Cybella

The clan’s nursery is an explosion of happy shrieks and coos. Through the midst of the joyful madness sails Cybella, a hatchling cupped under each wing. She giggles and chortles and babbles back at the young ones, the master of their secret language. They reach out to her with sticky paws. She lifts them high and tosses them--one! two! three!--returns them safe to earth, nuzzles their tiny heads and whispers gentle words. They climb her plush form like a mountain of soft sky and bury themselves in her feathers. She gives them rides around the lair, tending her affairs while adorned with their bouncing forms. The older hatchlings smile shyly, bow, acknowledge her with respect and poorly-concealed affection. She laughs and cuffs them gently, tells them to call her Cy.

When the sun sinks, she settles herself amongst the little ones. She lends them her downy sides as a living pillow, but her eyes are hard. She reassures the hatchlings with a rickety grin, the corners of her mouth twitching frightfully as she tries to hide her unease. Outside lurks the night and all its terrors. Long ago, Cybella had nearly given her life for a stranger’s egg. Now the strangers were family, and she would die a thousand deaths before the darkness so much as tested the threshold. A power lurks in her flickering smile that settles over the hatchery and blankets it in the promise of gentle dreams. When morning comes, she wakes the young ones with soft kisses, but pauses over FairyFloss. He rises ever so slightly, holds her in his trembling eyes. How different those eyes, and how similar their promise! Together they are warm nights and soft beds and kind stories, but his eyes are closing and he is drifting off. She feels her heart settle. There are eggs to tend to and hatchlings to hug. Her life and her heart are theirs, and she is content.

~~Lore by Oranitha~~


By Usagiglower