She glances back and forth between the ice-pale dragon and the night-black egg, considering. Moon-touched eggs are supposed to be silver, like Darkstalker's; does that black shell, dark and ordinary, signal a late hatching or no hatching at all? Is there a second dragonet to be named, or is this shell as empty as a moonless night?

He knows the answer to that question, but he doesn't know how to tell her. He has only the vaguest sense of how this business with making sounds about your thoughts might work.

Maybe, though...

His claws tingle, and his mind sees distant things again, images of futures he barely understands. In one future, he calls his sister out of her egg, and she spreads her beautiful wings in the moonlight, and they are equal in its power. She could hear his thoughts as he hears hers; she could see these same glimpses of what may come.

In the other future, he waits, and does nothing. His sister hatches late, and still beautiful. But she grows up like she is now, moonless, unable to see into the future or into other dragons' minds.

And in between those two, as he hesitates, he sees a smaller, subtler change, turning on a smaller, subtler choice...

Foeslayer, too, is hesitating.

She's not, really, willing to let Arctic name an entire definitely living dragonet. It's only the chance that the egg might be stillborn that lets her consider it. The detachment of grieving a lost egg is all tangled up with the detachment of letting her mate name their child, so that it feels like giving up the name is giving up the dragonet. Arctic clearly wants it, though, and she can tell he's going to be a rhinoceros nostril about it if she doesn't cave, and it's not as though he doesn't have any part of a point, wanting to compromise between their traditions as their union has compromised between their tribes. (Even though the IceWings are a bunch of frightful snobs who think about nothing but snow and social status all day, and the NightWings, while by no means perfect, clearly have a much better thing going.)

"All right," she says, heavily, grudgingly. "If that egg hatches, you can name the dragonet inside."

He glimpses that elusive future only as it slips away. His sister could have shared in his mother's love, as easily and freely as he will; but now there's a barrier between them, something he doesn't understand, a shadow over their future.

It's that, more than anything, that decides him. Though part of him fears the shape of the future with his sister moon-blessed by his side, though part of him wants to guard his power jealously and keep it all to himself, in this moment he's not thinking about that; he's grasping desperately after a vanished opportunity, trying to fix his mistake even though he can see it's too late. He reaches for his sister's egg, and does the thing he saw himself doing, and sees silver bloom where his talons touch her shell.

The mind inside stirs, sleepy and uncertain. Suddenly everything is so much louder. Where has her calm stillness gone? Can't she go back to sleep?

No no come out!! Come out in the moonlight, be beautiful, be loved!! He nuzzles his snout against his sister's egg, presses the side of his face to it, tries to listen for her heartbeat. He looks up at the moons and remembers for her how good it was to greet them. His thoughts are full of wordless encouragement and anxious love.

Oh. Okay then.

She stretches and shifts. Her weak talons scratch against her egg's tough shell. It'll take a little while, but she doesn't mind that. She's quietly determined to come out into the moonlight.

Arctic watches the tiny dragonet reach for his sibling's egg, and silver spreads across the edge from where he touches. Could he have...

No, that's impossible. He's far too young, he couldn't possibly have. Arctic dismisses the foolish thought and watches as his dragonet starts to scratch against the shell of their egg. "Well, it looks like it's going to," he says, with an air of vindicated superiority. "Perhaps this one will have more of me in them than yours." 

She wonders, tiredly, not for the first time, where it all went wrong. When did they start being the kind of people who divide up their children into mine and yours? When did they forget how to speak to each other without arguing? Was it ever really worth it, to love this impossible stranger, with his chilly IceWing superiority?

But she looks down at her son, earnestly pressing his talons against his sister's egg; and she flicks her ear to feel the weight of the earring there, the magical protection that Arctic defied his tribe's traditions to give her; and she thinks that, yes, there's something here worth having. Arctic does love her, and she does love him, and they made at least one beautiful child together, and maybe the second one will hatch too, and... and surely she won't always feel this way about her other child, stung by defeat, marred by a misplaced grief, surely once the dragonet hatches it'll all be fine...

