It was a pregnancy scare that what had broken them up, Bobbi reflected. Missing her period had made her realize that she wasn’t ready to settle down yet. There was more she wanted to do and see and experience and Stephen wasn’t the man she wanted to experience it with—or the man she wanted to be the father of her children.
If that pregnancy test had been positive, she would probably be weighed down with a boring husband and a giant belly right now, Bobbi reflected. And she would have been stuck that way for nine months. Too bad humans couldn’t just have sex for a day and a night and then lay an egg like the Orniths did—it seemed a lot easier in the long run.
The females laid eggs weekly in the communal laying house, but it was only after mating that they laid a fertilized egg which might grow and mature and eventually hatch into a baby Ornith or “chickling” as their young were called.
Bobbi had gotten to see a hatching just the other day and she was somewhat surprised when the large egg—about twice the size of a football—hatched a chickling the size of a small toddler. The baby Ornith had come out able to speak right away, too. Apparently they learned and absorbed language through the shell of their egg during the two-year long maturation process.
Because it took the eggs so long to mature and the Orniths only mated once a year, fertilized eggs were rare and precious. They were carefully guarded by the elders of the tribe, who were too old to lay fertile eggs themselves anymore. They sat on the fertilized eggs and “brooded” over them while the younger Ornith females worked in the gardens that provided most of the tribe’s food. It was a simple system, but it worked to everyone’s benefit and they were a happy and contented people.
“My mating was successful,” Therena said, pulling Bobbi’s mind back to the present. She ducked her long, snaky neck shyly and cocked her head to one side, looking at Bobbi with only one large, liquid black eye.
It wasn’t easy to read an Ornith’s facial expressions since you couldn’t see their pupils and they had beaks instead of mouths, but Bobbi had learned to interpret this sideways look as an expression of suppressed excitement.
“Then the mating was fruitful?” she inquired, smiling.
Therena bobbed her head in acknowledgement.
“I…I have laid an egg. And oh, Bobbi—it is deep purple!” she said in an excited whisper.
“Oh, Therena! I’m so happy for you!” Bobbi ducked her own head rapidly up and down, which was a gesture of joy and excitement among the Orniths. She understood the significance of the egg’s color because the bird-like people laid color-coded eggs.
Unfertilized eggs were creamy white—much like a chicken egg on Earth, though many, many times bigger. A pale green egg held a male Ornith chickling—these were rare but not very prized, since males weren’t much use to the female Orniths and were only needed once a year for mating.
A pale violet egg held a female chickling. But a dark purple egg held a female with special significance. It was said among the Orniths that females hatched from dark purple eggs were extra long-lived and extremely wise. All of the elders of the tribe had been hatched from dark purple eggs.
According to local legend, the egg of Jemeena, who was the oldest elder and the de facto head of the tribe, had been hatched from an egg with a shell that was such a dark purple it was almost black. She was a hundred and seventeen years old and still an extremely sharp and competent leader.
“Will you come and see it?” Therena asked, still bobbing her head excitedly.
“I would be honored to see your egg,” Bobbi said, smiling.
Together, they walked down the curving dirt lane edged with pinkish-white pebbles towards the long, low grass hut which was the communal laying house. To one side were the individual wooden huts where the Orniths lived and to the other side were the vast gardens which fed the entire village.
If there was anything the villagers needed that they couldn’t grow or make themselves, they bartered for it with the few traveling traders—mostly male Orniths—who passed by occasionally.
Their main item of barter were the unfertilized eggs that almost all Ornith females laid weekly. These were gathered, wrapped in grasses, and kept in a cool pit which had been dug in one corner of the laying house. The traders took the large eggs to port cities where they traded them with the very few visitors that came from other planets. Apparently, Ornith eggs were considered a delicacy on other worlds. Just one of them could probably have fed twenty people, Bobbi thought.
They entered the long, low laying house which was warm and stuffy and smelled of hay and dried grass. The reason for that was evident—huge bunches of the stuff were piled in four separate mounds, almost as tall as Bobbi’s head. Three of these had elders sitting on them, brooding fertilized eggs. Their long necks drooped to their chests and their eyes were sleepy or completely closed.