It really was beautiful. Emile held the egg in her hands, possessed by it. She turned it this way and that. Light was captured in its surface, held in a glorious splendor, and then released all over the walls and floor of the inn. She had always felt somewhat alone, though she loved her father. With the egg in her hands, she felt like there was meaning and purpose to her life now. Oh how she wished it would hatch. She knew that if it did she would finally have a friend, a real friend. The egg seemed to hum in her hands sometimes, and sometimes she could feel something moving under the surface.

Since she managed to convince her father to purchase it from the well dressed travellers, she had spent every free moment with it in her hands. During the day was the best, when the sun was shining in through one of the windows, and she could hold the egg in the warmth of the sunbeam. At night when she wasn’t busy with the guests at the tables or cleaning up she would cradle it in her hands near the fire. She would sit as close as she could stand and stare mystified into the beautiful emerald surface.

After the second day of this behavior Frederick had started to worry. He retrieved his wife’s thaumalogical field detector and had performed a cursory examination for enchantments. This wasn’t like Emile to let her attention be held by a bauble. Still, he thought, she has a hard life here, and she must be lonely. I’ve done the best I can given the circumstances, but there’s only so much a man can do raising his daughter on his own like this. And with that declaration to himself, he pushed his worries down. If it made her happy, and it wasn’t enchanted, he didn’t see what harm could come from it.

Now he looked over at her from his place behind the bar, he was polishing the glasses again, though they were spotless already. Idly he fidgeted with the glass in his hand and cleared his throat before he spoke, “Emile, it’s such a nice day, and we have an hour before lunch, do you really want to spend it sitting in that chair inside? You know I’m going to need your help for the lunch service.”

“Yes, pa. I’ll help with lunch. I always do.” She lifted her gaze from the glistening jewel like surface of the egg and cast him a smile that didn’t reach her eyes, and immediately returned to examining the egg.

“I just thought, you know, you might want to play outside?” Frederick was crossing the room now, “I mean, it’s really very pretty but you’ve been staring at that thing since we got it.”

“Yes pa, staring.” She fumbled for more words at this and kept turning the egg over in her hands, watching the light dance on it.

“Well, why don’t you let me put that somewhere very safe for you, and you go on outside.” He reached out to take the beautiful egg with both hands from where it rested on the table.

“I don’t know pa, I think I’d rather just stay inside and look at it some more. I mean, it’s mine right?” She spoke with so little inflection in her voice that it sent chills through his spine.

“Well, if that’s really what you want-” He was cut off abruptly and in his shock he dropped the jeweled egg on the floor. “It moved!”

Both sets of eyes followed the egg as it fell from the height of the table to the hardwood floor. In the split second before impact Frederick both wished that the egg would be broken and at the same time that it was unharmed. In a way, both wishes came true. The egg hit the floor with almost a soft leathery sound, not the shattering sound he had been bracing himself for. Cracks spread very slowly across the glistening surface, and there was definitely something moving inside it.

Frederick bent at the waist for a closer look, and the only thing that saved Emile was the fact that she was sitting down. A tiny green snout covered in fine scales poked out from between the splitting fragments. Brilliant jade eyes followed the snout; then a burst of green vapor that made Emile think of a kettle boiling.

“Back!” Frederick shouted, and almost immediately started coughing, lunging out with his hand in time to push Emile back in her chair. Then he froze. He toppled over in a way that would have been comical had it not been so terrifying. Emile was no stranger to stories about ferocious and dangerous beasts. She’d be secretly hoping that everyone was wrong and the egg would hatch. Watching her father plummet to the floor, without so much as reaching his hands out to brace for the fall, made her wish she could take all of those hopes back.

She was stunned. But not for long. She backed up in the chair as far as she could, and ran behind the bar. The creature had completed its escape from the egg now, and was stretching itself out on the floor. It seemed to be covered in some sort of ooze, but even that couldn’t detract from the luminescent splendor of its hide in the sunlight. Beneath the bar was a lockbox, and from inside it Emile produced a scroll bound with a leather strap. She stopped short on her way back to her father on the floor, and grabbed the still wet cloth from the counter where he’d been polishing the now forgotten glassware. The cloth was just big enough that she could hastily tie it in front of her face.

