Poor Little Thing
"Object...medical." Heiras leaned over the drawing on the page, then reached across to the circle of raked dirt. Five radial lines converging on a point represented the object; she drew a raindrop shape around them with two mirrored squiggles at its tip to complete the concept. It looked like a fair copy of the drawing, but would it make sense to Vrugnis? "Good so far?"
The others at the outpost would have laughed at her for asking. The tkevsas weren't primitive animals by any means, but they had no spoken language other than a repertoire of insults. They wouldn't respond to Oceantongue and it wasn't worth trying, everyone said. Yet in the pause after Heiras's question, Vrugnis ran the long sensitive hairs of his feet over the figures in the dirt, exactly as if he had understood her.
"Well? Is it any good? You know, I am much better at anatomical drawings than abstract ones, heh heh." On the other hand, it was true that Vrugnis rarely paid attention to her chattering. That suited her fine--it made him the only person who didn't make her feel embarrassed about it.
Or maybe he only looked like he wasn't paying attention? It was hard to tell, when a tkevsa's default posture was resting on the stomach and facing away. Only his back feet were moving, reading her attempt at communication. When he finished the inspection, Vrugnis dug his toes into the dirt beside the figure and more expertly duplicated it, confirming that she had written it correctly, then rolled onto his side in an attitude of expectation.
"Well! There's a relief. What's next?" Heiras turned her attention back to the thick, floppy book of tkevsa symbols and their meanings in Oceantongue. "Induce..." She thumbed over another page. "Induce, induce, induce induce induce..." An irritated sputter punctuated a flurry of page-flipping. "Who wrote this thing?! How about cause? Is 'cause' in here?" She glanced at Vrugnis's perpetually amused expression. "This would be so much easier if we could get a dialector to draw. Cause..." And back to the translation guide. "Here we go!" She started to draw another curve, but stopped. "No, wait--that's cause-ee." She smudged out the curve and re-drew it at a different angle. "Cause. With intention," --short lines crossing the curve-- "unconsciousness? Isn't there anything that means unconsciousness? I don't care what those linguists think, it is not the same as a deep sleep."
After half an hour, some less-than-accidental damage to the guide, and a constant stream of complaints and self-encouragement, Heiras finally assembled a passable description of a deeps-cheater packet. "Object, medical. Cause, with intention, to person...sleep, medical...length of one day...pain absence. Spit in the deeps, all that for one little statement. So help me, I'll have to build a medical translation kit from shell. This is ridiculous."
Meanwhile Vrugnis was busy making additions to his version of the figure. The result was similar to Heiras's, but less complicated. While the design was still based around "sleep", it was modified by only a single twisting stroke.
She let out a yelp of excitement. "You can't tell me that doesn't mean 'induced coma'! I knew you'd have field-specific jargon." Turning the guide onto its back, she opened it to a blank page and copied the entire figure. That done, Heiras rolled off her knees and onto her backside, exhaling a satisfied breath. "Your turn."
And again, as if on her cue, Vrugnis swept the circle of dirt smooth and began drawing a new pattern. "How do you know when to ignore me and when not to?" Heiras sighed. "I'd give a lot to know the trick. My whole life I've been plagued with the opposite problem. What's this, now?"
He had started with nearly the same shapes, but a knot of three crossed and re-crossed arcs replaced the five-lined star. "Medical machine? Oh, I'd love to see what you have. I wish I could work out how to get my acoustic scanner over here to show to you. ...Well, don't stop now! What's it do?" she demanded when Vrugnis suddenly abandoned his work and bounced away into the open.
Awkwardly and belatedly Heiras scrambled out of the low shelter after him. "Vrugnis!" she called out of habit, shielding her eyes from both sun and wind as she hunted around for the tkevsa. "Where in the wide and the tides did- Oh."
He was standing on his head facing the southern horizon, signalling rapidly with his feet. Squinting, Heiras made out the tiny backlit silhouette of the tkevsa he was talking to. "For the life of me I can't tell how you can see what they're saying. Your farsight must be spectacular." Her hand dropped to her chin as the thought settled in. "Now that's something that hadn't occurred to me. Are you functionally blind close up? That would explain a lot."
