Chapter Text
She is a day old.
She doesn't know that, not having seen the sun set and rise to mark the time, but she knows it's been a long time since the creatures who welcomed her into the world, who cleaned her, kept her warm, and fed her her first meal, left her alone. She thought perhaps these first faces she got to see were her parents. She isn't so sure now, but she hopes they'll hurry back. She is hungry.
The others she hatched with are, as well. They are all very small, and it's a long way down to the ground even if they could get through the dome covering the nest.
The warm light over them has gone dark, and though the air is warm around them, the unhatched eggs in the nest with them are cold. She heard movement behind the shell of some of them, before. They're silent now.
The hatchlings on the contrary are loud, her included. The dome echoes with their cries as they try to get their voices to escape into the strange cave with smooth walls that their nest is in. She doesn't know how long they have been screaming at the top of their tiny, newborn lungs, but they know instinctively that screaming means parents will come back, and parents will bring them food. She doesn't care whether it's the ones who were there when she hatched. Maybe those weren't parents at all, and are instead danger.
There is a noise from outside the cave.
The hatchlings redouble their efforts to call whoever is there to them. The youngest of them is so exhausted that barely a squeak comes out, but she keeps making those feeble squeaks anyway like her life depends on it, because it does.
They hear something again from the outside. Their parents don't rush to them at the sound of their distress.
She quiets down, and after a moment the others do, too, following her example. She was the first to hatch, so the others treat her as the one who knows what to do, as though she would have had that much time to gain more life experience. They do as she does when she crawls into the plants cushioning their nest, and hides behind the dead and dying eggs. Something is not right.
The noise is closer now. It's cautious footsteps, and sniffing. Claws tap on the ground. Then there is a snarl.
She is only a day old, but she is a predator. She knows now, the one making the noise is, too—and it's hunting.
Something large steps into the cave, a shape moving behind the fog they've breathed onto the dome's surface, then another shape comes in right after it. It's not the ones who were there when she hatched.
She presses herself flat and the others huddle closer to her. She can smell new things in the air, and also oddly familiar ones. She knows with as much certainty as she knows the thing moving in the cave is tall enough to reach their nest, that one of them is blood.
The clawed steps come closer, and a big, scaly snout pushes under the dome and into the nest, two rows of sharp teeth emerging as it splits open. In a quick lunge, it picks up an egg, and cracks it on the edge of the nest. When it drops it in the hay again, the snout dives into the shell and eats what was inside.
The snout is shoved aside by another one just like it, except slightly bigger, then both withdraw just outside. Jaws snap, on empty air but in a warning, and the other creature backs away with a hiss. The new snout pushes the dome up out of the way and sniffs at the nest while licking what's left of the egg innards.
This is where the smell of blood comes from, she realizes, but the creature is not injured. It has killed so recently it hasn't cleaned off all remnants yet.
It's about to pick up another egg, when it finds her and the others instead.