Panic surged through me as loud shrieks filled my head. I sat bolt upright, something hitting my shoulder as I rose and looked for the threat. The suns had begun to rise, so I'd been asleep for several hours. Had the swamp lizards struck while I slept? Or was there something else, something I didn't know about? Had the Veratocracy's soldiers caught up to us?
A pained mewling interrupted my frantic thoughts and I looked down to find the source. Trai struggled to roll from her back onto her belly and looked up at me, her sadness and frustration obvious. Behind her, Sybil fought to control her face, fiercely restrained mirth apparent in every quivering muscle while Shemira was unable to hold back her giggles, the laughter infectious as it rang out over the keelish. After a couple seconds' thought, my sleep-addled mind was finally able to figure out what had happened.
"Little one. Why did you do that?" I fought to keep my unreasonable wrath from bleeding out in my tone. That anger wasn't at all from a sense of superiority, but mere frustration at the rude awakening. Though keelish hatchlings were hunting and talking by a day old, much less nearly a full month old as Trai was, a khatif hatchling obviously aged much slower. Even so, she obviously was growing much more quickly than a human infant would be, as she could proficiently crawl and stumblingly walk and that still before a month of age.
"She was busy searching, and you interrupted her, you brute." Shemira's voice was still tinged by the giggles she fought to restrain, and I ignored her as I continued to focus on the petulant child.
Trai made eye contact with me and shrieked her incandescent rage at the mistreatments and indignities she'd suffered at my hand, or shoulder as the case may be. Though she was wholly enraged, I couldn't maintain my own frustration as the little hatchling tried to communicate to me how badly I had sinned. With a wry smile, I leaned down and offered my hands as a safe spot. After thinking about it, Trai imperiously crawled into my hands before I raised her up to a comfortable position in my arms, where she laid across my forearms and let her tail dangle.
With a laugh of my own, I began to hum to [Nurturing Enunciation], the magic swiftly draining from my sonilphon as I felt Trai's little body vibrate with the thrumming notes of my voice. I didn't think of it consciously, but I hummed to the tune of a lullaby from my mother:
When comes the spring,
We will be wed
For when comes the winter,
We must rest our heads.
When comes the summer,
Our tents we will spread
For when comes the winter,
Our paths we must tread.
When comes the autumn,
We will make our bread
For when comes the winter,
We may yet be dead.
When comes the winter,
When comes the winter.
A strange, morbid song I'd only thought about once I'd fully reached adulthood, but still the tune was calming and simple. After a full repetition, I had used just under one half of my sonilphon's reserves, so I began to repeat the little ditty. After just the first two lines, a small voice began to attempt to follow along with my own and I felt the small smile spread into a full grin as Trai sang along with my magic. As my sonilphon was fully depleted, my humming died off and I looked at the little hatchling for her forgiveness. I was rewarded with a contented nuzzle of her snout into the crook of my elbow and I felt myself soften further.
I was pulled from the reverie as Shemira stepped closer to me, her spine straight and her steps hesitant before she asked, "What… was that?"
Confused, I cocked my head. "My magic. It helps the small ones grow faster. Have you never seen me use it before?"
Surprising me, Shemira began to lose her composure. "No! That was something different entirely! The sounds you made weren't just your magic, but something that was… more than the birds, better than your other sounds. What was it? What's it called?"
Finally, I understood. "It's called music. You can just make the notes however you like, but I was just humming something my–something I've heard before." The thought of my mother having long died to the ravages of time sobered me, but I forced myself to continue speaking, "It usually has words, too."
Shemira took my words almost as a physical blow, her eyes immediately glazing as the idea of "music" being something deliberate, something "human". There was an obvious hunger in her face, a need to explore this possibility, and for the first time, I truly thought about what made a group of creatures a people. Words? Love? Music? Children?
Dozens and hundreds of possibilities crossed my mind as I briefly thought about making my people something more than a swarm of ravening beasts. I didn't want us to merely be a conquering force to either see me hailed as the emperor of the continent or be exterminated before we could make that a possibility. We could be so much more than that; an example of military might, an educational exemplar, a political paragon, an economic epitome. There was so much more than what I knew of the Keel of old that we would be. We would need overwhelming combat prowess to keep ourselves safe to establish that nation, but that became my goal beyond carving out a space to survive:
Making a people where we could explore whatever possibilities occurred to us. And to make that a more likely future, for now, I would need to consolidate power.
The new aspirations firm in my mind, I rolled my shoulders and began to look for Ytte. After all, the suns were up, and it was time to put my plans into motion.