Birds Lay Eggs, Did You Know?
Arda was used to seeing a certain starsinger’s puffy red bird form flap through her citadel home, crown of white flowers and all. Oftentimes, she…
Author: Sami Ardens
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Arda was used to seeing a certain starsinger’s puffy red bird form flap through her citadel home, crown of white flowers and all. Oftentimes, she…
Arda was used to seeing a certain starsinger’s puffy red bird form flap through her citadel home, crown of white flowers and all. Oftentimes, she just ignored her until the tweeting became obnoxious.
She was like that once, with gleaming blue fantail plumage, but that was a time ago. Akata’s tendency to flap around as a bird sometimes dug up memories she didn’t want to relive.
None of this mattered at the moment, as Akata was just roosting on a counter while Arda browsed the NexusNet on the computer. The period of quiet was interrupted by a sudden squawk from Akata, a noise Arda had no idea she could make, and a flapping of wings and fluffing of feathers. Arda opened her mouth and was going to ask if she was all right, but a dull thud on the table canceled the remark.
The bird and the bird lady stared at the egg laid on the counter, slack-jawed and slack-beaked. It was unmistakably a starsinger’s egg, sparkling with mysterious inclusions amidst the swirls of red and orange, but the problem with that assumption was that neither party knew starsingers could reproduce conventionally, let alone by laying eggs. Sheepishly, Akata flapped off the counter and shimmered into her humanoid form, strawberry blond hair seeming to float behind her for a moment. She then continued to stare.
Arda broke the silence, adjusting her glasses as she did so. “You laid an egg,” she said, as though it wasn’t the most obvious thing in the world right then.
Akata opened her mouth, shut it, opened it again, raised a finger to gesture, then drooped over. “I have no words,” she said, not taking her eyes off the egg.
“I guess that’s one mystery of the starsingers solved?” Arda approached the egg to inspect it more closely. “Do you know who the father is?”
“No! I mean, yes, probably, but I didn’t realize…!” Akata found herself hovering over her egg and feeling an urge to slap Arda’s hands if she put one too close.
“Yes or no?” Arda sighed. “I mean, most starsingers don’t even know where they came from, but at least we can now maybe say the egg came first.”
“We can talk about the origins of starsingers another time,” Akata blurted out, practically sputtering. “Right now, I’m just… Egg? Egg…?” If it were possible to verbally express a long string of question marks, that would be what she was doing right now.
“Congrats, Akata, you’re a mom now.”
“B-but! I’ve never seen any other starsingers lay eggs! Am I supposed to be a bird and sit on it, or wrap it up in a blanket, or figure out how to incubate it some other way?” Akata’s fingers twitched in nervous fidgeting as she tried to think up every possible way to hatch the egg.
“You haven’t seen any others lay eggs because most of them are busy making worlds,” Arda remarked. “Who’s the father? And be honest, because I’m going somewhere with this.”
“Um, from the looks of it… Janna, probably. There’d be more white if it was Selem’s, don’t you think?”
Despite herself, Arda smiled, remembering the small red starsinger man who was first to volunteer to help run the starsingers’ celestial headquarters. Selem, a gold and white starsinger, handled the deeper administration of the “birdhouse,” if she recalled correctly. She knew Akata adored both of them in different ways for different reasons. “Well, if it’s Janna’s, tell him. He’ll be ecstatic, I’m sure, and if there’s anyone who knows how to build an incubator for that egg, it’ll be him.”
“You’re right,” Akata said, exhaling heavily as the tension slipped out of her body. “How do I get this back to the birdhouse…? No, wait, I know. I’m sure it’ll be fine. Oh, now I think I might be excited!” The small wings on her back fluttered to reflect that budding invigoration.
“You should be. It was a weird surprise, but I think it’ll be important to see how it pans out.” Arda raised a hand to scoot the egg closer to Akata, but thought better of it before doing so. “Go home and give Janna the good news.”
“I…” Akata looked around nervously, as though still calling up the gumption to interact with her egg. “I will! Keep an eye on your inbox! You’re this baby’s godmother now, so I’m keeping you posted.”
Arda was going to object, but shook her head and accepted the role thrust upon her. “I look forward to it.”
Akata gingerly scooped up the egg, clutching it close to her chest before zipping away in a comet-like stream of light. When she was gone, Arda resumed browsing her threads and chatter between worlds on the NexusNet, but she kept her inbox window tucked right where she would see when an update came in.
---
Arda was about to get ready for bed when a notification pinged from her inbox.
The subject line read “Baby is home safe!!!” and could only have come from one person. Her heart skipped a beat as she clicked it open and was promptly greeted by a picture of the egg in a peculiar crystalline container lined with fluff. “Janna built the incubator without a problem,” the text below that read. “We don’t know when it’ll hatch, but we’ll visit him or her or them every day! Everyone else here is excited too.” After that was a selfie-style picture with Janna, petite and red even in humanoid form, practically mashed up against Akata while she tried to take a picture of both of them and give him a kiss in the same go.
