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It was early afternoon and Roni was in a state. She'd tried the kitchens where she knew he was supposed to be. She'd tried outside. She'd tried just about everywhere she could think of. And now, well now poor Roni was pretty close to giving up, which is to say, she was pretty close to giving into despair. And it was in that state that she finally found him, in the barracks, which she'd been retreating to with every intention of having a good cry and possibly throwing herself out the window.

"Fell!" For such a little, timid thing, she sure was managing loud fairly well. Tears were already leaking, her face red and blotchy, her hair a tangled mess. In her cupped hands was her firelizard egg, with one very prominent crack down the side. "Fell! Fell I broke it. I didn't. I didn't MEAN TO! It, the pot, it just jumped. And it fell over and the egg, it cracked and it's broken and it's all my fault and I killed it Fell. I KILLED IT!" The words rushed from her in a desperate torrent as she thrust the egg at Fell. "I killed my firelizard and now it's dead and I don't have one and I'm sorry and I should have been more careful, should have been watching and--"

The egg, in her hands, was shivering. She seemed completely unaware of this fact.

If nothing else, Fell's firm grip on her arms was enough to get Roni breathing again, the hyperventilating little gasps calming into hiccuping whimpers. At first, she couldn't quite understand what he was saying? Look at her egg? She didn't want to look at her egg! She'd broken her egg and now it was dead and it was all her fault. She was bad. She was bad and evil and--

Wait. What was going on? It was all... all shivery? Dead things didn't shiver, did they? Maybe it wasn't all the way dead? Maybe it was cold? Should she put it back in the sand?

But-- no. For all her fear and incertainty, Roni wasn't quite so much an idiot as she sometimes seemed. She just got too upset to think, sometimes. Now, with her mind settling, realization was starting to sink it. It wasn't dead. It was doing the opposite of dead. It was hatching.

It was hatching?

Oh, shards. It was hatching!

"It. Food. We need it. Right? That's what they do. Feed them. We should." She looked up at Fell, eyes still bright with tears, but calmer now. Trusting. "Do you have any?"

Kitchens. Right! If they needed to get to the kitchens, then the kitchens they would get to. Roni was still frantic, of course (when wasn't she) but now all that energy was being channeled toward the hatching egg, instead of prematurely mourning it's death. Holding the egg cupped against her chest with one hand, she grabbed onto Fell's arm with the other, and proceeded to do her best to drag him out into the hallway and to the kitchens beyond.

"What if they don't have meat?" she asked, biting her lip. "What if they won't give it to me? What if it hatches and it doesn't like me? Fell, I don't think it's going to like me!"

The egg's movements were quite noticeable, now that she was making the effort to notice. And all that noticeable movement was making Roni get very nervous, very fast. As if she hadn't started out that way. "Maybe. Maybe you should have it."

Fell had really hit the nail on the head with that one. The good thing about being little, and Roni looked littler than her actual age, was that 'sweet' came as a matter of course. Little nervous girls with eyes full of tears and hands full of a firelizard egg got bowls full of raw meat the moment they managed to string together enough words for the request. And that was, in fact, what happened to Roni. Only a minute after darting forward to make the request as ordered, she was retreating back to the corner of the kitchen, egg near exploding in one hand, meat bowl under her other arm.

"Fell, I got some," she said, breathlessly, sitting crosslegged in the corner when juggling both objects became too difficult. "I got some for us. But, but I think it's soon. Is it? Do I just, just feed it? How much? It's not going to really eat my fingers is it?"

Her eyes darted nervously from Cloud to the egg in her hand, "Did he? Bite your fingers, I mean."

A flash of green as the little lizard began to break free of its shell and Roni was so busy staring at Cloud that she missed it.

Oh shards! It was going to eat her. Fell had just admitted it and now it was too late. There was a green firelizard in her lap where the egg had been and she was going to have to impress it using her own flesh as bait. This wasn't as fun as it had been when they'd first found the eggs. Come to think of it, that'd been mostly terrifying, too.

Life was hard, when you were Roni. Everything trying to drop you or eat you or die because of you.

Firelizard. In lap. Making noises. There was a situation here and it wasn't the fact that she'd nearly fallen off a cliff retrieving the egg that was now a spotted green flitter. It was, instead, the flitter itself. Which needed feeding.

Feeding.

Right.

Meat was picked up from the bowl that she'd managed to procure, and popped (or anyway, dropped from a safe distance) into the little green's mouth. This seemed to please the creature who creeled hopeful until Roni continued the (nervous and carefully distanced) feeding.

"I. Umm. I don't know. Am I? She hasn't bitten me. Yet. She's. Umm. She's not biting."

As it slowly became clear to Roni that she wasn't actually going to get her fingers bitten off by her new small charge, she became confident to actually feed the green instead of just dropping meat in her general direction.

"She is pretty." Roni stroked a hesitant and almost reverent finger over that sleek green hide, all covered in little splotches. "I'm glad. I'm glad I didn't kill her."

She had not yet forgiven herself for the earlier panic, nor for the fact that she'd let the little firelizard's pot fall over. What a traumatic way to begin a life! Still, it was okay now. Making sure to do as she was told and keep the green eating, Roni dared a glance at the blue that Fell had impressed.

"It is. It's a good name. He's good too." Another shred of meat fed to the green who gave a happy little trill before attempting to swallow it. "She's all splotchy. Stained. That's her name. Stain." Glance, head tilt, "Is that okay?"