17.5
At least Jewel’s newest clutch of eggs had the consideration to wait until she returned to Valasect before the urge to lay overcame her. As she had expected it was once again three eggs, this time none of them True Wyrm Eggs.
Every one of them gave a now familiar but oh so shockingly intense sensation when she brushed their shells. It was confusing that all of them were spawn this time but so was everything about Jewel’s egglaying. Her duties however did not allow her to overly linger, a short season after and it was time for a trip to Kaeketeh, her Vassals requesting a diet to discuss the arrangement of the realm for this Debt Season.
The harness she had worn to carry the twins had served well to make sure she did not need to leave them behind even while fulfilling this obligation.
Kaeketeh was much the same as it had become, loud and almost intoxicatingly pleased to host her and the guilds had continued to be very enthusiastic with her non-interference in their affairs. Except they were still reportedly well in hand via the subtle machinations of Adelyne.
For Jewel’s other Vassals however? Things were a bit unruly this year, a shouting match had broken out with the Porter and Dockworkers guild head and the newest Mayor of Light’s End. That of course had then pulled the young Lord Ogien and Lady Petra’s Eldest Son into the row, leading to several infuriating minutes of vicious insults.
All of it over a suggestion about what side the river barges should tie off on the docks!
Jewel had to command silence in a tone loud enough to rattle the chandelier in the feasting hall’s ceiling to restore propriety to the discussion.
She was quite happy to be done with that meeting for the year, and it was an enjoyable winter, then when she was visiting Rochford for her traditional stay that winter her wyrmish nature chose to make another nuisance of itself.
Because all three eggs chose to break open on the anniversary of her own hatching day! Was Jewel never going to have any peace on the nature of her own spawn?!
Apparently not as she was now flooded with the mind-addling experience of three different shells breaking against her teeth, heels, claws, and elbows. The choking panic of having to cough up the effluviant from three sets of lungs. The biting cold of her bedchamber from three slimy sets of skin, six new eyes blinking blearily. The blisteringly painful touch of wool moistened in warmed water cleaning faces and bodies.
Jewel’s eyes were burning with tears at the sensation of three newly born lives coursing through all of her selves. Barely able to listen to the thunderous sound of her husband and family’s voices.
It was only after all the initial cascading waves of shock had passed was she able to even try to comprehend words. She was cradling one of the spawn in Jadwiga’s arms. Another in Smithson’s trembling grasp, with the third in Paul’s hands.
“It’s a baby?”
Paul and Smithson were staring down at Jewel, and now that she was not dealing with the mind searing and paradoxical newness of her latest selves’ existence she could begin to appreciate its strangeness.
She felt clumsy, soft, indistinct in a way that was more intense than even Gem had felt at birth, she blinked up at them with eyes that refused to focus. Squirmed with arms and legs that barely could move and shivered, trying to pull wyrmflame into a flabby body that she now realized lacked even the delicate scales that Gem had obtained.
She wasn't sure she agreed with their assessment, peering over with both her wyrmish eyes and Jadwiga’s, despite the superficial appearances. Yet she was still at a loss for any other words on the matter. However at least one distinct sensation met the fat, clumsy tongue in this new face and she would show them, Jewel opened the littlest, stubbiest, flattest face she had ever had and bared the set of sharp teeth that had hidden behind the infant’s lips.
Eunika and Jadwiga did not need a smirking look to share Jewel’s bemusement, but they did it anyway. Her Husband’s recoiling horror was short lived but he still held Jewel’s smallest flabbiest self a bit away from him. She admitted it was a bit of an odd sight. His shock at the newborn girl with a perfectly formed set of pointed teeth barely kept a giggle from Jewel’s wyrmish throat.
Although she was not sure if she was laughing because she could just not manage the energy to do anything else. Now that her attention was drawn to it the other two spawn were by comparison thankfully familiar, one of them the spitting image of how Eunika and Jadwiga’s slender build upon hatching, the other?
Jewel’s exhausted smile fell from all her faces as she turned to look with not just Eunika’s eyes but also her sister and mother self as well.
It stung to look at, to remember, to feel the precise way the form echoed in Jewel’s mind. It wasn't exactly the same, there was far less confusion then had been at that age, the neck was longer, the face perhaps a little less snubbed.
