Name: Elara
Gender: Female
Elara was born different.
It started with her egg. It was a difficult laying, a frightening time when her father truly believed he would lose his mate. He spent hours crouching by the nest, tears silently rolling down his face, as the female he had come to love so much lay panting, tremors rolling through her in waves. Eggbind, the whispers said; a frightening word, a powerful word that stopped you in your tracks and made you thank the skies one moment it was not you being spoken of, then hang your head with guilt the next, ashamed of your thinking.
Eggbind. A death sentence in all but the lucky few, the chosen few, who got through it. The egg itself was almost always beyond help. Often that was what tilted the situation against the mother - all that work, all that pain, for nothing. You could see the moment the life left their eyes, even if they had not yet stopped breathing. Io did not dare look, did not want to see the spirit leave his beloved mate.
When the Alpha pair stopped the others from bringing food offerings to keep up Leda's strength, the pack dispersed altogether and left the pair to their grief. Io understood the reasoning - no use in wasting hard earned food on a dying pack member - but it made it no easier. Right now, he knew, several viscets would be gathering plants for her grave-to-be, keeping out of his sight to avoid confrontation.
As though he had enough strength left for that.
Leda's last, long sigh sliced through him like a shard of ice, leaving him breathless with grief. He lay alongside her, waiting for the pack to approach, to take her into the earth.
It did not take long. The smallest first, ready to skitter away if he attacked. He did not. The rest of the pack emerged in twos and threes, ready to lift her, to bury her, to pay their respects. Io slowly rolled to his feet to give them access
What was that?
"Wait! Don't touch her!" Unsure, the other viscet reached out again, swatted away with a snarl and a scream, "Don't TOUCH her!"
The pack Alpha approached. It had been his daughter Io had struck, but the rules were different in times of grief. "Io," the low voice of their leader rumbled through the crowd, "you must let us take her. It is time."
Io flattened his ears, trying to show deference but at the same time communicating his absolute refusal to back down. "She moved. I felt it. A shudder."
Murmers in the crowd, embarrassed shuffling. Io was young, this was his first experience of death. Who would tell him? Of course Callisto spoke, it was fitting that the Alpha deal with this.
"Brother, I am sorry. It is nothing but the body shutting down. It is a known death effect."
Io laid a paw on the body beside him. She was so cold. He snuffed at her face. Nothing. Not a twitch. Devastated he backed away, giving the pack room to work.
They were quick and efficient, wrapping her in a large leaves they had already collected, several females lifting her between them, crooning gently to show respect. The female holding Leda's head turned to lead the rest then froze, yelped, turned back.
"Stop! He's right!"
Shaking their heads - no one likes drama made of such a difficult thing - the other females lowered Leda to the ground. An elder stepped out of the crowd, gently patting Io as she passed, pressing him back as he took a step toward his mate.
"Come now Dia, what is this foolishness? You cannot do this to Io, to all of us. Your first time carrying and this is how you behave?"
Dia held her head high, defiant, her eyes hard, "I know what I felt, Ganny." A glance at her fellow workers, "Unwrap her! We should help her to breathe."
"She isn't breathing."
As the elder spoke a visible shudder ran through Leda's body. Her back arched and she took in a massive breath, expelling it in a scream along with her egg. Io rushed to her head, holding her, speaking to her, as she was quickly unwrapped. Never had anything like this happened before.
Leda struggled to lift her head, rasped through Io's whispers, urgent. "SAVE THE EGG!" Then all was black as she passed out, exhausted.
Leda quickly changed in the eyes of the pack from a figure of wonder to something to be pitied. Despite the shell not having been fully formed, and the odd protrusion on it from her exertions, she loved her egg as though it was fully viable. Which, as all the elders knew, it was not. It was barely an egg at all. Still, Leda chipped at the rocks by the lake all day as soon as she regained enough energy, fashioning a safe case for her not-quite-an-egg. A fake shell to replace the one it should have had. She insisted she could see something growing inside but she would not allow the others to see. The pack appealed to Callisto but he ruled that she should be allowed to grieve in her own way, and so she was left alone. Very alone. Only Io stood by her. The rest were too afraid.
