1.8

Her friend arrived immediately, seeping up with a creaking shift of the old stones as bog peat pried its way between them. Parting the stone through the expedient of simply lifting them up and out of the way. Peat turned sopping with sulfurous water and then in the time it took Jewel to begin breathing far too rapidly the black spire of vine-like heaving ‘substance’ arrived.

By the time the brim of the hat unfurled like the wings of a crane and the crescent of pale blue-ish grey skin pierced free Jewel was already speaking, her voice rising in whispered panic.

Straining to keep her volume down so as to not disturb the sounds of slumber from her mother and newly born sister.

“Tsulogothulan!”

Before her friend could finish picking a side of their nose to push out their eye Jewel was already tripping over her words.

Cradling the topic of her panic in her hind claws as gently as she could. Almost afraid to squeeze the thing which had apparently slid out of her.

“I just! I just now! Tsulogothulan!”

A burbling croak of a frog sliding into a heron wail in the wind passed swamp reeds drug its way past earthy effluvient.

“Tsulogothulan this is no time for japes I just laid an egg!”

The eye finally popped free ponderously on the very tip of the weird’s nose. Like the bud of some grotesque tree and then rolled in all directions glancing everywhere before finally settling on the egg partly cradled in Jewel’s coils and feet.

“I’m sorry?! say wot Jewel!?”

Actual words rolled free in classic Tsulogothulan fashion. But far too loudly.

Jewel shushing with a hiss more suited for water dropped into a hot pan then any civil noise.

“Quiet! Mother is convalescing after giving birth!”

Which actually brought up a good point: Tsulogothulan was Father’s sworn wizard. Why were they not present to see to his wife’s birthing labor?!

“Where were you?!”

The Weird for their part shushed Jewel with a black, gauze-wrapped finger that seemed more rotten bones with dark rotting flesh then the clothed appendage it sometimes appeared to be.

“Quiet Jewel, your mother is convalescing. And I’m no good with births. They don’t involve eggs hatching or swamp water. If your mother was a heron, fish or toad I’d have been of great service. But few beasts which bear children as men do pass my waters.”

Jewel was about to make a very inappropriate noise.

But the Weird had leaned over her... Her egg!

Jewel had laid an egg!?

And then proceeded to rap it quite loudly with a single gauzy knuckle.

The sound seemed to fill Jewel’s entire head with the thunderous presence of it. It was like a blow had been made to her skull with a mountain.

It left her stunned and deafened before a terribly grating scrape followed, echoing up and down her bones. Filling the world with the awful noise and making jewel hiss for quiet, for comfort, to just make the sound stop.

“Stop that!”

Which happened, but more because the Weird and her friend had recoiled back, body bending in several places it should not. Somewhat mirroring Jewel’s own rearing curved neck posture whenever she was over shamed or frightened.

It took her several slow breaths between them before she realized that she had brought her wyrmflame to rest in her mouth with the demand.

Could feel it laced and waiting with terrible potency on her tongue. Fizzling and flaring on the errant air that yet slipped past her lips.

It took great effort to swallow the threat back down her throat and pull it into the rest of her flesh.

“I... I’m sorry my friend. But it was so loud.”

Tsulogothulan for their part withdrew their eye from the tip of their nose and then pushed it out to blink wet and loudly on one side. Shaking themselves out of the sinuous curve they had contorted into and becoming a posture much more manshaped.

Exhibiting lumps that might be shoulders, hints of a torso and hips beneath the now far more cloth-like pillar that their body was.

Still black and slick but more like a garment wetly clinging to a body beneath rather than an extended oozing pillar of fleshy tree limbs masquerading as a person.

Voice soft and rounded but even less reedy and swampy.

“I... I’m sorry Lady Jewel, but that is terribly interesting. I hardly touched it harsher than this.”

And the weird rapped against Jewel’s coils (well away from the egg) and then dragged their ‘nail’ (just a sharper edge on a finger) against her scales.

It was incredibly gentle.

