“It really wasn’t hunting us,” I murmured.“Why did it fight so hard to get close?”
Tovis walked around the percer, forcing Jiith to stumble after him as he prodded a foreleg with his hoof.
“I don’t know,” he said.“It doesn’t make any sense.”
I grimaced as he bent down and pressed a hand to its shoulder.
“It’s cold,” he said with a frown.“We only slept a few hours, it must have crawled to us as soon as we were asleep.”
For some reason the thought of the dying animal dragging its injured body toward our sleeping forms made me feel a little weepy.It had to have been hurting and scared.Was I being foolish and sentimental to think it just didn’t want to die alone?
I hobbled over to Tovis’s side, my feet somehow even more sore after resting them.Looking down at the dead percer, I marveled again that Tovis had fought it and lived.It was huge.Bigger than a horse, even with shorter legs.Truly a tank made of muscle and bone.
A strange protrusion near its back legs caught my eyes and I squatted down, cringing as I reached for the almost petal shaped bulges.There was a bony triangle that jutted from its lower belly, and a fold of leathery skin hung down almost like...a pouch.
I gasped.
“Jessa?”Tovis crouched beside me as I dropped to my knees and pulled at the fold.There was a cavity beneath it, dry and still warm, and I hesitated before reaching inside.If I got a handful of monster junk I’d have to cut this hand off, but I had a feeling that wasn’t what I’d find.
The angle was weird, and the bony petals had stiffened in death, but it only took seconds for me to find it.A smooth oval rested inside the armored pouch and I carefully pulled it out.
“It’s an egg,” I breathed.The egg was dark grey and fat, not shaped like a chicken’s at all.There were yellow speckles on its surface and it was heavy, at least five pounds.It took both my hands to hold it safely and I turned it gently as I inspected it.
It seemed to be intact, though there was a small, worrying chip at one blunt end.
“You should crush it, or eat it,” Jiith said.
“No,” I gasped, cradling the orphaned egg to my chest and glaring up at the syto.“This is why it followed us.”
I looked down at the egg, sad all over again for the animal that had been captured, forced to fight and died, all while protecting its egg.
“It knew it was dying.It was trying to give us its egg.”
“Jessa,” Tovis said reluctantly.“If that’s true, it doesn’t change the fact that the thing that comes out of that egg is a percer.”
I looked from the defenseless egg to the massive, smart car sized animal it came from.He was right, I knew he was.If we were smart, we’d do what Jiith suggested, crush the egg and have one less giant predator to worry about in the future.
Or eat it.We didn’t have any supplies, and the egg was big.Big enough to be a decent meal, even between the three of us.
I wavered, my stupid, squishy heart warring with my survival instincts.And then something tapped on the inside of the shell.I flinched at the movement, my palm pressing the smooth shell as I waited for it to happen again.
The baby percer inside tapped again.
“I’m keeping it,” I declared.
“Jessa-”
“It might not make it anyway,” I pleaded.“I took it out of the pouch, it probably got shaken up when its dad was fighting you.It might never hatch, but I can’t let you kill it.”
“Then leave it here,” Jiith said flatly.“If it hatches, it hatches, and we don’t have a carnivorous monster hanging off us.”
I clambered to my feet, still cradling the egg to my chest.
“I understand that would be wiser,” I said, staring the syto in the eye.“But I could have made the same argument about feeding you.I could have left you to your fate, it would have been easier for me than bargaining for ration bars and walking over glass to give them to you.”
Jiith quailed under my gaze.“I never asked you to help me.”
“You didn’t,” I agreed.“But sometimes kindness is all we can offer someone.Sometimes it's all that separates us from the likes of the Kwin.”