Abruptly Vrugnis dropped back onto his stomach. He scrawled a less tidy copy of "medical machine" onto the hard-packed ground and bounded back into the shelter. "An emergency," Heiras guessed aloud. "Well, you can count on me for any help you can use." She dropped to a half-kneel at the entrance, stretching in just far enough to snag her kit, and briefly froze in surprise.
On her first visit to the tkevsa doctor's half-house she had noticed an odd piece of furniture at the back and taken it to be a table. But now Vrugnis was dragging that "table" by means of a harness, in smaller jumps of about half the length and twice the frequency of his usual leaps. The table itself moved smoothly, not on wheels but on a belt of flat feet that rolled to the ground at the front, stood steadily as the table passed over, and then were raised from the ground at the back.
"Sorry! I'll get out of your way." Rather hastily Heiras retreated from the entrance. "I take it this is your machine?" Vrugnis hauled it past her without so much as an acknowledgement, stopping finally a short distance from the shelter. He shrugged out of the harness and took up a position alongside the machine, gazing intently to the south. "M-hm. And rather than try to describe how it works, you're taking advantage of an opportunity to show me." Again she raised a hand to block the sun. "I hope you know what we're waiting for."
After the space of a good rest, a faint rumbling became audible. Heiras groaned. "Tides save me, it's one of your storm-cursed bird machines, isn't it?" A few breaths later this proved true, as she caught sight of a speck moving across the glare of sun-brightened clouds. "Pardon me if I just..." Without finishing the thought she sidled up behind Vrugnis. It was a bit cowardly, of course, but given the erratic way those devices rattled up and down in the sky, the only place on the ground she was sure was safe was near another tkevsa.
This one, at least, was following a smoother path than most. The speck expanded rapidly and within another half rest was near enough to identify a trio of tkevsa aboard. Then, springing a chill into her heart, the two on either side dropped from the machine and spread themselves flat against the air. Distracted as she was, the machine itself fled her awareness before it had left the scene.
"They glide," Heiras said firmly, trying to reassure herself. "It's how they travel. It's no different from what any migrating seabird does. Except they're not birds!" A shaky, humorless chuckle trickled out. "They're so heavy, they have no feathers, how do they do it?!"
Undeniably they were gliding, the two of them in formation, with a sizable object slung between them. With increasing horror Heiras watched their approach, seemingly on a direct collision course with her and Vrugnis. "They'll turn off. They'll land. They know we're here." And then the thought flew into her head again-- What if they can't see?
In panic Heiras flung herself to the side, straight into the path of the right-hand tkevsa, who along with the other had released their burden and veered away at the last possible moment. With a frantic midair twist the tkevsa narrowly avoided striking her, and flopped onto the ground just beyond where she lay with her arms over her head. Immediately upon rolling upright, the tkevsa let loose with a voluminous harangue.
"All right, all right, I'm sorry!" Heiras spat out as she levered herself back to her feet. "Featherhead. Ought to have known better. They've probably done drops like this hundreds of times." She returned to Vrugnis's medical machine, the furious tkevsa following without a pause. "Look you, I've no doubt I deserve some of that, but I'll have you know gratuitous insults are not tolerated where I'm from!"
At Vrugnis's growl the other tkevsa suddenly broke off with a snort and spun halfway around, knocking both feet against the offending human before lumbering away. Heiras lurched forward under the impact, almost diving across the machine. "I suppose, by tkevsa standards, I was just let off easy," she grumbled as she recovered her feet. "Never mind, then. Let's see what this delivery is."
Throughout all this Vrugnis was unwrapping the bundle the two tkevsa had left. Immobilized inside was the smallest tkevsa she'd yet seen, oozing blood from a number of long, straight wounds and sporting an obviously dislocated front leg. Heiras sucked in her breath. "Oh my deeps, you're just a baby. You poor little thing, what happened to you?"
More delicately than it seemed possible, Vrugnis transferred the injured child to the machine's tabletop. With a few swift motions of his feet various sections of the table shrank until it fit the little body perfectly. Heiras hummed approval. "Ingenious. I want one." As he set to work adjusting the damaged limb, she went on "I hope you'll let me assist." Her hands still shook from the close call, but they calmed as soon as she touched the soft skin. "Don't worry, little one, you're in good hands." She smirked. "If you'll forgive the figure of speech."
