Isabelle was surrounded by darkness. The last thing she remembered was the excruciating pain of being burned alive. She wasn’t sure why, but she chuckled, remembering the smell of her own burning flesh. She drifted in and out of consciousness, questioning where she was. Was this the underworld, had she truly died? She didn’t know.

Is this death? she asked herself. After a long time stuck in the void of non-existence something finally changed and she felt a connection to something spring forth. It glowed like a star in the dark sky. She reached out to grasp it, but her fear overpowered her and she hesitated. She was desperate to touch it and finally be free of the dark void she had come to know. But she was safe here. In this quiet, lonely place, nothing could hurt her. Not anymore. Even so…

“I’m not going to consign myself to this place forever,” she said with a confident voice in her mind and tentatively reached out to grasp her freedom. She felt the connection rush into her and a dim light poured into her vision, enveloping it entirely. It slowly got brighter and brighter until she was blinded, but the blinding only lasted for a few moments. Her vision slowly returned to normal. She saw the world again… but to her utter surprise, it was her siblings Alan and Sam’s room. Both of them were sleeping on the thin straw mattress. The only light in the room was emanating from a candle positioned nearby.

“What?” she asked herself, only for an odd noise to come out; it was stranger than fiction. If she had a facial expression, it would be one of utter confusion. Then, she realized her perspective was a little strange. She was looking up at… everything. It was the perspective a child might have, and she was no child.

Her perspective shifted forward and back and in her field of vision was a hatched egg, along with several others that were cracking at the same time. She realized what was happening but didn’t understand why. The eggs she laid were hatching in her sibling’s room. They must have found them and moved them into their room after she died. Isabelle was looking through the eyes of one of the hatchlings, the only hatchling thus far.

Isabelle felt a connection in her mind that felt difficult to describe. It was a popping sensation that flooded her senses, it felt right, as if it was always a part of her. She didn’t realize until now that it was something she’d already felt only a short while ago with the birth of the first hatchling.

Her insatiable curiosity propelled her to dive into the second connection and her perspective shifted. She was viewing things from the perspective of the second hatchling. She kept going deeper into the connection she felt with the creature and felt how it felt, both physically and mentally. It could feel her, too, and she could feel the warmth it felt from her presence. It was calling out to her in its mind as a parental figure.

She pulled back, out of the connection she felt with this creature until she was alone again in darkness with her thoughts, the connections with the creatures only being a dim light in the darkness. The further she pulled away, the dimmer they became. Several more connections popped into existence in the empty space she was in.

She stewed by herself for a long while, unsure of how to feel. I’m alive, but what am I? No. It doesn’t matter. I’ve already decided, I’m going to make the most of things. Having decided, Isabelle delved back into the connection with her creatures. She didn’t go very deep, only enough to see the world through their eyes.

Several hours must have passed because light was already filtering into the room from the rising sun outside. It was about time for Alan and Sam to wake up.

Isabelle inspected the freshly hatched creatures. They look strange, she thought. In a sense, they were adorable… for something that looked like a little murder machine. Black armor covered their bodies. Their eyes were pitch black. They had clawed hands that were meant for slicing flesh apart.

Strangely, there were some minor variations between the creatures. Two of them had dexterous hands, not that they couldn't mangle flesh. All of them had two sets of teeth; a sharp set for tearing their prey apart, and a flat set for grinding vegetation, or so she assumed. They all had tails just like hers.

Soon enough, Sam—the third oldest sibling after Alan—woke up and saw the hatched creatures crawling on the floor. Sam left the room to get her siblings and now they all crowded around the hatchlings.

“They’re so cute!” Sam said to a furious nodding agreement from Alan. Several of the siblings were petting the creatures.

“I guess the big one doesn’t want to hatch,” Alan said while staring at the big egg that was at least twice the size of the others and had yet to hatch.

“Maybe it just takes longer?” Sam suggested.

“Eh. Probably. It is pretty big,” Alan replied.

“What do you think they eat?” Tom asked, the second youngest sibling.

“Not sure. Let’s try feeding them a few different things!” Alan said, then left the room. A few minutes later he returned with an apple, slice of bread, and grass cuttings in a bowl. He also had a small amount of fish meat that was bought in town recently. He placed the food in front of the hatchlings and they ate all of it.

Isabelle felt a flood of information entering her mind through the connection she had with the creatures. She tried to take a closer look at it, to comprehend what it was. But when she got closer it became too overwhelming and she couldn’t parse it, forcing her to back away. She could feel it in the back of her mind, she’d have to take it apart piece by piece to get a better understanding. She started doing just that, skimming the fringes of the data.

“I guess they aren’t picky!” Sam said with a laugh.

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“We should take them outside!” the youngest of them, Mia, said. I’m glad she’s okay, Isabelle thought with anger as she stared at the tiny scar on Mia’s neck, wishing the perpetrator would meet a terrible fate. She regretted being incapable of giving it to him.

“Yes! They would look so cute outside,” Sam said. Each sibling grabbed a hatchling, some two. Isabelle watched through the hatchlings eyes as they were brought outside and placed in the grass. The sun was still rising higher into the sky. Immediately, the hatchlings started chomping on the grass.