Darkstalker claws at the fur-lined floor of the nest in frustration, growing a tiny dragonet growl. He can tell that his mother is wishing for that lost future too, even though she never saw it. He doesn't know how to give it to her. He wishes with all his heart that he could.

In her egg, the second dragonet steadily scratches. She can feel the patient moons waiting; she knows they'll be here for her when she gets out.

Her brother is so sad, though. She's having trouble understanding why. Something about their parents, but she can't understand their parents as well as he does, with his headstart on mindreading. Something about the way her mother is looking at her egg...

She wears away at the shell with slow, methodical scrapes of her talons. There's a weak spot just there; she sees in the future how she'll be able to feel it, after she's worn at it enough. First the creak, and then the crack, and then the breaking free. That's how it's going to go.

It's amazing how patient she is. Darkstalker couldn't wait to get out of his egg! And even now that she can feel the moons—he can hear her feeling them!—she's still so different.

He bumps his nose against her eggshell and makes an affectionate warbling noise.

(For just a moment, even without the power to read minds, Foeslayer sees her daughter through her son's eyes, and understands what it would be like to feel unconditional love for the mystery locked inside that mysteriously colour-changing egg.)

The weak spot creaks. See? Everything is going to be fine.

Darkstalker does not know how to articulate complex ideas even inside his own head, but he does know how to pat his sister's egg encouragingly. Pat pat. Soon she'll be out here and pretty and full of moonlight. Soon. Soon? Soon, right? Will it be sooner if he bonks his head against the shell?

All right, that's enough of that. You're not supposed to bother a hatching egg too much. Foeslayer scoops him away from it and watches, trying to recapture the expectant joy of watching her son hatch, trying not to resent her mate for badgering her into letting him name this one.

He squawks indignantly—he was helping!—but then settles. At least mostly. His mother's arms are going to end up full of impatient wiggles before this hatching is through.

She makes steady progress over the next few minutes until, at last, the shell breaks open and the light comes pouring in.

She's every bit as beautiful as her brother expected. Dark scales on most of her body, but ice-pale wings flecked with black, the inverse of a NightWing's black wings flecked with starry white. When she raises them to the moons she nearly seems to glow, like a little moon herself.

She's like no dragonet he's ever seen, though of course that's to be expected, there's never been a child of IceWings and NightWings before, no queen would ever have allowed such a thing. 

Strange though she is, she's beautiful, shining in the moonlight. "Whiteout," he decides, reaching out his talons to his daughter the same way Foeslayer did with her son. "A fitting name for such a pretty dragon." His tone makes it clear that he will brook no argument. She did agree, after all, and he watches his daughter stretch her wings, smiling at how lovely she looks in the light of the moons. 

Foeslayer grits her teeth and lets go of her son, half because she can tell he wants to greet his sister, half because she's afraid if she keeps hold of him she'll squeeze him too hard.

Whiteout doesn't notice her father reaching for her, too busy basking in moonlight. It makes such pretty pictures in her mind, and such pretty sparkles on her scales!

Darkstalker intends to wrap his arms around his sister the way his mother wrapped her arms around him, warm and comforting and full of love. But he is not very good at moving his body yet, so what actually happens is that he tackles her to the floor of the nest.

She meeps with surprise, then giggles. Darkstalker's love is big and strong and clumsy just like he is! What a pretty shape for the world to be!

"Disruptive little one, isn't he?" Arctic says, both mildly amused at the sight and mildly frustrated that his daughter didn't come to him the way she should have.  There will be time for that later, he supposes. Plenty of time for him to dote on his loving daughter and watch her love him in return. "I'm sure he'll be more polite as he gets older."

"I like him. He's fierce." She shouldn't start a fight—who is she kidding, saying anything at all was starting a fight. Existing where Arctic can see her is starting a fight.

It's easier to not fight, though, when she's distracted by how much she loves her dragonet. Her dragonets. She has two. She has two and she loves them both.