Chapter 71: The Fluffy Little Creatures

Chapter 71: Chapter 71: The Fluffy Little Creatures

With many people helping, the cooking was no longer such hard work.

Everyone went into the house to carry the tables out, setting them up in one long row. The hotpots and the burners were brought over by Daniel at Liam’s instruction. Liam was pregnant, Daniel and Camila could not eat spicy food, so all three sat at the same table, eating the portion of hotpot without chilli.

Everyone ate while chatting away merrily, the dinner only broke up at ten at night. Once the tables and the dirty bowls and chopsticks had been cleared away, each person got two pieces of watermelon for dessert. The flesh of the melon was still red, the seeds were rather sparse yet very large, so everyone could spit them out onto a plate easily.

Liam told Benjamin to remember to gather them up to try sowing a new round, to see whether the quality matched planting from the original seed.

Having finished his melon, Daniel elegantly wiped his mouth. He propped up his chin looking up at the sky, saying with feeling: "The stars here really are bright. On the planet Altair there is nothing but electric light."

Liam teased him with a laugh: "Why not just stay here tonight, get your fill of stargazing. Either way, tomorrow we are both going over to Sirius to work."

Daniel considered for a moment, he had only just nodded in agreement when Benjamin’s call rang out: "Liam! Those chicken eggs you set to incubate before we left have started breaking out of the shell!"

Liam hurriedly stood up, striding off inside. Following him in there were Isabella and Auntie Camila as well. Daniel was also curious about what a chicken egg was, so he ran in after them too. The warehouse was cramped, so only two retainers came in to guarantee their master’s safety, the rest stood guard in front of the door.

The incubator was set on a wooden platform in the innermost corner of the warehouse, a spot Liam had chosen carefully beforehand because the temperature there fluctuated the least, it also escaped the draught that came through the gap in the door every time someone went in or out. The lid of the incubator was a curved sheet of transparent glass, beneath it sat three slightly tilted egg trays, while on the wall of the incubator the row of figures displaying temperature and humidity was still ticking over very slowly within the safe range.

Benjamin was sitting hunched up in front of the platform, one hand holding the camera, seeing his younger brother come in he hurriedly shifted aside to give up the spot, his voice still breaking with excitement:

"I came in to get a storage box, passing by I heard the sound. At first I even thought it was a Sharptooth Beast, but our planet has never had a single star-beast on it."

Liam sat down on the platform, signalling everyone to be quiet.

In the warehouse there was nothing left but the very faint whirring of the incubator’s motor. Then from beneath the layer of glass, a tiny sound rang out, thin and hoarse, sounding like someone tapping a fingertip against the wall of a glass. Cheep. Cheep cheep.

Daniel tilted his head, both eyes wide: "It... it is calling out?"

"Mm." Liam answered, his voice dropping along with it: "At the large end of the egg there is an air sac. Before breaking the shell, the chick has to drive its own beak into that air sac in order to switch over to breathing with its lungs, once it can breathe, only then can it call out. Hearing this sound means that inside there it has already finished the hardest step."

Camila said in a low voice: "Do not stand so close, children. Star-fowl and star-birds are all very ferocious when they first break out of the shell, you have to stand a little further off to avoid getting hurt."

Liam smiled at her: "This thing is not a star-fowl or a star-bird, it is feeble as anything. In a little while when it crawls out you will know at once, auntie."

Just at this moment, the egg in the middle row gave a stir. Benjamin at once zoomed in to film a close-up at a 3D angle.

The egg stirred very faintly, only rocking slightly in the hollow of the tray before going still, but immediately after that a bump the size of a grain of rice rose on the surface of the shell, and that bump broke open into a crack speckled with white. The shell had been pushed from the inside out, so the edges of the crack were frayed up like chalk dust.

Everyone held their breath waiting. More than ten minutes went by, nothing happened at all. After waiting another half hour, the chick inside still would not come out. The crack on the egg stayed exactly where it was, without widening in the slightest, and the cheeping inside grew sparser before dying out altogether.

Camila grew so anxious she could not sit still, in the end she could not restrain herself, reaching out a hand meaning to open the glass lid: "Let me peel a bit of it off for the thing. How is it to get out through a hole that small, lying in there it will suffocate."

Liam immediately caught her hand.

"Do not touch it, auntie." He said, his voice turning serious outright: "It is lying still not because it is exhausted, but because it is finishing off the work inside the egg. The membrane stuck to the inner face of the shell still holds a whole network of blood vessels, which has fed it all the way from the beginning until now. It has to wait for the blood in that network to drain fully into its belly, the yolk sac also has to be drawn the rest of the way into the abdominal cavity, only then can the abdominal wall close. If we peel the shell off for it at this point the blood vessels get torn, it will bleed to death."

Camila pulled her hand back as though scalded, blank for a moment, only then did she smack her lips: "I see. Like clamping the umbilical cord too early, now that you put it that way I understand."

Liam laughed: "That is exactly it, auntie. So at this step we have one single task, which is to do nothing. It can rest as long as it likes, some of them rest half a day before carrying on."

Liam had only just finished speaking when the egg began to stir again.