The day came, a little over two weeks after her ordeal, that Leda's behaviour changed. Usually she could be found on her hind legs, cradling her stone egg, walking back and forth. She crooned to it, sang to it, told it stories, whispered things no one could catch. All normal nesting behaviors, but all very much not normal when directed at a rock.
Today, however, she was found at the shoreline, crouching over her not-an-egg, washing it over and over, gently, inside and out. The young viscet who first saw her backed over his own tail, tripped, and scrabbled away over the rocks. Io could deal with this. It was no one else's problem.
The curious pack watched as Io approached, making a little noise on the pebbles so he wouldn't startle Leda. He sat nearby, washed his paw, sighed.
"Love, is it liquid at last? Come, finish washing it out and we will nap together. We can always try again..."
Leda tilted the inside of the stone shell towards her mate without looking up. His breath caught in his throat. Was that... an ear?
He shot across the rocks to her side, hung his head over his mate's shoulder, and gasped in wonder. A beautiful, perfectly formed viscling, speckled like the sky at night, her paw pads soft, her mane already fanning out around her head. She met his eyes and peeped gently at him, ignoring the mass intake of breath from the gathering pack, focused on one thing. She reached out a paw to her father and he reached back, touching his daughter, nuzzling his proud mate. Everything was going to be alright.
"I can go out on my own, mother! All the others do. Some younger than me, even. It's humiliating being so..."
"So what? Safe? Alive? Not eaten by a bear?"
"... babied."
Elara stared at the ground, digging her claws into the soil. It wasn't fair. Just because she was a difficult birth her parents were too afraid to let her make her own mistakes. They'd kept her confined to the nest long after anyone else and now, when others her age were exploring and hunting for themselves, Elara was not even allowed outside the main pack living area without an adult by her side. If they both left to hunt, her parents left her with boring old Ganymede, who snorted all the time and only had stale food to eat. She looked up to meet her mother's eyes, furious that her own were filling with tears. She was ANGRY, not upset, tears just made her look like a child.
Elara knew she was different. From her unusual mane to her unique colouring, her impossible odds as an egg, to her strangely solitary nature, she wasn't like the others. It was hard enough trying to make friends without the restrictions her parents placed on her.
"Elara, love," Her father crossed their den, standing firm beside her mother. "Your mother, both of us, we... we only want the best for you dear. When we feel the time is right..."
"And when will that be? Three eggs from now? Ten? You already have one to replace me when it's born so I don't see why..."
"That is ENOUGH." Her mother's tail twitched so angrily she knocked her current egg across the ground. Io intercepted it and rolled it back to safety, shaking his head at his daughter. Leda glanced over to see that it was alright then continued, "You need to remember your manners. You're lucky to be alive, young lady, and we..."
"... gave me everything you had so I could live this life, blah blah blah, I know."
"You will NOT speak to your mother that way!" Io's crest stood straight up and he reared to his feet for a moment, stamping his front paws down, hard. "How dare you be so rude. So ungrateful."
"Ungrateful?" Elara's voice was so much calmer than she felt. "Ungrateful for what? For being stuck here forever? Trapped? Treated like hardened clay, about to break any moment? I've never even run at full speed. All the others race but I lose every one, did you know that? Do you know how that feels? Do you know what it's like to have no friends? To be teased even by the youngest of visclings?" She looked away, unable to meet their eyes as she spoke. "I wish I was dead."
Elara turned and left the den, closing her ears to her parents' grief at her words, walking straight across the main living space. She lightly trotted toward the trees that bordered their land. She had never gone into the forest but she had learned all about it. She thought quickly - she could hunt, she could climb, she was an excellent hider... all the things she needed to live. The air here was so fresh, so clear. There was no pack pressing in on her.
Without looking back, she broke into a run.