As she gently stroked the infant's head, one black eye opened, then quivered shut. "Vrugnis, haven't you anything to dull pain? I don't know about your species, but in mine, the young feel it more keenly than the grown." She crouched and opened her kit. "Now, I have something-"
As her hand came clear holding a dosing packet, Vrugnis reached over with two toes and smacked her knuckles. "Credit me with some sense! This isn't deeps-cheater, it's much less potent. Two hours of relief, just enough to get through the worst of it. And it's wrapped in a measured injector. Full amount for an adult, a quarter dose for a baby-"
The toes snatched the injector and tossed it into the shelter to land in the middle of the dirt circle. Heiras pressed her lips thin, then sighed. "You're probably right, at that. Who knows what it would do to a different species. Well and good, I'll describe it to you later. Do you object if I work on these wounds, at least?"
Out of the kit she brought a roll of skin seal and a cylinder of wound cleanser. Immediately Vrugnis knocked the cylinder away. "Well, what, then?!" Heiras snapped in exasperation. "You can't expect me to seal up these gashes without doing something to prevent infect-" She stopped short as Vrugnis shifted a foot to bring out a hidden tray from underneath the table containing a stash of apparently unmarked jars. He brushed his whiskers across their tops, then pinched one between two toes and deposited it in her hand.
"Vrugnis, I am beginning to be convinced you understand every word I say." She lifted the cap from the jar, frowning slightly at the contents. It held a brown and slightly gritty paste, putting her in mind of mud mixed with sand. Despite her misgivings she unwrapped a clean applicator brush from her kit and dipped it into the jar. "I'm sorry about this, little one," she murmured as she painted the substance on the edges of the broken skin, "but the chief physician has decided against pain relief, and I'm sure he knows what he's doing."
With a pocket blade she trimmed from the roll of sealing a handful of carefully-sized strips. "Now, I'm afraid this will hurt some, as I'll be pulling where you're already sore, but it won't be as bad as whatever did this to you in the first place." She began with two strips laid to either side of the cut, then from one end to the other pinched it closed as she smoothed a third strip along the closing gap.
As she worked on the fourth of the collection of wounds, Vrugnis spared one of his feet to investigate her technique. "I'm glad it meets with your approval," she commented drily. "I'll leave some with you, if you like. How's the leg?" She glanced over to see it partially enclosed in a glistening material. "Oh, and that'll harden up, will it? Very nice. Seems I ought to be paying more attention to what you're doing."
Between strip applications she paused to observe the process of straightening the youngster's leg. The paste was a mixture of materials from two separate jars, and felt warm when she leaned across to hover her hand over it. The first section had already dried to a dull texture. When the entire casing had dried and cooled, Vrugnis closed the drawer of jars. Spinning himself to face the wind, he slapped his feet together to knock the remnants of paste from his toes and then groomed the dust from his whiskers by alternately drawing one foot across the other.
That appeared to be the end of the procedure. Vrugnis nosed under the harness and with the same quick little hops pushed the whole apparatus, machine and infant, back into the shelter. Heiras re-packed her kit and ducked in after. Brushing the rejected pain treatment to the side, she dragged the raking stick over the circle and wrote query; after a frenzied consultation of the translation guide she gave up and defaulted to cause.
Vrugnis slid himself over to the circle and began a reply. As it grew in complexity, Heiras felt her stomach sink. "It'll take me a good three hours to puzzle this out!" she moaned. "And I've already-"
"Heiras!" a voice from outside called. "Time's up! We're heading back. You coming, or spending the night?"
"Give me a good half rest!" Heiras shouted back. "I need to make notes!" As quickly as she dared she copied the intricate figure onto another blank page of the guide. "Sorry, that's the end of the day for me, but I'll be back tomorrow." Scooping up the guide along with her kit, she crouch-walked out from under the low roof. "All right, Shoran, I'm ready."
"Who's that one?" asked the lanky figure waiting beside the outpost's runner.