Gritting her teeth at the mixed feelings of happiness and distant pain and longing, Arda tried not to smile and failed. She shook her head to keep the negativity at bay and kept her reply simple. “Good luck, lovebirds,” she typed into the reply field, then sent it off.
When it was done, she left her desk to finally go to bed and to inform a certain pastel-colored bean-shaped assistant of what had happened while she was out getting provisions. Even as she was winding down, she found herself trying to guess when the next update would come in, and what it would be.
---
No updates came in for a little while, until an instant message box popped up one day with a “HEY” that jarred Arda out of a meme thread-induced stupor.
“Hi Akata. How’s baby?”
“Baby is great!! Janna figured out some more stuff and we think she might be hatching soon! Actually we don’t know if it’s gonna be a boy or a girl, but the hatching soon is probably a yes.”
Arda sighed and plopped her chin into her hand, imagining the proud new parents being positively gooey over each other and taking in the attention from the other starsingers coming through the headquarters. “Keep me posted,” she replied.
“I will!” There was a pause before Akata added, “Since you don’t have a world, maybe you ought to find someone too.”
That sentence made Arda’s internal processes crash to a halt in a blink. “I don’t have a world for a reason and you know it.”
“I’m sorry.” There was nothing else to say on that front; there was a difference between not having a world due to being an overseer and not having a world due to that world ending.
On that sour note, Arda clicked out of the instant message box and attempted to drown her sorrows in memes and pseudo-philosophical discussions on how birds ran the universe (not untrue but no one had the idea completely right). She wasn’t able to get far before the window began to flash and beep with a rapid fire flurry of messages.
“OMG!
OMG!
O
M
G!
BABY HATCHING NOT A DRILL BE BACK LATER W PICS BYEEEEE!”
Arda stared at the message box and yet again found herself smiling despite not wanting to. “OMG,” she typed to jokingly mimic Akata’s excitement. “Good luck with little one.”
She found herself wishing she had the gumption to do more than sit and wait, to maybe even fly over to the birdhouse herself, but the more she thought about it the less she wanted to.
Beans (the aforementioned pastel bean assistant) scuttled up to her at that moment, too, and she was very enthusiastic when Arda relayed the news after the inventory report. Her spacey blue eyes shone with giddy zeal as she squealed, “Those two are perfect together, from what you’ve told me anyway! You better call me when the baby shows up!”
“Yes, of course, you hopeless romantic,” Arda said through a sigh as she ruffled one of Beans’s fluffy antennae, eliciting alien purrs from her.
She wasn’t sure how much time had passed when her inbox dinged again; she and Beans had apparently fallen asleep while waiting for an update. Nearly falling over herself to open the message, she was greeted by a picture of Akata and Janna putting their hands together to cup a tiny red bundle of feathers in the middle. “Meet Jaki! She’s sleeping but Selem came by to take a look and says she’s very healthy and will wake up and say hi to everyone soon! Idk how he knows, but I’m glad he stopped by!”
“O. M. G!” Beans squealed and launched herself into the air by unknown means. “Look! Look at ‘em, Arda! They’re perfect! A perfect family!”
“Not in my ear, please,” Arda groaned before pulling up the reply window. “So fluffy,” she typed. “Beans says congrats too. Maybe I’ll finally get up and come see you guys soon.”
She sent the message with that last line in it but was unsure of how genuine it was. As much as she wanted to show support was as little as she wanted to pass through space once more. Someday, she’d have to face that void in her, she knew it, but she would not do it today.
---
A video chat was a rare and limited event indeed on the NexusNet, given the difficulty of broadcasting across an entire universe, but Akata was inviting Arda to just that. Arda accepted the invite and called Beans over as she did so, and when the camera view came up, Janna was adjusting the camera. A few artifacts of low video quality danced across the screen, but she was still able to see the stars of the show.
Akata waved at the camera with the hand not holding the hand of what appeared to be a 5-year-old humanoid child bearing a starsinger’s signature wings. The red coloring came from both of them, but the bright turquoise eyes could only have come from the child’s mother. “Arda, hi! Look, look! Say hi to Jaki!”
Arda waved at the camera. “Hi, Jaki.” She wasn’t sure what to expect; the little girl was probably still a baby, but her humanoid form was certainly older, perhaps to make it easier to interact with the universe around her.
Jaki stopped sucking on her fingers for a moment and stared straight into the camera before shyly yet clearly asking: “Auntie Arda?”
Akata’s briefly dumbfounded expression shifted to one of delight as she squealed in pure, piercing joy. The conversation broke down from there into a flurry of questions from Arda and Beans, with Akata and Jaki and Janna periodically firing back.
So far, the next generation of starsingers was off to a promising start, but it would be some time before anyone could determine their destiny.
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