Tag: fantasy

Summary: A young kobold who has followed his wife to a distant Imperial posting brings his egg to the clan and discovers that he doesn’t understand as much about his new society as he thought he did.

A/N: Rated general audiences, no particular warnings.

Pale morning light caressed the creamy yellow shell of the egg, speckled with blue like Morning Daughter’s eyes. Third Son rearranged the little puffs of cotton warming their egg for the fourth or fifth time. “It’ll be all right,” he’d told Morning Daughter before he left their rooms at the far end of the compound, and she’d nodded bravely. It was the egg—it was harder than they’d thought it would be.

The rest of their move from the violet tier to the black had been difficult, but it was a good opportunity, and it hadn’t been more difficult than expected. There was the journey, which, thanks to some complications during the crossings, had taken nearly two weeks, and there was the tier itself—although this had made up for its cave-like qualities by turning out to be startlingly beautiful. Third Son had heard that the seasons on the lower tiers had more to do with location than with time, but he hadn’t really understood what that had meant until they had arrived in the middle of a raging snowstorm that gave way within a half hour’s walk to a warm, quiet spring-like day. There was also getting settled, half their furniture being lost somewhere on the green tier, and finding out just exactly how different a shared language could be.