"Vrugnis, why?" Heiras replied, and was startled when Shoran bent down to the shelter's entrance and hollered into it "Rising tides, Vrugnis, have a good night!"
"And what was that all about?!"
Shoran shrugged. "Why not be polite? They seem to like hearing their names. Who's the one in the back? Looked small enough to be a pup."
"Yes, and a badly injured one. As to a name-" Heiras grimaced. "I forgot to ask. I'll find out tomorrow. Tonight I'll be busy with a little translation project. Unless you can make sense of this on sight?" She handed it over, open to the last page she'd filled in.
Shoran took the open guide from her, held it up, squinted at it, rotated it. Then, with a grunt, handed it back. "You'll have to take it to Follas for help."
"Oh, probably," Heiras acknowledged. "But I'd like to see how much I can pull out on my own."
In the end, even Follas didn't know all of it. A trio of "danger birds" had attacked a group of tkevsa in a purposeful gathering--the lead linguist guessed social or familial--and this particular young tkevsa had been carried off. A protector of the group then discharged a weapon at the bird, which dropped the tkevsa. But for unknown reasons the tkevsa failed to glide, and suffered a hard landing.
"That means you were more badly hurt than I realized," Heiras said to that tkevsa the next day. "Luckily your skull is thicker than mine. Still, it'll take you longer to heal if you have internal injuries to recover from as well, you poor little thing." She shook her head. "I can't keep calling you that. Vrugnis?" She scooted over to the circle and drew query, name.
Vrugnis read it, but instead of drawing a reply he only added a negative modifier to it. Aloud he answered in the form of a series of harsh sounds like sarcastic laughter. "No name, only insults?" Heiras asked incredulously. "No, if you please, I don't care what your traditions are, I am not referring to a child with that kind of language. Looks like you'll continue to be Poor Little Thing as far as I'm concerned."
From then on Heiras chattered as freely to Poor Little Thing as to Vrugnis, neither expecting nor getting a response. Vrugnis confirmed that in addition to the dislocated shoulder, Poor Little Thing had a fractured humerus and a minor concussion, which well explained the lack of activity. But as several days passed and the young tkevsa showed no external sign of improvement, the human doctor began to worry.
"Not that I've ever been a children's doctor," she admitted to Vrugnis, "but one thing I know about children is they're supposed to be active and energetic. When a young patient is this cooperative, it's a sign that something's wrong, and I can't help being bothered that you don't appear to be the least bit concerned." She steered the table machine into place, set the brake, and dropped the handle she'd been pumping--apparently hopping was necessary to power its belt. "Two hours in the sun and I'd swear you slept the whole time! How do you expect to recover if you don't move any of your working parts?"
Heiras sat herself dejectedly by the dirt circle. It still contained a lonely query, which she'd drawn before their excursion and found herself stymied. With a sigh she added the sign duration. It would be useful to know how long Vrugnis expected Poor Little Thing to be confined to the table, but it wasn't the information she really needed. And for this, the guide was no help. "We could discuss symptoms, treatments, even the weather all day. But toys? Games? Fun? Jokes? What do your youngsters do to entertain themselves? Why didn't anyone ever think to ask that?"
She glanced down at Vrugnis's reply. "...Six more days? Really? Now that's a suspiciously short time for a broken bone to mend enough to walk on. Either we're completely misunderstanding each other, or you have a treatment I desperately want to know the secret of. I hope it's the latter." She started to draw another query, but stopped. "Is that why you're not worried? Because you know it will be a short recuperation?" She shook her head, frowning. "Six days may be short for a bone, but it's an eternity for a bored child." She hesitated. "No...not bored."
Heiras cleared the circle and drew problem. After a long consideration, Vrugnis left another query beside it. "And already I've confused you? That's no surprise. I have a hard enough time explaining this to my own species." She picked up the stick and began making random scratches in the dirt. "If Poor Little Thing were human, I'd be calling in an aura specialist about now, because all I can see is a child with no interest in getting better. Most people don't realize it, but the Deeps' Draw can hit hardest in the young. For them, the future isn't a real thing. What's happening to them in the moment feels like it will last forever."
