I found Hex before the light was straight overhead. She hunkered down in her nest of leaves and long grasses, a dead tree leaning over her back and hung up in the branches of another tree.
“This is where you picked to nest?”
She stretched her wings out and fluffed her black and white feathers up.
“Go away, Punk.” She crouched lower over her babies, covering the stone children with her arms. At that size, they couldn’t even break free of the stone. Their arms and legs and wings were all tucked in tight to their tiny bodies.
“This is a terrible nesting spot.”
“Nothing can find me here.”
“I found you.”
“Monsters can’t.”
“You’re dumber than Moose was if you think that.”
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“Get lost!” She bit at me, then stuck out a leg to kick.
I backed up out of her reach and waited.
Moonie showed up.
“Hex,” she gasped. “You’re nesting?”
“Make Punk leave. He’s going to give away my spot.”
“Somebody’s got to watch for danger,” I said.
Moonie settled on a branch of the fallen tree, humming and swinging her feet.
“It’s the gods you have to watch out for when you nest, anyway,” Hex said.
“They’re definitely going to find you,” I said.
“No they’re not!”
“They are if you keep screaming.”
She quieted down after that, cooing and clucking to nestful of stone.
I tried out a few lookout spots. The widest view was up there beside Moonie. I perched a couple branches above her. From there, I could see the ground in every direction.
The leaves were getting thin. Soon, we would be losing the daytime warmth, and the dark would turn to killing cold. Maybe not before Hex’s stone babies hatched, though.
Moonie cocked her head and stared out into the leaves. “What do you think they do with the babies?”
“Take them,” Hex said, scuttling down lower like just saying that was a threat to her babies.
“But why do they take them?” Moonie wanted to know.
I shook my head. I couldn’t guess.
“They won’t take mine,” Hex said.
I’d never heard of somebody hatching their stone babies before the gods took them, but I was tired of arguing with her, so I just watched out for monsters.