Chapter 522: Not a Single Word
"It seems you’re truly alright. Now, do you have any questions? Any requests for your doctor? Anything?" Lazuardi asked, unhurriedly gathering his instruments and tucking them into his medical bag.
His sky-blue hair was escaping its ponytail, and his spectacles were still slightly fogged from the steam of the birthing pool, but his demeanor was as calm and unhurried as ever.
"Profe—Doctor, how do I..." Cecilia hesitated, glancing at the egg resting on its bed of glowing coals. The cracked obsidian surface pulsed rhythmically and peacefully, like a heartbeat made visible. "How do I carry Sol around when I want to carry them around?"
Lazuardi raised his eyebrows. "Right. You’re not a dragon," he said, nodding. "If they just sit on their coal bed, the shell will be quite hot, so be careful when picking them up."
"Doctor, I mean..." Cecilia sighed. "Do I have to carry them upright? You know, my human instinct is to cradle them and rock them in my arms. Like a normal baby. Is that... allowed?"
"Huh?" Lazuardi widened his eyes, finally understanding what she meant.
"Aahahahah!" he burst out laughing, a full, booming, unrestrained laugh that filled the room . "Why not?! Throw the egg around too! Dance with it!"
Cecilia grimaced, shaking her head. She should have expected this from the doctor who had just told her to simmer her baby in a pot.
"You know that a dragon egg is ’a bit harder’ to destroy than any other egg, right?" Lazuardi smiled, his eyes twinkling.
The phrase "a bit harder" was doing a lot of heavy lifting. Dragon eggs were practically indestructible. They had been known to survive volcanic eruptions, deep-sea submersion, and falling from a mountain.
"The baby will come out after it grows a bit more if nothing’s wrong. Seize the chance to bond with it in any way that you want while it still grows. Usually after five to six months, the egg will stop growing bigger," Lazuardi said, his laughter subsiding into a warm, encouraging smile.
"If by then they won’t come out, as we’ve discussed before, it means they don’t want to come out yet for some unknown reason. So, it’s better to make them want to come out within these five months."
Oh. So the total would be around ten months too. Cecilia did the math in her head. The baby had been inside her body for roughly four months, and after five to six more months of external incubation, the egg would stop growing. Nine to ten months total, similar to a human pregnancy.
Lazuardi picked the egg up from the coal bed casually. He cooled it gently with a whisper of magic and then placed it in Cecilia’s waiting arms.
Cecilia’s smile broke across her face so wide she didn’t even notice it happening. The egg was bigger than a normal human baby’s head, its weight solid, warm and precious against her chest.
This was why she had torn during the birth and why the elixirs had been necessary. It was bigger than it should’ve been.
"Cherish the days you can still hug it like this," Lazuardi said, his voice taking on a slightly mischievous edge. "Some dragon eggs grow as big as your body by the fifth month."
Cecilia’s head snapped up, her eyes going wide. "What?!"
Oathran chuckled, shaking his head. "He lied. He’s teasing you. The egg won’t grow so big you can’t hug it within your arms."
Lazuardi’s laugh boomed out again, filling the room with joy. Dragons were rare, so rare that every birth was a cause for celebration among those who understood the weight of the moment.
But a dragon doctor like him was rarer still. In fact, he was the only one. The sole dragon physician in a world where dragons were already fading into legend, Lazuardi had delivered every single dragon hatchling born within his centuries-long career.
And because of how rare this moment was, he was never tired of pranking their parents the exact same way.
"Oathran, in the past, you refused to come out of your egg for two whole winters! Your egg also didn’t stop growing after five months, it stopped growing after eight whole months! I’ve never seen anything like that!"
Cecilia turned to Oathran with wide, fascinated eyes. Eight months? Two winters?
But Oathran just smiled gently, softening the sharp lines of his face. He said reassuringly, "No, don’t worry about it. Sol will come out in time. I’m just a bit different."
Eastiel, meanwhile, had leaned in close. His tears were falling freely now, dripping onto Cecilia’s shoulder and sliding down to land on the egg’s warm shell.
He reached out with trembling fingers and gently caressed the top of Sol’s surface. He seemed to want to say something, but all that came out was a strangled whisper.
"C... come out... quick... Sol..." Then he clamped his jaw shut so hard his teeth clicked, holding back the sob that threatened to escape.
Cecilia looked down at Sol, her thumb tracing the glowing golden veins that pulsed beneath the cracked obsidian surface. Then, she rubbed Eastiel’s cheek with the same hand.
She wondered why Oathran was so sure Sol would be more normal than he had been. After all, Oathran was Sol’s biological father. Wouldn’t it make sense to worry a little whether the baby would do the same thing as its father?
Perhaps Sol would also linger in the shell, refusing to emerge, waiting for something no one else could see.
"The fact that you grew bigger for three extra months... Do you know the reason?" Cecilia asked.
Oathran chuckled. It was a light sound, almost dismissive, as though the question were about something as mundane as a childhood growth spurt.
"It’s because my mother deliberately put me in an excessively dense mana environment. The two winters before I emerged, it’s because she didn’t say a single word to me since she conceived me." He shrugged, his expression wry. "That lady is something else..."
Cecilia’s eyes faltered.
Her hands tightened instinctively around Sol’s egg, pulling it closer to her chest.
...what?
His mother had not spoken to him, not once, since the moment she conceived him?
Through the entire pregnancy, through the birth... through eight months of an egg that kept growing and growing...?
Why was he brushing this off like it was nothing?
She didn’t say a single word—
DING!
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DING!
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What—?
The world suddenly folded into itself.
And the egg in Cecilia’s arms disappeared along with it.