Easter is one of those holidays that hasn’t spoken to me since I was a very young kid.
Sure, I have good memories of it– some of them even decently recent…
Like the time when my melodramatic older sister wrote words in crayon on her dyed eggs for the younger kids to find and my Aunt was somewhere between confused and offended by the green-grey egg that said “MELANCHOLY”
As a parent things have come full-circle. I’m back to delighting in the simple pleasure of watching little hands get horribly stained with vinegary dyes as eggs change from basic white into colorful things of wonder.
I’m excited for easter.
I waffled quite a bit on what to write this week. I didn’t know if I wanted to go with something Spring-y for the weather, holiday to mark the weekend, or completely generic.
But watching my daughter stare in wonder at colorful eggs (then promptly crush one of those eggs in the red dye) I knew exactly what I wanted to write.
Thus was born this weeks piece:
Egg-Straveganza at Highlakes Park
Jill N Davies
Martin had meant to find eggs during the West County Egg-Straveganza Easter egg hunt at Highlakes Park. A whole lot of them, in fact. He was a good boy, and he wasn’t looking for trouble. Unfortunately, he found both.
Martin had only found 8 eggs before he found THE egg. He was taking his time, weaving back and forth through the long grasses next to the old oaks while the younger kids flew wild through the field. Then, suddenly, there it was.
Bigger than all the other eggs, the egg wasn’t painted in bright, colors or whispy pastels. But it wasn’t plain white either. It was bluish, with dark speckles, dirty from having spent what Martin had to assume was some number of days tucked away in the crude nest.
He knew the instant he found it that this egg wasn’t part of the hunt. Even though he knew it, he couldn’t just leave it there. It was a big egg. Whatever laid it hadn’t been back to take care of it, or even check on it for that matter. In that instant, as Martin stared down at the egg, pondering the heat that radiated outward from the shell, the egg began to wiggle. It was then that he realized that whatever was inside the egg was getting ready to come out. Martin was compelled by an exuberant compassion to make certain the egg was kept under his protection.
Martin’s mother balked when he said he was done with the egg hunt and handed her his basket with the paltry 8 eggs in it. She looked with wide eyes at the bright blues and greens and sparkly pinks hiding in the nest of fake green grass, forsaken by her son. When she asked why, Martin shrugged and said, “I guess I got bored,” which probably she knew was a lie.
But she didn’t ask about it when they drove home, even though Martin didn’t take off his stiff Easter jacket in the hot car. Nor did she call after him when he raced up the stairs without any of the candy the Easter Bunny had left him that morning.
Up the stairs and around the bend in the hall Martin took time to ensure his door was shut securely and the little metal lock was set so that he’d at least have some warning before either of his parents burst through the door. Then, with all the caution and care an eleven-year-old could muster, Martin extracted the egg from beneath his shirt and laid it on his bed.
He stooped down so that his eyes were level with the mattress, considering this miraculous thing he’d found. The egg had wiggled and twitched the whole way home, vibrating against his bare skin and making him feel like a brooding hen. For now, the egg was still.
The main thing Martin worried about was keeping the egg and whatever was inside of it warm. The egg was practically baking in the early-spring sun and that seemed to suit it just fine given all the wiggling and trying to get outside. Martin’s room was in the back of the house, shaded by a row of Osage trees. He didn’t have a heat source like the sun to help the egg hatch…
But he did know where his mom’s heating pad was. That would have to do.
Since getting found out by his parents was a secondary concern, Martin had no choice but to leave his door unlocked as he searched for the heat pad. As he rummaged and pilfered through neatly stacked rows of towels and rags, de-neat-ifying them, his mom called from downstairs.
“Do you want some lunch?”
“No thanks!” Martin said, wrapping a victorious hand around the cord.
“A snack then? I sliced some strawberries,” she baited. Martin could tell she was trying to lure him down to the kitchen.
“My stomach hurts. I ate too much chocolate this morning,” He called back, thinking quickly of something that might give her reason to leave him be for a bit. “I’m gonna take a nap!”
That ought to do it.
“Alright. Let me know if you need anything,” she said. Then her footsteps went off in the other direction.
Satisfied, Martin raced back into his room with the heat pad, slamming the door behind him.
It took him a minute to figure out what he was seeing. In the short time that he was gone, the egg had disappeared from his bed. Its absence filled him with a dread panic. He had to blink a few times before his mind was clear enough to understand the rest of what he was seeing.
The egg wasn’t gone. It was broken in half, and one of the halves was further broken into dozens of pieces. The other half tottered at the edge of the bed before toppling over and hitting the ground with a muted crunch. In its place sat a small creature with shimmering scales and enormous, searching eyes.
Though the shock hadn’t quite passed yet, Martin sprung into action. He plugged in the heat pad and used a combination of the pad, pillows, and blankets to fashion a sort of nest for the hatchling, who immediately snuggled against the electronic warmth emanating from the pad.
Martin marveled at it. It was covered head to tail in metallic scales that managed to take what little light was in his room and make it glow in a rainbow of colors. A ridge of hard silver spikes ran from the base of its skull down the length of its ample tail. It had wings. Beautiful, black and silver wings that looked like moonlight when it stretched them out.
There was no doubt in Martin’s mind of what it was. It was wonderful, and awesome and unbelievable. And it was all his.
The only problem was that Martin had no idea what to do with a baby dragon…
The End
Check out the video, done late at night after way too long of a week on IGTV! Make sure to follow my author account for all the things!
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