While the last of the night ebbed, and the sky gradually lightened to gray, Kiron directed Menet-ka in the hatching of his egg. Once the others were awake, they gathered around to watch, each of them knowing that when the time came, it would be he who hovered over the rocking egg with a hammer, listening intently to discover where the dragonet within was chipping now, and adding carefully measured hammer blows to the outside.

And at last, as Kiron had known it would, the egg rocked violently one last time, and broke into two uneven halves, and the new dragonet sprawled out of it and into the sand. Menet-ka gave a cry of joy, and Kiron plucked the hammer out of his hand as he flung himself at his new charge.

“Right,” he told the others, who were crowding closer for a look. “Out, all of you. This baby needs one mother, not nine, and he—” he took a look back over his shoulder and corrected himself, “—she won’t know who it is if you’re all shoving your faces at her. Don’t worry,” he added, as he herded them out before him. “You’ll get your chances soon enough. In fact—Gan, your egg isn’t that much younger than Menet-ka’s and I’d be surprised if yours didn’t start to hatch by tomorrow morning.”

That at least sent Gan scrambling back to his pen, and the rest of them realized that in the excitement they had all forgotten about breakfast.

The baby would be fine for a bit without food, and so would Menet-ka, even though the latter didn’t have a yolk sac to absorb. Kiron had his own leisurely breakfast, and went to check on Avatre, who was trying with all her might to find out what was going on in the next pen without shoving aside the awning and getting her head wet. He remembered how she had looked when she first hatched, like a heap of wet rubies and topaz. He had known then that she was going to be beautiful, and she was certainly fulfilling his every expectation.

She whined at Kiron as soon as she saw him. He grinned. “All right, my love. Come along, I’ll show you.” He put a hand on her shoulder—it was so ingrained in her never to leave the pen without him that he didn’t need to chain her—and led her to the pen next door. She didn’t like going through the dripping water—but then again, she wanted to see what was going next door so badly she put up with it.

Cautiously, she craned her head and neck around the door, and snorted with surprise at the sight of the baby. Menet-ka was oblivious; he had the dragonet’s head in his lap, and its wings spread out on either side of it atop the sand to dry, utterly absorbed in his new charge.