Something that would not have even left a mark on a maiden’s skin.

Almost un-notable to Jewel’s scales.

Which hardly made sense, but since when had anything made any sense when it came to growing up as a tyrant wyrm?

“But... it felt like I was being pummeled and gouged by the terror boar all over again!”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

The bog wizard scratched at their ‘nose’ under the one eye. Then nodded softly.

“Interesting, and most peculiar. You laid that egg? How did you manage that?”

Jewel gawked at her friend aghast, then looked down between her thighs and the scales which she had been just about certain were entirely smooth and without any hint of blemish or parting as she’d seen in any of the farm animals or other beasts.

That was actually a good question.

“I... I’m not entirely sure.”

She’d been thinking, feeling, all but caught up in the rhythm and working of the wise woman for Mother. The rhythm of birth and protections erected for it.

Had been leaning into it as she had felt herself when performing other workings and had sympathy pangs to her mother’s own labors when-

“Ah! I see, so you are at least partly female.”

Tsulogothulan was staring between Jewel’s legs.

Jewel blinked slowly, then in dawning comprehension she found she could not restrain her wings from flaring and her neck curling back aghast.

A new motion also joined that one completely unintended but welcome all the same, her hind limbs crossing so her thighs came together to cover the place the Weird had been staring at.

Jewel could not find any words. She could not find any words at all. Everything was colliding in her head in a jumbled mess.

Confusion, horror, new found ways to feel shame.

But under all of it was a surge of relief and a completely unexpected joy.

Jewel was in fact a lady, as she had asserted for her entire life.

The ambiguity of whether that was true, whether it even applied to Wyrms had haunted her.

But there she was, with an egg nestled in her tightly wound tail.

All the requisite parts for womanhood.

Well half of them.

But still!

Something now made her the same as her mother and her newly born sister.

It almost let her forget the sheer incredible absurdity of how she had found out.

“B-but, I’ve never been with anyone before! That’s not how it’s supposed to work!”

Tsulogothulan stared pointedly into Jewel’s eyes with their one.

The big violet colored iris of the orb and it's over thick lashes blinking even slower than usual.

Scraping the lid closed even more audibly.

Popping it free of the interlocking lashes even more sharply after a brief clinging to remain joined.

Then that gaze fell on the egg for a time and then again returned to Jewel, and just to make the point abundantly clear, shoulders popped into place to either side of where Tsulogothulan’s neck generously could be said to widen into a torso.

The left and then the right.

And only then did they shrug so slowly and so intentionally that Jewel was starting to become rather cross with her friend, but more so with the absurdity that was her life, her world and everything. It all seemed absolutely obsessed with bringing to her as many burdens as possible.

Her friend offered in a soft but also commiserating tone.

“The entire reason I am here to observe and describe you for the next thirteen years beyond our friendship is so that it can be known precisely how it works for wyrms Lady Jewel. All bets are off on what that will be.”

Jewel just stared, then turned her gaze down to stare at her egg. It was her egg. She was certain of it, as assured of its providence and connection to her as she was her own limbs, her every coil, her mane, tongue and tail.

This egg was hers in a fundamentally true way that could not be denied.

The two were both equally shocked out of the contemplative quiet that had finally settled over them by a soft creaking voice emerging from behind the closed door to her mother’s bedroom.

“Now that y’all both have shut it for the moment, would the young Lady Jewel and the Weird Wizard Tsulogothulan kindly shove off quietly to environs that are not liable to disturb her mother and newly born sister in the middle of the night?”

Jewel was made properly aghast and whispered the softest of apologies for her poor manners.

As they departed, she settled on walking with her wings so she could gingerly carry her egg in her foreclaws.

Tsulogothulan gently cajoling the stones and miniature mire of swamp they had traveled by away to wherever they brought them from.

It was only by Jewel’s hearing that she heard the voice of the wise woman behind the door muttering a chuckling.

“And congratulations on the laying young lady.”

The condolences even if not meant for her to hear gave a warmth to her wyrmflame Jewel did not expect.