She smoothed the scratches out from under Vrugnis's attempt to read them. "No, no, that's all nonsense. I'm just trying to think what I could do that would help. I'd prescribe a distraction, but I don't know how I'd explain it to you, and we didn't exactly bring children's playthings with us. Maybe a pet, if you had any domesticated animals-"
The thought brought her up short. "Six days, you said? Then I don't have any time to waste." Impulsively, decisively, she ran the stick through the circle. Object, personal, next day, give-to, person-damaged. "Now...about this bone treatment..."
The next morning found Heiras in the fowl yard, armed with a glove and a warming bag, staring down a mistrustful duck. "I'm sorry, I'm sure you won't like this, but you can spare a couple of eggs and I know someone who needs the company. No fuss, now," she coaxed as she reached for the nesting bird.
The duck, of course, fussed. First with a warning quack, then with a sharp jabbing beak as Heiras slid the glove's shield against the bird, pushing into the nest. "Just two, and I'm not going to eat either one. That's a promise." Heiras groped for the feel of shell, got her fingers around a single egg, and ever gently drew it out.
The duck continued to jab and scold, wings beating against the glove as it pulled away. "Oh, hush, you." Heiras slid the egg into the activated bag and tucked the padding around it. "Just one more now." Despite the duck's continued protests, she maneuvered a second egg into the bag. "Well done, you've defended your nest admirably," she complimented the duck. "And if these turn out to be drakes, we won't miss them. But even if not, as long as this works out it will be worth the loss of a few future eggs."
Not food. "That's the most important thing. These are not for eating." Heiras drew it again to be sure. "Do you understand?" Vrugnis proved he did by answering not food, eat decline. "Yes, exactly. Now..." Information, give-to, person-damaged. "Will you do that?"
Vrugnis wrote agree. Heiras waited, but he did nothing else. Made no sound, no motion, until he added continue. Her face puckered in confusion. "Did I make a mistake somewhere? Maybe if I try..." Information, query. To which Vrugnis responded agree, complete, continue. "Well, that's...interesting. Do you talk after all, but at a frequency humans can't hear?"
She took a deep breath. "Whether or no, I can't take them back at this point. Here, Poor Little Thing--this is for you." She tipped the warming bag, now barely above ambient temperature, and rolled the first egg into her hand. "I'm going to let you have a good look at this to start with." It still felt odd, presenting things to a tkevsa's feet for close examination, but so far her guess about their eyesight held true.
Poor Little Thing didn't move until Heiras tickled the egg across the sensitive foot whiskers. Then, after a startled twitch, the little tkevsa's toes closed around both her hand and the egg. "Do you know what this is? I'd be surprised if you hadn't eaten an egg before. But this one is different. There's a baby duck inside, and in a few days--hopefully not too many--it's going to break its way out."
The toes tugged at the egg, then relaxed their grip. "Satisfied? Good. Now, this part's going to be very strange to you." Heiras wriggled herself around to Poor Little Thing's undamaged front leg. "I'm going to tuck it right here, where it will stay warm." She nestled the egg into a likely-looking joint space, then guided the second one out of the bag to join its sibling. "Heh. Funny to see an elbow where I expect a shoulder. Now don't squeeze too hard. Turn them so they stay warm on all sides if you can. When they start to hatch, don't try to help them along. The ducklings have to do the work themselves."
She repeated all these instructions in writing, securing Vrugnis's promise to convey them to Poor Little Thing. "By the way, I hope you don't start thinking this is something I do all the time. A pet is a treatment that comes with significant responsibility. But I've noticed that having something to take care of can do wonders for reviving someone's interest in life."
"Heiras. Wake up."
The sound of her name dragged her partway out of sleep. "Hunh? Wha? Budtahar? Wha's goin'on?"
"Emergency. You're needed."
That word was enough to finish the job. "Something happen? An accident?"
"No idea. We just sighted a message that the tkevsa big-shot medic needs a human hand."
Heiras shoved herself out of bed, squinting into the lantern light. "All right, I'll get my kit. Thanks, Budtahar. Did you already rouse Shoran?"
"Not gonna bother. Since it's an emergency, I'm flying you in."
Heiras felt the blood drain out of her face. "Fly? Flying? In that bird machine? At night? No. No, no no. I'd far rather take the runner."
