They were folded in the sleeping position, the same way a cat folds its legs when it sleeps, the specific compact folding of something that knows where its legs are and puts them somewhere when they are not in use. Eight of them. The specific dark iridescent color of the scales, not the simple dark of the realm's ambient quality but the specific iridescent dark of something that had been built for this environment, the scales carrying the realm's characteristic low luminescence in the deep blue-black of something that absorbed and reflected dark realm light rather than any other kind.Its chest rose fell and rose.Flora was looking at it.Something had happened on her face that was not the seriousness she had been wearing since the conversation about the ecosystem. Something that was in a different category than seriousness, the category of a person who has read about something for a long time and is now in front of the thing and the front of the thing is different from the page the

At the eight feet.At the egg two feet from her boot.She nodded once. Small and slow, the nod of someone who has fully received a message and is communicating the full reception of it without additional motion.Flora leaned close.She spoke at a volume that was technically speech but was the minimum version of speech, the version where the words were carried by the shape of the breath rather than any projection behind it."Any vibration." She said. "Any sound above a specific threshold, they register it through the ground as much as through the air. The slit pupils are motion-sensitive. The ears are attuned to frequencies that the living world doesn't naturally produce." She looked at the nearest nest. "And the eggs. Do not touch the eggs. Do not go near the eggs. If the shell cracks, if there is any impact against the shell, the mother's response is immediate and it is not a process." She paused. "It is a result."Mira looked at the egg two feet from her boot.She took one ver