Flit Acquisition (3/3)

Writers: Duskdog, Steel
Date Posted: 12th April 2025

Characters: V'tian, Chandrany
Description: V’tian and Chandrany go flit-hunting
Location: Dolphin Cove Weyr, Elsewhere on Pern
Date: month 6, day 12 of Turn 12

Chandrany

V'tian's head snapped up, and then he was at her side in an instant, his own shovel tossed aside.

Down the beach, Indith was jarred awake by the exclamation and the sudden burning jealousy that ignited, however briefly, and she lifted her head. }:Mine?:{

V'tian was focused on digging, very nearly shoulder to shoulder with Chandrany.

And then he saw it, the soft curve of a _big_ shell. “First pick.” He said, instantly, beginning to carefully excavate it.

As much as she wanted to protest, she couldn’t -- those _had_ been the terms, and she couldn’t pause in her digging now -- if anything, it was more urgent now. She’d broken an egg. What if she’d killed a firelizard?

As her fingers worked into the sand where she’d been digging, they came against something hard. Slowing down, forcing herself to be more careful in her excitement, she carved the sand away from around the shell of another egg. Intact. Maybe she _hadn’t_ actually broken one, all evidence to the contrary? “Oh, _another_!” she breathed.

V'tian looked up at her exclamation, though he was still mostly focused on the egg he'd found and excavating it. “Keep digging-- if there's two there might be more.”

She freed the egg from its confines and set it aside, then, belatedly, realized it still needed warmth and instead put it in the edge of the hole near her shovel, covering it only partially with loose sand so that she could still easily tell where it was, but hopefully also keep it warm. Even with the other egg still partially buried, it was obvious that the one she’d found was smaller, but she hardly cared in the moment. All that mattered was that she’d found one, and it was okay, and it was now branded in her heart as _hers_. She’d punch V’tian in the teeth if he tried to take it from her.

Now, with that egg removed, she could see that it had been partially covering a second egg, a mottled shell with a crack running the length of it. Heart in her throat, she dug away at it, her fingers coming away wet with goo as she uncovered the shattered end of the egg. It was a wonder her shovel hadn’t destroyed both eggs, as close together as they’d been, but no -- it had hit the end of one of them and cracked it open, and now the sticky, nourishing fluid that had kept a growing baby firelizard safe was seeping out into the sand around its corpse.

She choked back a horrified gasp and brushed sand back over the broken body quickly, eyes burning. She couldn’t bear to look at it.

It seemed wrong to keep on digging, but what would happen to the rest of them now? V’tian’s efforts had revealed a patch of shell behind his large egg, and she moved around the hole -- away from the dead firelizard who never got to be -- to dig gently, half-heartedly, around this new egg.

V’tian was quiet a moment, claiming his egg from the nest-pile and setting it aside, scooping up some warm sand and covering it just a little bit. “.... We can't leave the nest here now.” He said, quietly. “Not… like this.” Predators could come.

He took a deep breath. “... If there's more eggs, we'll take them too. And… re bury the one left.”

That set her heart somewhat at ease. It was nice to hear a solemn plan from someone else, and… if she were completely honest with herself, nice to have a justification for continuing to dig as if their digging isn’t what caused the problem in the first place.

They weren’t guaranteed to survive if they’d been left alone, she reminded herself. If predators didn’t get the eggs, they probably often got the babies as they emerged from their shells and shook off the sand. That’s how nature worked.

The egg she was working on revealed itself slowly, but it seemed intact, and was warm under her fingers. Carefully, she extracted it from the sand and put it safely next to the first. It was obviously a little larger, but she didn’t think she’d be able to guess what might be inside.

“It looks like there might be another there?” she pointed to a spot to the other side of where V’tian’s egg had been.

V'tian nodded. “I'll dig it out and check for any left, watch our eggs. Go get the buckets out of Indith’s saddlebag, right lower bag.” He told her. “We'll need them.”

Chandrany was loathe to leave her eggs, but they needed the protection of the buckets, so she pushed herself up off her knees and waved at Indith on her way over. “It’s your turn to be the hero, sweet girl… let me see your saddlebags!”

She didn’t have to rummage to find them, and as soon as she had them, she hurried back to the hole.

“Any more?” she asked, filling the bottom of the buckets with a cushion of warm sand.

“... Just this one.” V'tian responded, and nodded to the smaller of the two eggs; the bigger one sat behind it, more or less buried still. He'd taken a quick look at it while Chandrany was bucket fetching and it was _definitely_ the biggest of the four surviving eggs.

The smaller egg seemed about the size of one of Chandrany’s, and a flit was a flit. He wasn’t going to risk not getting what he wanted, so he was going to keep both.

“... Are the buckets ready?” He asked, and Indith crooned softly to the tiny eggs.

“Ready to go,” she said. Carefully, she dug a little indentation in the sand at the bottom of the buckets, and then picked up each of her eggs and nestled them into those spots, covering them again with warm sand. “Do you need help digging out the big one?”

“I have it. Just there.” V'tian nodded to the small pile of sand next to his smaller egg. “... make sure you put enough sand in. We'll have to fly back straight so the eggs don't get cold.”

He began to prepare the buckets for his own eggs, first the smaller one-- was that a discolored patch on one side?-- and then the bigger one.

“I don’t even know where we _are_,” she pointed out with a little laugh, more excited nerves than anything. “So I don’t know how long that’ll take.” She got V’tian’s smaller egg situated in a little sand cocoon in its bucket, too, packing sand a little tighter around each of the eggs, just in case. Hopefully that would keep them from jostling on the flight, too, as well as keeping them warm.

“When we get home, we’ll need to transfer them to pots and keep them near a hearth or something, right?” she continued. “I think I remember that much.”

V'tian squinted at the sun's angle, visually comparing it to the spot it had been back at the Weyr, and on arrival here. “A little bit more than half an hour, if Indith stretches out and _really_ flies.” He half guessed. “And yeah-- keep them covered in sand and somewhere warm. Not hot, something a bit more on the warm side. The buckets and our sand will do until then though.”

}:I can do it, Mine.:{ Indith said.

“I… I killed one,” Chandrany said, as if he hadn’t already seen, as if he hadn’t already promised they would bury it. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t even think about the shovels…”

“... It might have died anyway.“ V'tian said, but not harshly. “Wild wherries, felines, tunnelsnakes… and they hatch pretty small.”

A pause. “The firelizards _shouldn't_ want to use this spot again to nest.”

“I guess they don’t all survive,” she agreed reluctantly. “It’s like that in nature. And… maybe we’re saving these others. Maybe they would have gotten eaten. So maybe it balances.”

She didn’t think her shovel exactly counted as “nature”, but it felt better to say it, at least.

“I’m going to dig this hole a little deeper for him, so he doesn’t just get dug up, and then I’ll help load up our stuff. And, uh… I’m sorry. That could have been your bronze.”

“... This other big egg could be a bronze too.” V'tian responded, nodded toward the now-covered in sand pot. “... but we'll see, I guess.”

A pause and he added awkwardly, “... it was my idea to use shovels.“

“I guess there’s not really any other way to do it,” she replied. “It’s not your fault.”

Last updated on the April 15th 2025

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Flit Acquisition (3/3)