Ane brought their boot down on the shovel. Carved wood sank into loose earth. The strange power that permeated their body spiked as they pivoted to dump the soil beside them.

They would like to have discovered the energy themselves. But Orim had described it to Ane and demonstrated how it could compensate for their lessened physical strength.

Teil swung their madduck. The sod was torn away. They proceeded to break up the packed dirt and rocks below.

The two had been at it most of the day. Much as they had the previous days.

Neither of them felt fatigue. The only limit on their work hours was their focus and willingness to continue the task.

Teil stopped and straightened. “Let’s take a break.” Their tail curled anxiously. Ane was now familiar with the meaning behind that.

“I’d love to.” They had been pushing themselves to only stop when Teil did. It was working. But was also frustrating.

Teil stuck their mattuck in the ground and climbed from the trench. Ane watched as Teil pulled their boots off.

They undid their belt and shuffled out of their dirt caked trousers. It freed toned gray legs.

They sat on the grass. Leaned back. Then pulled their knees up and to the side.

Ane saw their dark labia minora between lighter gray majora. The sunlight glistened and highlighted Teil’s arousal.

They must have been thinking about pausing their work to relieve themselves. And their body responded to the prospect.

Ane felt their own body reacting to the sight. A heat and hunger unrelated to food built as the place between their legs flushed. And a nervous pressure spread down the first half dozen inches of their tail.

Teil’s pelvic muscles rhythmically clenched. They let out quiet whimpers. And a glossy black orb began to part their folds from within.

The egg was pushed past the midpoint and slid free. It left no discernible effect on the opening it emerged from. That opening began to clench and relax again.

Ane climbed out of the ditch themselves. They had not bothered with a covering on their lower body. About a third of the current residents of Willowcrook regularly did the same.

They bunched up their tunic and squatted. Muscles moved within. And the egg inside them began its journey downward.

All the villagers had slightly different relationships with laying. Some did it in the middle of their daily lives. Others designated a time and place and otherwise avoided it.

A few people still did it in private. But most of them did not care.

Ane could see why. There was no innate aversion to being seen. It was actually comforting in an odd way. Like how eating together had felt before.

“How much longer do you think it will take?” Teil sounded almost normal. The slightest tension revealed their distracted state.

“Months, most likely. We don’t have the available lumber to finish it now, anyway.” Ane’s voice was unchanged. Their time trapped in the cave had left them far less affected by laying.

Teil laughed. “True enough.” The laugh had a bitter edge to it. One that managed to remain through the high.

Ane let a moment of silence fall. It was hard to respond to the source of pain there. Not when they had not shared that pain.

“How are things going with Diar?” Teil changed the topic.

“Well. They are getting really good with their tail.” This time the laugh was genuine.

“No, you ass. How is dating going? The non-fucking part of it.” Ane made a small shrug. The climax tingled to their extremities as an egg crowned.

“Same as we talked about when we started. It is still a shelter in the storm kind of thing. Things still feel too new and strange to know if there is more there. And they feel the same way.” They could have been flippant again. But the high from laying tended to make speaking their mind easier.

“You have been spending a lot of time together. I just thought you might feel different now.” Teil seemed incongruously put out that Ane was yet to find love.

“We are hanging out and cracking a lot of eggs, but that is about it.” The rule about destroying all eggs that resulted from mating was several weeks old now.

The increasing number of small gray children in the village explained why. It took a few days after the first couple hatched to deduce with confidence what caused some eggs to produce kids.

Rounding up the fertilized eggs was surprisingly easy. They were the only ones not to hatch after a month.

It instead took three months. And the children that finally broke out of them were barely two hands tall. Yet they acted like kids approaching puberty. Even if they had no memories of their own.

The idea of breaking all eggs was suggested. But the final ruling was to destroy any egg suspected of having been fertilized.

It was easier than trying to break all of them. And there was never doubt if an egg was fertilized while laying it.

New kids popped up periodically. But the potential horde of adolescents was avoided. There had been a lot of fertilized eggs lain in the last few months. And all of them hatching into highly curious blank slates would have been a problem.

Teil sat up and looked down at the eggs between their thighs. The ovoids began to wobble. They then started rolling across the grass without a visible cause.

Ane watched as the orbs circled around Teil and met the pile of similar black spheres a dozen feet from the ditch. The parade of eggs rolled into those already there. The crude cairn was left a little bigger.

“That is so cool.” Ane’s comment was accompanied by the clink of an egg dropping to the collection below them.

“I bet you could learn it.” Teil stood and started pulling their pants on.

“It might mess with that brute strength thing you do.” They retied their belt.

“I’m not so sure. I can’t make heads or tails of most of the stuff Orim does.” Ane had managed to perceive the energy in their body. But the pattern that made Orim physically stronger was the only one Ane could fully track.