“I was right. They’re cute!” Sam said with a smile.

“I’ve never seen creatures like this. Where do you think Isabelle found them? There were so many of them on her bed,” Alan asked his siblings. They all thought about the question but didn’t know the answer.

“Who knows.” Mary, the third youngest sibling, said. “It’s weird, but they do kind of look like her… after she changed.”

“Yeah, I see that too. They share some qualities,” Alan said. “Maybe she went back to those tunnels and found them. Ugh, I wish she told me where those tunnels were! Just don’t tell mom or dad. If they see them, they’ll freak.”

“You don’t think she…” Sam said. Alan and Mary both replied with a fervent “no”.

While Isabelle watched over her siblings through the eyes of the creatures she had a thought. Just how deep of a connection do I have with these creatures? Will they listen to me?

She took the opportunity to tell one of them to do something simple. She told one of them to take a few steps forward. To her surprise, it did as it was told and stopped munching on grass to take a few steps forward. It started munching on grass again while Isabelle thought of what to tell it next.

She told it to hold its arms up in the air and it did.

So cool! Isabelle thought with excitement. I can control them. They listen to me.

“What’s it doing?” Alan asked his siblings.

“I’m not sure…” Mary said.

Days passed and inevitably, the siblings were found out. They were all outside playing with the hatchlings—which had grown at least an inch or two—when their mom stumbled on them.

“What’s this?” she asked the frightened children with her hands on her hips. Uh oh… Isabelle thought.

“Uh, nothing! We’re just playing,” Alan said.

“Just playing? What are those ugly things?” Katharos asked Alan.

“We found them. Can we keep them? Pleaseeeeee!” Sam begged.

“Sam, I’m sure its mother and father are looking very hard for it. We can’t keep it,” Katharos continued her line of questioning.

“We didn’t see any parents. They’re all by themselves, if we let them go they’ll die!” Sam said. Katharos sighed and relaxed her posture.

“Alright, fine. But you’re taking care of them. Your father is not going to be happy,” Katharos said and walked away. The siblings were surprised. Most of them were expecting her to talk about how the babies looked like demons and needed to be let into the wild, but their mother had been acting differently for a while. Nonetheless, they were happy.

It took another nineteen days for the big egg to hatch. During that time, the smaller creatures had already grown bigger. They spent most of their time eating grass, scraps, even small insects and leaves. The tallest of them had grown to be a foot and a half tall while the rest were about a foot, with the smallest one just under a foot. The big egg was a foot tall. As soon as it started cracking, the siblings surrounded it to watch it hatch. Isabelle watched through the eyes of the rest of the hatchlings. As soon as it was born, she felt a connection to it. She dove into that connection and shared all of the new hatchlings' senses.

“This one looks different than the others,” Sam said.

“It does but it’s not that different,” Alan replied.

The hatchling looked different but shared a lot of similar qualities with the other creatures from the smaller eggs. It had black eyes and it was covered in a black chitin looking material while a familiar tail sprouting from its back. It was sleeker than the others and had two small horns sprouting from the top of its head, a quality which none of the other hatchlings shared.

Two of the creatures helped the new one clean itself off with their long tongues and dexterous hands. It was the same two creatures that were born different from the original eight.

The creatures grew larger every day. They continued to eat and grow over the next eighteen days. The largest one had already grown over two feet tall, while the others averaged around one and a half feet. During this time, they started digging tunnels to the point it became concerning.

Isabelle watched as one of them dug a tunnel outside, directly next to the house. It peeled apart the grass to get to the soil like it was an onion. Wanting to stop it, she delved into the connection she felt with the creature and tried to communicate with it. Stop!

It stopped what it was doing immediately. Isabelle felt powerful for having such control over this creature, but she quickly squashed those thoughts down. No, no… can’t think like that.

Still, she was curious. She’d so far skimmed the edges of the connections she felt with these creatures. What if she could do more? It seems safe so far, she thought and dived deeper into the connection she had with this one creature. The further she went, the more she understood. It’s as if they were becoming intertwined. It was then that she realized she was no longer just seeing through the creature's eyes, she was the creature. She had total and perfect control over its body. Its mind was still there—she could feel it—but it was powerless to stop her, not that it had any desire to.

She considered trying to communicate to her family that she was alive—although she was dubious if her state of existence could even be called that, even though she was currently inhabiting a body—but decided against it, feeling that they had already gone through enough. She caught them crying and there was always a depressing mood in the background of every conversation, particularly with each other. Her death caused that, though it was rare for anyone to bring it up now that some time had passed. The mood only slightly lifted lately and she didn’t want to put them through any more pain. No, she felt her time in the world had passed. She was nothing more than a fading ember.

On top of this, as much as she hated to admit it, she was worried. If anyone discovered the creatures like she was discovered Isabelle had no doubt the Church would come back again, probably with that same priest.

My family was lucky to escape persecution the first time, there’s no way they’d escape a second time. That prisoner taught me that, Isabelle thought. Even though it pained her, once night fell she ordered all of her creatures to travel into the forest together. She may not get to see her family anymore, but this way, she could keep them safe.