"Runner's too slow," Budtahar argued back. "If they want you now, they're getting you as close to now as possible. You've been working with that little one of theirs, haven't you? Whatever's happened to it is serious enough they didn't wait until daylight to ask."
Heiras choked on her own breath. Her whole body seemed to cease function for an instant. An undignified whine came from somewhere inside her.
"You coming or not?"
Hoarsely, "Coming."
Heiras dropped onto the flat, oblong seat--designed for tkevsa, of course, not humans--and buried her face in the padding. "How long," she gasped, "will it be?"
"Once we're in the air? About a quarter hour. Better grab on tight. You're not using any controls, so you can just link your ankles under the seat."
She followed the welcome advice, wrapping her arms around the tkevsa chin rest as well for good measure. "Isn't there a safety harness?" she asked weakly.
Budtahar laughed. "And what would a tkevsa do with one?"
"You couldn't have put something in?!" Though she wasn't sure suddenly whether she really wanted it. When the erratic machine went diving toward the ground, would she rather be tied to it or not?
The machine's engine began sputtering. "Ready?"
"NO!" Heiras wailed, but the vehicle lurched forward anyway. Forward and up, and then down, hitting the ground again and then bounding up, repeating the process until the downward plunge ended in a smooth lift rather than a bone-shaking jolt.
She turned her head to protect her face from the wind and squeezed harder. Her stomach was still somewhere below, trying to catch up to her, soaring up whenever the machine dipped and diving when it rose. The sickening motion was only partly to blame; the rest was from fear of what she would find when she landed.
"He swore Poor Little Thing was two days from walking again. What could have happened? Those wounds all healed, no infection, hardly any scarring even. Was there more serious brain damage than he thought? Something internal he didn't detect? I should have insisted on packing the scanner just once, I could have made it fit a tkevsa somehow!"
"Sorry, can't hear you!" Budtahar bellowed over the combined roar of wind and engine.
"Not talking to you!" Heiras shouted back.
"Then why are you talking at all?!"
"It's keeping me from being sick!"
The landing was worse. Budtahar killed the engine and brought them down in a bobbing spiral, unhelpfully explaining "Gotta lose enough energy to come down softly instead of crashing." It felt enough like crashing as it was, bouncing alternately and repeatedly on the rear and front shock absorbers.
Ultimately Heiras was successful in holding on to the contents of her stomach, through both pure will and not opening her eyes once until she was standing on solid ground on her own two feet. She retrieved her kit with a trembling hand, switched on her lamp, and staggered toward Vrugnis's half-house.
Budtahar, the show-off, gave a massive yawn. "Tell me as soon as you know how long you'll be. I'd like to get in a nap while I'm waiting if there's time."
Heiras threw the technician a murderous look. "I'm going nowhere else with that flying death machine. You can tell Shoran to pack me some breakfast and lunch. I'll be waiting for pickup tomorrow as usual."
The lantern reflected back a glittering pair of eyes waiting just inside the shelter. "I'm here, Vrugnis. How's Poor Little Thing doing?" Her knees, still shaky, buckled as she bent to enter, and she ended by sliding almost headlong across the room.
Without even getting up she waved the lamp around the interior. Poor Little Thing flinched away from the beam with a vigorous headshake. "Oh, dear, sorry." Heiras hooded the lamp, only afterward noticing an unexpected difference in posture. "That's funny. You look more alert than I've ever seen you. How can that be a bad sign?"
Vrugnis started a repetitive hacking sound, and Heiras turned to look more closely at him. "It can't be you that's in trouble. You wouldn't need my help if you were." He slapped his front fin on the ground, next to the dirt circle. "Oh, thank your sense, you have an explanation all ready for me. But-" She cut herself off with a groan. "Did I think to bring the guide along? Of course not. I very much hope the practice I've had is enough."
She set the lamp where it would cast light across the circle, enhancing the depth contrast between the grooves and the smooth sand. "Query. I do love that term, I could draw it in my sleep by now. Query...that's 'instructions', isn't it? You need instructions? From me? By the tides, about what?!"
Into the following silence a tiny peep intruded.