“Orim was some kind of crazy powerful war-mage before all this. Of course they are better at magic stuff than us.” Teil started with their left boot.

“I know. But I never could develop a talent before.” Teil scoffed at that.

“And you think I could.” They switched to the other boot. “That shit’s hard. I’ve barely met two people with genuine magic talents.”

They were not wrong. Most alma would never gain a talent. Not one more substantial than igniting tinder with their mind or seeing a little too well in the dark.

“I don’t think this works like talents, anyway.” Teil was right.

Ane could sense the power now. It was like stepping into a room they visited every day and spotting something they never noticed before. Knowing it was there made it a permanent part of Ane’s awareness.

It had been harder to sense it in Orim. But watching how the mage moved their power let Ane copy it. That was not how magical talents worked.

“We’ll catch up. I get a little better every day.” Teil stood and stretched.

“Much better…” They glanced down at Ane.

“Are you going to be a while?” Ane suddenly became aware that they were still pushing eggs onto the grass.

They fell into the habit again. The feeling of an egg crowning causing them to reflexively start the next moving down.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

They even shifted their position unconsciously. Otherwise the accumulated eggs would leave no room for the next one.

Ane sheepishly pushed the last free without starting another. It was easy now. As long as they did not fall back into the old rhythm.

“How can you not notice that?” Teil was incredulous.

Ane shrugged as they climbed to their feet. “I don’t know. Experience? It stops being a distraction after long enough.” They started picking up their eggs and chucking them towards the cairn.

“How? Its not sex. And its certainly not child birth. But it’s its own thing, and damn distracting.” The reference to Teil’s motherhood was not a revelation.

The villagers rarely mentioned the gender they had as alma. Most seemed mentally removed from it. As if the topic held little interest.

But Ane knew Teil was female and had a family before the necromancer. Ane was not sure what happened to their kids or possible husband.

Neither were around now. And Teil did not seem interested in talking about their original life.

“Once it becomes your resting state, it is just your normal. You notice the absence more.” Ane said it calmly. But Teil knew enough to understand the implications.

“I hadn’t thought of it like that.” Ane let them ruminate while they tossed eggs.

“It’s not a big deal.” They threw the last egg. “I just messed something up inside, and now it is taking a bit to work out.” It was true.

Ane had an easier story than anyone in the village. Except maybe the little ones who hatched in the last few weeks.

Teil went through a living nightmare. Ane knew they were not originally from Willowcrook.

They had been trapped in a rotting corpse for years without a moment of freedom. Ane’s challenges were laughable in comparison.

“Hard things don’t become easier because someone else has it harder.” Teil waved their hand. The scattered eggs rolled into the pile.

Ane did not respond for a moment. “Thanks, Teil.”

The duo returned to work until the sun approached the horizon. They were in clear view of the village proper.

The trench was intended as the groundwork of a rampart encircling the inner village. Lumber and stones were stacked along the perimeter. The plan was to build a retaining wall backed by the displaced earth.

The whole idea was insanely ambitious. There might have been a hundred adults on board with the project.

It helped that some of them had direct experience building fortifications. That experience was acquired while a dark mage controlled their bodies. But it still provided insight.

Ane spotted Diar removing the branches from the trunk of a river willow. The fast growing trees were surprisingly hard even when green. But they were also the only abundant large lumber on the plains.

They broke away from Teil and wandered over. “I’m going down to the river. You want to come?”

Diar kicked a branch they already hatcheted half way through. The remaining wood splintered and broke off with some twisting.

“Sure. I’ll be losing light soon anyway.” They looked Ane over and raised a brow. “You will need to wash some of that off if you’re coming to bed tonight.”

Digging all day and not wearing trousers had the expected outcome. Ane was more brown than gray from the knees down.

“That’s the plan. I wouldn’t want to be left empty out in the cold.” Diar snorted at the directly sexual reply.

They slid the head off their hatchet. Both head and handle were packed away for the night.

The path to the swimming hole was narrow and not well established. It began forming when those working on the rampart started walking to the river directly.

Snap-tails slithered in the grass to avoid being stepped on. They seemed to like hiding in brush.

The name snap-tail had inexplicably caught on over anything else. Ane privately found it a little silly. But it described the serpentine things that hatched from most eggs. They snapped onto people and became their tails.

Ane absently wondered if any of the creatures in the grass came from them. It was hard to say how many eggs they had produced. And those from more than a month prior were slithering around somewhere.

“We’re having to go further and further to find wood. As long as we don’t want to clearcut the banks.” Diar was relaying the challenges of the lumber team as they walked.

“I’m guessing we’ll need to scale back the design to use less posts.” Ane only knew second-hand how something like a rampart worked in combat. The closest they had seen was similar fortifications in times of peace.

“A ditch and mound would give us a defensive advantage. As much as the sort of wall we could make here.” Ane nodded their agreement.