This time, it shook without stopping, as though someone were rocking it gently from below, and from the original crack, a new line of fracture ran round to one side, then one more stretch again, inching on like that along a circle round the large end of the egg.

Each time it inched on a stretch, a rasping sound of straining rang out inside, the rhythm of its breathing audible as well.

The incision went three quarters of the way round the circle, then stopped. Inside the egg there was silence for some ten-odd seconds, then the whole egg jerked up very violently, the cap of the shell burst off, and one tiny leg kicked straight out.

Daniel drew in a breath.

The chick kicked twice more, then slid out of the remaining half of the shell, rolling out into the middle of the tray, lying on its back, on all four sides around it were fragments of shell and the membrane that had dried into white threads.

The chick could not stand up, nor did it make any sound. It only lay there, both eyes screwed shut, its long scrawny neck stretched out, its two wings so small they looked like a pair of scales, its whole body soaking wet, matted together into sharp little spikes, its belly still heaving with each hurried breath.

Daniel asked Liam in a low voice: "What is wrong with it? It looks like it is about to die."

"There is nothing wrong with it." Liam answered: "It is resting to recover its strength."

Daniel let out an "oh", bending down to look a while longer, the expression on his face utterly indescribable, in the end he turned to Liam, asking with the most earnest air: "This creature seems... a little ugly, doesn’t it?"

Liam snorted a laugh: "I hope that when you wake up tomorrow morning you will still be able to say that."

He straightened up: "All right, the rest of the eggs will be just the same, there is nothing worth watching. It is late too, we ought to go to bed."

Everyone nodded in agreement. Benjamin set the camera to automatic to go on filming, after that he went into the house.

Earlier in the evening White Narcissus had messaged to say he had something on tonight, there was no need for Benjamin to read him to sleep, while perhaps because of the piece of white melon his younger brother had given him that afternoon, Benjamin’s mind was somewhat wide awake, he had trouble dropping off. He simply sat up to edit the videos filmed recently, after that he posted them to his vlog channel.

This video began from the scene of raising seedlings out in the fields, then on to the process of germination, next the process of the plants growing up until the time of harvest...

The work that had gone on for more than a month was wrapped up in a video only forty-eight minutes long, yet it achieved a result better than hoped for. The followers of Benjamin’s channel had long since waited until they grew mouldy, now seeing him post a new video, they immediately poured in to watch, after which they flung out winged words of praise without stinting.

Benjamin waited on and on without seeing White Narcissus come in to interact, guessing that by this hour he had already gone to sleep. He lay down on the bed in disappointment, flipping this way and that like a pancake being fried, on and on without managing to sleep.

It really was strange to say. Before this he had been a devoted fan of Daniel, so much so that the first time he met his idol he had caused a few scenes that left one not knowing whether to laugh or cry. But little by little, he no longer had so much excitement in him. By today, meeting Daniel again, Benjamin was able to talk with him like a normal person.

The opposite was true of this Omega with the network ID White Narcissus. Lately Benjamin had been talking with him often, usually about interesting things in daily life. The one doing the talking was no longer Benjamin alone, White Narcissus now and then also told a few interesting stories he had come across. White Narcissus was used to listening to Benjamin’s voice in order to fall asleep, while Benjamin had also grown used to listening to the sound of his breathing.

Benjamin felt he had come down with something.

Daniel was lying in the room next door talking quietly with Liam, after that he was too tired and fell asleep, with no idea at all that someone was missing him badly enough to lose sleep over it.

The next morning, the moment Liam woke up Daniel had only just woken as well. Once they had finished washing, they had just stepped down the stairs when they heard a volley of cheeping ringing out on and on. Daniel ran swiftly out into the yard, seeing everyone crowded round looking at something, in each person’s hands they were holding up a ball of yellow fluff besides.

Daniel leaned in close to Isabella out of curiosity, asking: "Isabella, what is that thing you are cradling in your hands?"

Isabella smiled with her eyes crinkled up, lifting the ball of yellow fluff in her hands over in front of Daniel: "It is a chick! Look, they have all hatched. All twenty eggs hatched, every one, the soaking wet down from yesterday has dried too, they look unbearably adorable."

Something soft was placed into Daniel’s hands, he opened his eyes wide in astonishment to look. The ball of yellow fluff had a pair of glistening black eyes, a minute beak and a pair of tiny pale pink feet, its stubby little wings pressed close against its body, now and then spreading slightly open. The ball of yellow fluff tilted its head to look at Daniel, opening its beak to let out one "cheep".

This "cheep" was like an arrow from the God of Love, planting itself with a thud into Daniel’s heart. On his childlike face there suddenly appeared the tender feeling of a mother, around him there seemed to rise layer upon layer of pink bubbles as well.

Benjamin saw this scene, suddenly thinking, if White Narcissus were looking at this adorable creature, he would surely wear an expression similar to Daniel’s, wouldn’t he?

Thinking so, he opened up his smart watch, lining up the angle to photograph the little yellow fluffball of a chick, after that he sent it over to White Narcissus: [Let me show you this. Isn’t it adorable?]

At the very same moment, the smart watch on Daniel’s wrist let out a notification: [Message from the Interstellar Connection network, your network friend "Farming with the Martinezes" has sent an image.]

Benjamin: "..."

Daniel: "..."