Horrified enlightenment crawled down her spine. Taking the lamp with her she crept to Poor Little Thing's side and picked up the eggs, one after the other. One of them had a small cracked bulge in the side, the other a longer gap through which the tip of a tiny beak glistened in the light.
"This! THIS is your emergency! I just risked my life flying out here to watch ducks hatch!!" she howled. "That liar! I should have asked what the message was instead of taking the word of a careless-tongued fraudulent value-breaker!"
Poor Little Thing flinched away again. "I'm sorry." Heiras spoke more calmly now. "I'm not angry at you. Either of you," she clarified. "Naturally you'd want someone knowledgeable on hand. So now that I'm here, I'll get to the part where I reassure you that everything's happening according to nature."
Heiras picked up an egg in each hand. "They've both pipped, which is an excellent start. Still, it could take a few hours for them to hatch completely." She began to set them back down, but paused. "I wonder...could I trust you to be careful? Normally I wouldn't interfere with a hatching egg by holding it, but there's no other way you'll know exactly what they're doing."
She looked to each tkevsa in turn, weighing the risk against the reward. "I'll chance it," she decided finally. "If I'm worried they'll get hurt I'll take them away, that's all." And she nestled the eggs into the palm of one of Poor Little Thing's feet.
It was gratifying to see the young tkevsa, who had been nothing but lethargic for all of Heiras's past acquaintance, respond with such interest as the ducklings pecked and pecked against their round prison walls. At first, every time one of the eggs gave a particularly strong lurch, Poor Little Thing responded with a similar twitch, but soon the irregular motions became familiar. Those always amazing whiskers drifted over and around the eggs and the shell fragments gathering in tiny untidy heaps.
"I would love to know what kind of sensory image that gives you," Heiras mused wistfully. "Careful you don't get pinched, though. When that crack gets far enough around, it'll start opening and closing like tiny jaws. Could catch some of those delicate hairs of yours."
As the second egg caught up with the first, a new peeping melody line joined into a cacaphonous chorus. "Good, strong ducklings. Ooh, feel that? That's the duckling starting to push against the cap." The uneven edges of the gap opened and shut, straining against a still-linked shell hinge, stretching just a little farther each time. "You can do it," she whispered encouragingly.
The sun was above the horizon, sending early light through the opening in the roof, when the first little duckling pushed its head through the lid of its shell and greeted the bright world. "Beautiful!" Heiras breathed, although the duckling was anything but. It was an ugly, twitching mass of wet feathers, scrawny neck, pathetic wings, and it lay collapsed in the rest of the shell with its eyes glazed over and its lungs pumping madly.
"You rest now. You've earned it." To emphasize the point, she scooted back to the circle and wrote wait. "The poor thing's exhausted," she explained to Vrugnis as she drew. "It's been fighting that shell with all its might for more than a full day. It needs to rest for a while, gather its strength, pull all the nourishment it can from the last of the yolk." She chuckled. "Once it's dry and fluffy...that's when you'll have to start chasing it down. You're going to wonder why I cursed your clinic with a pair of baby ducks, but I hope you'll eventually agree that they'll provide good exercise for a young tkevsa recovering from a broken bone."
It was another hour before the second duckling finished hatching. By then the first one was already proving how much trouble it could be. Poor Little Thing was hard pressed to keep track of the now-active ball of fluff as it nibbled and poked at sensitive pieces of tkevsa anatomy. Heiras giggled unsteadily, fighting off the twin demands of sleep and hunger. "Congratulations, your feet have just adopted ducklings!"
"Heiras, you still in there? Sorry about being late."
Ah, breakfast! Suddenly alert, she uttered "Be right back!" and crawled out into the open. She picked herself up and skipped eagerly toward the direction of the voice.
"What's been going on?" Shoran asked as Heiras snatched the offered bundle of food and peeled back the wrapper. "Budtahar said something about the little pup being in a bad way. It turned out all right, I hope?"
She hesitated before her first bite, grinning. "Well, we don't know what the future holds, do we? But for right now, things look very good indeed."
Badge by Tillerz using MJ
This is fantastic! I love this story. And yep, I'm going to need to read the others, too! So much fun!
Thanks! Eventually I'll go back and tidy it up, but for now I'm just glad I got it done in time.