“And there is an infinite supply of dirt and rocks. It just needs people to move it.” They patted the top of Diar’s head. “Not that I don’t like seeing you chop wood. All your muscles flexing. Grunts of effort.” Diar ignored the patting.

“Thanks. I like watching you roll in the dirt. People just love the idea of a wall…” They trailed off as the pair emerged from the brush.

A rocky beach led to the river that allowed Willowcrook to survive on the plains. But the figure crouched on the opposite bank held their attention.

An alma in worn traveling attire looked up at the voices. All three stared for a moment. Ane waved.

The gesture seemed to snap the crimson haired stranger out of their paralysis. They spun and bolted into the treeline.

“Fuck!” Diar yelled as they dashed forward.

Kicking off the shore sent them flying to land with a splash in the shallows on the other side. Ane was not capable of a twenty foot long jump. They were left wading across.

Boots squelched and energy serged as they pursued Diar into the woods. They spotted Diar less than a hundred feet in. They were hunched over a crumpled body.

Ane slowed. Diar was patting down the burgundy woman. They pulled a hand long knife from its sheath on her belt. It was tossed aside.

Purple blood stained the leaves. It pumped from a gash mostly obscured by her hairline. “She’s alive.” Diar responded to the unasked question.

Ane believed them. But they also knew how precarious head wounds could be.

“Did you have to…” They left the thought hanging between them.

“Yes. Now watch her.” Diar sprinted off towards the river.

They were right. The prospect of encountering outsiders had been debated at length. And the current official decision was that anyone who saw the inhabitants of Willowcrook could not be allowed to leave. Even if lethal measures were required.

It was logical. No one really knew what they were. But they obviously were not alma. Anyone raised on the Creator’s doctrine understood what that meant.

Willowcrook was isolated. No consistent trade existed with the outside world. Only luck or word of mouth might bring a passing traveler to stop in the community.

Ane inspected the small alma woman. She appeared in her late 40s, entering middle age. Her heavy outer layers and the satchel at her side reminded them of their own lost gear.

She was likely a courier of some kind. One who knew about a small frontier settlement she could stop at for a night.

Or maybe she was unlucky enough to approach the river without knowing a village of monsters lived on the other side. The large canteen she abandoned by the water would support that idea.

Was this the truth behind how Ane ended up with gray skin and black eyes? Maybe they were about to stumble across whatever person or thing left them in the pit. And it had ensured they could not reveal its presence.

There was no way to know. The black creature had never appeared again after that first day. Ane might never know what it was or why it chose them.

Crunching leaf cover heralded Diars return. Ane looked over to see them newly soaked. And a snap-tail passively curling in their hand.

“What are you doing?” Diar dropped to their knees by the stranger.

“Making sure slamming her head into a root isn’t fatal. Help me roll her.” They pointed to the traveler’s hips.

“What?” Ane could not parse the request.

“Help me get to her back. If a snap-tail can give a skeleton flesh again, I bet it can stop you from dying from head trauma. Support her head.” Their free hand pushed under the small of her back.

Ane cradled the bleeding head and lifted it along with the right shoulder. “Are you sure we should be doing this?” They tried to keep the motion as gentle and even as possible.

“What’s the alternative? Kill her? Lock her up and keep the snap-tails away?” Diar rolled the outsider onto her side and brought the snap-tail near the seam between jacket and trousers.

“She is getting a tail or dying. Otherwise it is too dangerous for everyone.” They were right.

Just being near the village guaranteed snap-tails trying to attach to the alma. Keeping her both captive and away from the creatures would require locking her in a sealed room and never letting her out.

The snap-tail reacted immediately. It slithered onto the fabric and deftly between the two layers. Ane could see the cloth shift as it permanently attached.

Ane nervously twisted their own tail. The parallels with how they acquired it seemed evident.

The alma woman likely felt nothing. But Ane distinctly remembered the spike of pain and tingling sensation that followed.

If she survived, she would wake up to the feeling of that new appendage as much a part of her as her arms and legs. Ane was uncertain how they felt about it.

Being what they were now did not feel bad. Rather the opposite. The idea of going back to an alma was viscerally uncomfortable. And everyone in Willowcrook seemed to feel the same.

But it was not just the physical changes. Becoming this meant the loss of the world they knew. However, it was better to take that away from the bleeding woman than risk the lives of everyone.

They carefully lowered her back to the ground. She was still breathing. Any additional damage done was not fatal yet.

“I’ll watch her. You get Orim and anyone else good with healing.” Ane nodded affirmation.

They started jogging back to the river and village beyond. The resolve on Diar’s face lingered in their mind.

There was a hardness there. A certainty of action and purpose. One without doubt or concern for the few over the many.

A sense of distance seemed to accompany the memory. It made Ane realize something. They would need to spend tonight alone.