“Right!” She said to no one in particular, and she cautiously approached the creature and her immobilized father. “Now don’t be afraid, little dragon, I’m not going to hurt you.” She was absentmindedly speaking as she crept closer and closer. She unrolled the scroll, and the words on the page burned themselves off as she read near silently, her mouth forming the words of the incantation. Brilliant white light radiated from her hands, and she dropped the now blank scroll. She dropped both hands together on her father’s chest, and for a moment she felt his whole body jerk. The white light seemed to drain from her hands into his body, and his pallid cheeks filled with color once more. Beneath her hands she felt the reassuring rise of his chest. Relief was short lived however, when his chest did not begin to fall again for the span of what felt like minutes to Emile.

The little green dragon surreptitiously nuzzled her hand, and she automatically ran her hand across its scaly head. “I know you didn’t mean it,” tears were forming in her eyes now, and her voice hitched, “but I think you really hurt my pa.”

The dragon looked up at her, into her eyes, and in them she saw no malice. Her seven year old heart swelled. There was no room in such a heart for thoughts of anger or revenge, especially against an unthinking animal. She was still resting her hands on her father’s chest, her sobs becoming more prominent now, when she noticed that his chest was falling and rising. Just very, very slowly. Almost imperceptibly.

“The healing hands scroll must have worked, just not well enough! That means he’s not dead! He just needs to get better.” With the back of her arm, she wiped the tears from her eyes.

The door swung open, and the sound of boots on the floor jarred her from her reverie. A stocky man with ruddy skin sauntered in atop heavy boots. The door slammed shut behind him, and the sounds all felt horrid and amplified to Emile in her current state. The dragon scurried behind the bar, spooked by the activity. “Emile, what’s that rag on your face! And where’s-” The man noticed Frederick sprawled out on the floor now looking like so much discarded refuse, “Oh lordy, what happened here child!”

“My pa needs help.” Emile spoke, still crouching over her father, and the man crossed the room hastily. “You should go get the midwife.”

“The midwife, yes. I’ll be right back Emile!” The heavily built man left the inn with haste, and again the too loud door slammed shut behind him. Emile wasted no time, and began cleaning up the fragments of the egg. By the time she was done, having hidden the bits and pieces that looked like leather encrusted with jewels, a small crowd of people was were hurrying into the inn.

The first to enter was the stocky man from before, stomping in his heavy boots. Behind him was another farmer, this one too tall and lean, like the years of working in the sun had caused him to sprout up like a plant, stretched thin. Then walking much slower was town’s resident healer, mother Maia. She was a short, round woman, forever wrapped in a grey no color cloak that swept along the ground. In all the years Emile had known her, she always had a smile and a sweet for the girl. Her round face was forever wrinkled with the lines of a life well lived. Frederick had told Emile more than once that she owed her life to Mother Maia.

“All right, all right boys, back up now. Give me room, give the man air!” She brandished the walking stick that she seldom leaned on like a club directing the two men like wayward cattle away from the prone innkeeper on the floor. “Emile, what’s going on here?”

Emile gestured to the dragon behind the bar, and hoped the dragon would understand that now would not be a good time to follow her. She walked from around the bar, and started to explain how her father had just fallen over, and wouldn’t move. She left out the cause to protect her dragon, and she left out the bit about the scroll because her family secrets were hers to keep.

“I see, I see.” Mother Maia was kneeling now, and raised a hand for silence as she lay her head on Frederick’s chest. An eternity passed. Empires rose and fell, and finally she started to stand back up. “Well, the girl’s right, he’s not dead, not yet anyway.”

“Is he cursed, Mother Maia?” It was the stretched too thin farmer that spoke now. For some reason Emile couldn’t remember his name. Her Pa always remembered everyone’s name.

“Hard to say for sure. Aye yeah. Looks like pear-rally-sis. Haven’t seen anything like this since the war.” She leaned heavily on her long, cherry walking stick now, “I think you boys’d better carry ‘im back to my hut. I can run some tests. You better lock up and come along too, Emile.”

Emile was torn, she didn’t want to leave the dragon, but she certainly didn’t want to let her father go to the midwife’s place without her. With a final word of caution to the dragon, she followed the trio and her unmoving father out of the inn. She locked the front door with a heavy iron key. When she was sure that no one was paying attention to her, she also uttered a locking ward.

