This mind is still and calm, not pulled urgently by the call of the moons, not battered by the storm of emotions surrounding them. Warm and content, tucked into her shell, unaware of the world outside.

He wants to burrow into this small calm place and hide there from the big complicated world, but at the same time and much more strongly, he needs to answer the call and escape from his shell. He can feel the light just barely touching his scales, dimmed by its passage through the shell, and he needs to tear that shell away so he can bathe in it. Scritch-scratch, scritch-scratch, with clumsy claws whose shape he only barely understands.

The clashing feelings are getting stronger, faster than he can claw his way out of his shell. An unseen balance begins to tip. Strange images pour into his mind, of scales torn and bloody, claws swift and sharp.

He doesn't fully understand what the images mean, but he knows that they're bad and scary, and that coming out of his shell faster will make the bad scary thing go away. He pushes harder, determined to win, determined to escape, determined to protect the one who feels so protective of him.

Under his relentless assault, the shell begins to crack. A sliver of moonlight peeks through.

He feels it touch his back claws and kicks harder, his determination renewed. The bad images fade, and the two minds cease their conflict; the protective one shimmers with excitement, and the resentful one is grudgingly curious.

In the exultant rush of his first victory, he tries to reach out to the small quiet mind right next to him, tries to share his pride and offer her encouragement, call her out of her shell like the moons are calling him; but strangely, no matter how he wiggles his clumsy body in an effort to press closer, he can't find any echo of his own thoughts in hers.

Her heart beats on, quiet and steady, untouched by mind or moon.

Another flare of danger distracts him. He kicks and claws at his shell, reaching with all his might for the tantalizing feeling of the moonlight on the other side, the feeling that says he is welcome, he is wanted, he is going to be glorious. He flails his wings and stretches his talons and snaps his jaws and—and—

His shell shatters, and the moonlight pours in, eager rays wrapping him up in the silver mantle he was made for. Every scale blazes where the light touches it. The shards of his shell reflect the light into the shadows of his wings and belly, surrounding him with its soft, welcoming glow.

He opens his wings and rolls around, bathing every scale in the light. His eyes blink open for the first time and he looks up and sees three huge silver eyes staring back down at him, and understands that these are the moons whose light called to him, and he reaches up with his tiny talons and tries to grab them out of the sky, tries to devour their beauty and brilliance so it will never stop shining on him. But his reach is not long enough, his claws not strong enough; the moons are beyond his power.

When he finally lowers his eyes from the sky, the first thing he sees is the nest: round and warm, carved into rock and lined with black fur. Beyond its edge, the world is a maze of black and silver stripes, stone tangled with shadows.

His sister's egg rests close by in the nest, its black shell nearly invisible against the black fur, undisturbed by his emergence.

Two huge shapes loom overhead. One, dark and flecked with silver, blends in against the starry night sky; but he can tell she's there by the thoughts in her head, by the echo in his own mind of what she sees when she looks at him. It's the protective one, and she holds out her talons with a beaming smile, her heart overflowing with love for the tiny creature she made.

"Darkstalker," she says. "Hello, darling." Meaningless noise by themselves, the words are tangled with her thoughts in a way that makes it nearly possible to understand them.

"Darkstalker?" the other shape, looming pale and white and awful in the reflected moonlight speaks next. "You must be joking. That's the creepiest name I've ever heard." His words are mixed with thoughts in a way that makes them just as nearly understandable as the protective one, but the thoughts of the resentful one are laced through with vile pain and regret, in a way that makes them much less easy to experience. 

"It is not," the dark-scaled dragon snaps. "The darkness is his prey. He chases back the dark, like a hero." Her thoughts are full of images of her beloved new dragonet pouncing on shadows, defending his tribe and his loved ones.

Darkstalker doesn't understand most of the details, but he understands enough to tumble awkwardly into his mother's arms, curling himself up in the warmth of her touch and her love.

"Sounds more like he creeps through the dark. Like a stalker." His thoughts are of something terrible lurking in shadows, never seen, only felt, a prickling up the tail, watching and waiting for some awful unknown purpose. 

He shivers, hiding in his mother's arms from the specter of his father's opinions.

She cuddles him protectively. "Stop being horrible. It's not up to you. Among the NightWings, mothers choose their dragonets' names."

The thoughts that accompany these words are harder for her dragonet to understand, being mostly about her complicated relationship with her own mother; what comes through the most clearly is a sense of belonging, being a part of the group of black-scaled dragons who live in this shadowy tangle of canyons.

"Well among the IceWings, the dragon with the highest rank in the family chooses the dragonets' names and the queen must approve them."

His thoughts are of a similarly complex concept, a memory of rules and strictures that are both a reviled cage and sense of familiarity, now shattered and broken, despised and missed. The images that accompany it are more pale white scales, violence and blood, fierceness and regret. 

"And of course you think your 'rank' is higher than mine." Her mind seethes with resentment of his sense of superiority. "But we're not among the IceWings. My dragonets will never set foot in your frozen wasteland. We are here, whether you like it or not, and he is my son, and his name is Darkstalker."

She cradles her dragonet close against her chest, where he can hear her heartbeat through her scales.

The pale shape stares him, his eyes like shards of ice studying every scale, his gaze full of cold and heavy resentment. 

"He looks every inch a NightWing," he growls finally, his words and thoughts distancing him from the tiny new dragonet. "Not a shred of me in him at all." 

There is distrust in the thoughts around those words, suspicion and anger, resentment and pain. 

Darkstalker burrows deeper in his mother's arms. Under the shining moons he felt amazing and powerful, but under his father's eyes he feels small and scared.

His mother growls softly, but doesn't answer her mate's unspoken accusation.

"Fine," he says at last. "You can have your sinister little Darkstalker. But I want to name the other one." More distancing thoughts, but also thoughts of the other egg, black and untouched by silver. She could have him, but whatever hatched out of that egg would be his.