But one of her spawn was otherwise the spitting image of Gem at her own hatching, complete with the distinctive darkened scales upon her back on either side of her spine that had always resembled folded wings. Smithson was holding that particular spawn, incontinent tears pouring down his cheeks, the shivering she thought that had been from shock was anything but, it wracked his body from shoulder and back down, like he was about to crumble. Holding her with a trembling shuddering so intense that it seemed on the verge of shattering the man and a pained grin splitting his beard.
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Jewel stared up at him from that face, she could not find words in any of her throats, looking up at Smithson like that, grief, joy, relief, terror all warring on his face, this clutch was already too much! Just having another spawn that looked so much like Gem would have been overwhelming!
But her naked pink and she now realized almost completely tailless self had ruined all other considerations. Forced her attention away from the way that her captain was breaking apart. She tried speaking with the newest stubbiest throat of her spawn but found nothing but garbled mumbling for her efforts. Great, another entirely new neck and tongue to try and work out how to use.
She could only barely smother the giddy horror that threatened to break out from all of herselves at this absurdity. She’d hatched a spawn that was the spitting image of Gem, she’d hatched a self that looked like it might very well grow to be a proper woman!
There were no words!
Paul finally looked up from where he had been cradling the profoundly human looking spawn.
“S-she has my eyes. Jewel, what does it mean that she has my eyes?!”
The wyrm took several breaths, in all her lungs, she did them quickly, but that began to stoke the terrible precipice inside her hearts and raise their pace. No she had to calm, she took slow breaths, slowest of all with her wyrmself, but each set of lungs was filled evenly, slowly, reaching capacity and then straining just past.
Releasing a moment.
The two closest men in her life waited for her to regain some composure, but even then she could feel an almost buzzing activity in her tone.
A dangerously precarious excitement on the edge of terror.
“My Husband, dearest one in my life, I don’t know, could it possibly have something to do with my dear Paul’s incessant chastity? I absolutely can’t say! If I had any certainty in the matter you would be the first to hear of it! But alas my life is an endless series of infuriatingly mysterious events!”
Her voice started strained, but the more she spoke the more it began to split and break beyond the confines of even a matronly humming rumble as she tried to contain, no it breached and tore like an overstuffed bag finally exploding at the seams. Growing shrill and buzzing and inhuman and thunderous.
It was at that point Mother came into the room, fixed Jewel with a glare that made her suddenly want to recoil in shame for having let loose her voice as stuff.
For what felt like an age Mother was still, gaze wandering over the scene; Jewel still sprawled in her bedding, eggshells and yolk sopping wool pads scattered on the floor, Jadwiga, Smithson and Paul all burdened with intently staring infants of various shapes.
Her mother, often morose and distant over the years, looked at the eight faces staring back at her after an eternity of silence that felt like it was deeply judging them all Jewel’s mother marched into the room right up to Paul, reached out to grasp his left elbow and hand and firmly adjusted how he was holding Jewel’s plumpest and least scaled spawn.
The shift she had to admit gave an added support for the oversized head in a way that was a huge relief on the quivering muscles of her brand new neck.
With that done finally the silence was broken.
“Well then, perhaps this granddaughter won’t set the wet nurses to a panic?”
Jewel couldn’t even pretend to maintain composure or propriety, it had been too much, she could not resist, cracking her new pink lips and grinning up at her mother with the dainty set of pointed teeth. Which got a blink and then the first proper chuckle Jewel heard from her mother since her Father died.
It felt like something was starting to groan and snap in Jewel’s chest.
“Or perhaps not.”
That was it, the morning had been too much for her, she gave into the terrified buzzing hum inside her, it broke out of her throat, it welled up from all of her chests. The only thing that shocked Jewel was that her mother, Paul and Smithson all joined her in it.
The entire room was swept up in the desperate laughter, Jewel could not even say what about it all was so funny, she honestly thought it wasn't funny at all, it was horrifying, confusing, overwhelming, Smithson was still crying, her mother was howling in a way that normally only happened when she was several cups in.
But they were all sober, it was the start of the day, and every one of her throats howled, squealed and gurgled at the delight of it. Her life was an absurd parody of everything she had been taught it would be.
And yet it was her life, and she had her family and loved ones.
That was how Alexander and poor Monika found the lot of them, laughing so hard the humans were desperately gasping for air against Jewel’s sides. It took almost half an hour before anyone had enough breath to even try to explain what happened.
Especially because even looking at her brother’s wife kept setting Jewel off again. The utter bewilderment of the poor girl coming to realize the family she had married into was just too much.