The town was empty for the most part at this time of day, most of the farmers and fisherfolk in the fields or on the water. Those that kept house were mostly inside preparing meals, or tending to other such domestic duties. The improvised medics passed only a few small children on their way to Mother Maia’s place on the outskirts of town. The ancient midwife gave the children each a sweet from one of her innumerable pockets. “Frederick took a bit of a fall is all, nothing to worry about. Just like when you fell out of the tree, Milo.” She smiled with the ease of a professional liar, “Do you remember that Karolyn? When little Milo fell out the tree and hurt his arm? Didn’t take him long at all before he was up and climbing trees again though!” The children thoroughly distracted with the sweets and the memory, Maia hurried to catch up.

Mother Maia’s ‘hut’ was actually a well built wooden cabin on the outskirts of the village. Maia had been a very beautiful woman in her youth, and had ran through a string of husbands over her long and illustrious career of childbearing and rearing. This, coupled with the fact that she had delivered most of the adults in the village, and all of the children, led to a form of tribute being paid to her in the form of donations of both labor and goods.

Maia had been trained in the healing arts from a young age, and had inherited the cabin from the village’s previous midwife. Many extensions and modifications had been added to the building, not the least important of which was a clean room that was kept as sterile and well lit as possible. It was here, on this very bed where Emile had been born, that her father now laid.

“Alright you two, back to the fields with ya!” Mother Maia spoke with the voice of a head matron. “I’ve got my work cut out for me, and I know you boys do to. Don’t go spreading rumors or fear-mongering! I mean it!” The two middle-aged men shuffled their feet and looked at each other abashed, like children reprimanded for something they haven’t even done yet. “You just tell everyone that he’s sick, and that the inn is going to be closed for a few days while he recovers.”

“Yes Mother Maia.” The two men muttered in unison and began to make a hasty retreat, contemplating where they were going to source their midday meal and ale.

“Mother Maia, is my pa really going to get better? Do you think?” Emile’s voice was hitching again as she spoke but she was determined not to let herself cry again.

“Emile, you’re a clever girl, sharp as a tack. Like your mother. I’m not going to lie to you. I have seen this before, and I can’t say for sure until I run some tests. I’ve got some books here on the matter, and I’m going to do my very best. I hope you know that.” Mother Maia’s usually cheerful voice was grave and serious.

“Maybe I can help you?” Emile wanted to do something. To do anything. She didn’t want to feel helpless, and in spite of her age, she knew who she was.

“Of course you can help. You can help me keep him comfortable, and to take care of him.”

“Well, maybe I can be more help than that. I know you are going to try your best, but don’t you think that the wizards at the University would, you know, be able to do more?”

“Of course the wizards at the University would be able to do more. Mercy child, if there’s anyone in all the land that would know how to handle this situation it’d be one of them wizards. Why, if you’re mother were here with us.” Mother Maia trailed off at this.

“Well then, shouldn’t we get one of the wizards to come and help?” Emile’s voice was filling with hope now as she spoke.

“Aye girl, but them wizards don’t work for free. Worse still, we’d have to send a message. You’d likely have to give up your family’s inn just for a consultation, and who’d carry the message across all the badlands between here and Two Lanes?” Mother Maia was speaking automatically right now, her still sharp mind broke into several small sharp pieces while she was feeling Fredericks wrists and ankles, testing the rigidity of his joints.

“Well, I could go!” Emile was almost bubbling over with hope now. It was all so easy, she’d go to the University, explain the situation, and one of the wizards would come back and her father would be all better. Everything could go back like it was.

“The roads are rife with bandits and trouble. It’s an expensive trip even in the best of conditions. These days it’d be a death sentence to try and send one of the men from town.” She spoke while she examined, placing a hand over Fredericks eye, and then studying his pupil.

“Mother Maia, you agree that my pa needs a wizard.” Emile’s voice seemed to take on a silky soft edge now.

“Yes, I agree.” Mother Maia was muttering now, almost inaudible.

“And you agree that no one from town should be sent?” The edge to Emile’s usually honey sweet voice grew silkier and softer.

“Cor’, it’d be a death sentence.”

“And the inn is going to be closed anyway? So no one would miss me, if I went?” The words came from a deep depth, and filled the room, growing from the girl.

“Yes, closed.” Maia had stopped her examination now, and just stared at the prone man.

“We agree then, I’ll be on my way, and you’ll take care of my pa until I get back with a wizard?” The girl spoke forming a pact with her words.

“Always take care of your family, girl. I always have.”