I don't remember when it started anymore. Those creep-crawling ice-paws dancing across my bones, night after night, day after day. The thrice-cursed feelings just won't leave me alone, and I know those shadows over there are slinking closer every time I blink.
I try not to blink, anymore.
The room was dominated by the nest. The heap of blankets spread from wall to wall, blocking the door but for the smallest of cracks, barely large enough for her child's frame to squeak through.
She'd arranged the eggs like they'd been arranged in the strange little not-cave she'd found, deep in Akelara's heart, with its swirling mist and dank stench and unseen eyes. Like the noisome den of a feral rakkan (insane eyes and dripping saliva and jagged, old-ivory fangs), the place had made her skin crawl in self-preservation.
The call had been stronger. The siren call of terror-desire had forced her to take one step, a second, a third. Had forced her to step into the darkness she had avoided for years, had forced her eyes to dilate, had forced her to notice the threads of power that illuminated the dark with their painful anti-glow.
The eggs had stood out, perfect stones in an imperfect cave, places where the too-dark threads of power didn't touch. A welcome relief from the blinding anti-light.
She had reacted without thinking, wove a net of threads under the nest, scooped what she could and took off running, trailing eggs like a mother duck trailed ducklings. It had been a long, harrowing run, from the depths of Akelara's Left Wing, to the depths of Akelara's Right Wing. A run to her secret room, where she went to hide when the world was too much.
I see the lines more clearly now. Why did I ever fear it before? I am it and it is I. I know what power is now, and why did I ever fear it? Aunt and Uncle would be so proud, to see that I have 'conquered my fear', but have I? Or have I just learned what fear really is?
Why do I care about them, again?
She woke to the echoes of animalistic screams and burrowed deeper into the nest, shivering with the sweat that drenched her in ice-water. Those were her screams, bouncing, echoing, amplified by the very eggs she curled against. That was her shame, loosed for the universe to hear, held safe from the ears of others by the same stone that tormented her.
She wanted to croak the command for the crystals to shed their gentle light, but her treacherous voice would not respond, her throat in burning tatters. The eggs didn't want the light, anyway, and wasn't the not-light of the threads more than enough for someone of her lineage to exist by? She didn't want to be consumed by those threads. (But was that something to fear? Power didn't know terror, or pain, or anguish.)
Instead, she curled tighter in the circle of eggs. Two large, eight tiny, her own miniature fortress against the world. They terrified her, but terror was a close companion. Terror was a known. Terror reminded her of the rakkan that had stood over her, eyes ablaze and fangs gleaming in the torchlight of the searchers. Terror reminded her of mangy fur, hot breath, and shivering in the fingers of icy breeze that wisped into the deep lair.
She didn't remember anymore. Had she been afraid of the rakkan, or of the searchers, the family who desired to reclaim her?
Aunt and Uncle are looking for me, I know they are, but I can't let them. Come here. Can't let them see. They don't approve. (Do they even know? I don't remember. I know they wouldn't approve.) They don't understand. Can't. They have themselves, and dragons, and Mage-horses, and dedications. And I don't. Don't even have them.
Why'd they have to leave?
It was like her year in the wild all over. But this time there was no warm, feral rakkan watching over her. Only cold, hard eggs standing like marble tombstones around her place of rest. And that was soothing, despite the dream-terrors that took her every time she closed her eyes.
This time, there were blankets, covering the entire room. (And what a room! A kingdom in itself, ten feet on a side, rough-hewn walls, alcoves for perching above the floor like some violet-eyed albino raven, possessed by a demon of omen.) Her few possessions lay scattered about in the highest alcoves. A blood-stained rock. An old-ivory colored fang as large as her hand. A silver chain, broken, the pendant lost. A tattered tunic, the emblem nearly obliterated. Her life, condensed neatly into objects.
No. They wouldn't approve.
But she had to wait, hidden from the rest of the Clan, until the eggs hatched. She had learned, with the rakkan, how to survive long confinements. Her supplies were suitable. Her patience still fresh. She would wait until they hatched.