all that heroic stuff.... She bit her lip, caught in uncertainty. The crack down the middle of the egg finally started to open, spreading spidery lines across the rest of the shell and making bits break and fall off, revealing... a glimpse of blue white marbled downy fluff?
Well that just refuses to make any sense at all. Kiah slid cautiously back down from the rock and edged closer, trying to see inside. "Er... I... hello in there?"
The egg stopped moving at the sound of her voice, gave a soft an excited "Chirp!", and went back to wiggling even more insistantly. With a final defeated crack! the shell's resistance broke and it started falling appart in chunks, crumbling to scatter on the ground around... around possibly the most adorable creature Kiah had ever concieved of.
Serpentine, deep shimmering blue, decked out with spines down his back and topped off with a tiny pair of downy-floof wings, the little dragon stared at her for a second with big round black eyes before seeming to recognize her and puffing up proudly.
Kiah stood there blinking uncertainly. Young kids were fun and all, but she'd never handled a baby before, especially not such an aware one. "Um... Hello there, little guy." She knelt down and reached out to pat him and relaxed- well, let's admit it, melted- a bit when he met her halfway, slithering forward to nuzzle her hand with his little muzzle.
"Well aren't you a nice little thing after all! Way to scare me three quarters to death." She slid her hand down the back of his neck to the first spine, ran her fingers over the smooth surface, tested the tip which proved as sharp as it looked.
"You need to be careful with these, okay? Very important." Kiah looked the little dragon in the eye for emphasis. "Very careful."
*Ye' ma'am!* He squeaked happily and fluttered his tiny wings against his sides as Kiah yelped and almost fell over in surprise at his 'voice' projected in her mind for the first time.
"You can talk already!"
*Mmmmm!* He chirped again, then blinked and started looking around for the first time. Kiah stayed back and kept quiet, wondering what he would do. Much to her satisfaction she could see him paying attention to what he saw rather than just looking for something to climb or chew on or roll in.
"Well?"
He peered up at her curiously, tilted his head. *Whatnow?*
"Uh heh-eh... well, I don't really know what now." Kiah sighed as the reality came back to her.
*Oh.* He seemed stumped by that and thought about it for another minute- Kiah trying not to giggle at how hard he looked to be thinking- with his eyes finally landing on her backpack laying on the ground. He fluttered his wings excitedly again. *Storystory?* Without waiting for an answer he was wiggling his way over to crawl into the pouch, though his first spine catching on the opening kept him from being able to reach Kiah's precious book, to her relief. She carefully pulled him back out by the tail and pulled her book out.
"Idunno if you'd like the stories I have in here. You're probably wanting the stuff Zeke used to tell you, about heroes and all that."
*Hnn-nnn!* The dragon crawled over to sit on Kiah's foot and stare up at herpleadingly. *No Genral Eeenderton?*
"You liked those stories? The military documentaries?"
The little dragon nodded like mad. In fact, he nodded feverently until he had clearly made himself dizzy and fell over with a small 'poof' into the dust. Kiah chuckled pleasedly to herself- this was even better than she'd hoped. "Okay, I'll read you a story, but can you think of what we should do before we sit down and play?"
He shook himself off, sat back up, and stared curiously. "Noooo ma'am."
"We have to survey the area and make sure it's safe!"
*OoooOOoooO!* He started nodding again, and the little choke-snort laughing noises started escaping Kiah's efforts at holding them back. How seriously he was taking her, and just hatched!
"We-ell, we'd better have you do it for practice!" Kiah, careful not to stab herself, picked the wyrm up, pulled her way up onto a rock, and held him up as high as she could with both hands. The little guy stretched his neck as long as he could and looked around, scrutinizing the landscape more seriously even than Kiah had ever bothered.
*Don't see an'thing!* And then, as an afterthought, *High up is good for looking.*
Kiah chuckled proudly. "Well, then I guess we can go ahead and read."
The dragon squeaked and whistled happily to himself while he and Kiah settled down on the 'blanket' she'd laid out before, wiggling around her in drunken, odd looking circles with quite a bit of flapping while she watched and quietly wondered what the heck he was doing. Finally he stopped and wrinkled his nose.
*Wings can't march!*
Kiah snorted so loudly that a few tiny birds hopping nearby spooked and flew away. "You need legs to march hun. Don't worry about that right now, okay? Why don't you just settle in and tell me who you want me to read from, if you remember who's in here."
*Ilari! Ilari!* He crawled up into her lap eagerly, making Kiah suck in her stomach to avoid being poked. *Ilari is bestbestbest in the whoole book.*
Kiah chuckled again that the little guy would like stories about that general the best. He had been best known to history for being observant and a briliant general, but also merciful and lighthearted outside of battle. It was far too fitting. "Is that right? You know, I can't just call you 'little dragon' for much longer. Do you want to pick your own name? You can use someone from the book if you want."
He squeed happily and wiggled a little bit, making Kiah lean away from his spines again. *Ohpleeeese. Can I? Can I?*
"Sure!"
*Ilariiiiii.*
"'S all yours then."
And so passed much of the day, with Kiah enjoying reading to her charge much more now that she could tell for sure that he was listening. There's something lacking about talking to more or less a tremendously fancy pet rock. They were only inturrupted by nearby falling debris once or twice. If little Ilari were more observant yet he would have caught that Kiah started looking about to be ill as the night went on- but as it was he didn't ask.