Cedar Sanderson is doing N'inktober, so I'm going to follow along and do what I've been trained to do by the Raconteur Press Postcard books: come up with a story to match her visual prompts. I can't guarantee that I'll have a complete story for every image, but I'm going to at least try to come up with a scene, a start, or an idea!
Childhood Elephant-bird
With a month to go before her birthday, Piper Kane decided that it was time to leave subtlety behind. Sitting on the stool at the kitchen counter, she pushed her eggs around on the plate, building her courage.
“So, um. Mom.”
Her mother looked back over her shoulder from the sink where she was busy rinsing dishes. “I know that tone of yours. What’s on your mind, Pip?”
She bit her lip and stared at the scrambled eggs. “My birthday’s coming up.”
“Already?” Her mom winked at her. “Ten! Double digits!”
“Yeah. Do… do you and Dad need any help with anything?”
Her Mom shut off the water and turned around, drying her hands on a dishtowel. “I don’t think so. We’ve sent out your invitations, and I know you wanted the dragon cake. Is there something else you think we might ned help with?”
Pip squirmed a little before blurting out “Presents? I mean…”
“Ahhh.” Her mom smiled. “You mean, do we need help figuring out what to get you?”
“Maybe. I mean, if you were wondering.”
“No, I think your dad has it covered. You may have let something slip about wanting to learn to ride? Hmm?”
Piper’s heart skipped a beat. “He listened? I mean… I may have, I guess.”
“Once or twice.” She nodded at Piper’s plate. “So with that out of the way, how about you finish breakfast before the school bus gets here?”
“Right!” She dove into her eggs. Truth be told, she barely tasted them. She was already dizzy with anticipation.
She slipped into her usual seat on the bus next to Kayleigh. Her best friend stopped doing her last-minute math homework long enough to cock her head inquisitively.
“Well?”
Piper bounced in the seat. “I asked!” She dropped her voice to a loud whisper. “Just like you said. I asked, and Mom said Dad’s on it!”
“No. WAY!” Kayleigh grinned. “Told you! Is it the one you wanted?”
“I guess. I mean, I practically told him.”
“Man.” Kayleigh sat back in the seat, shaking her head. “I wish we had a farm like you. There’s no way that my parents would let me have a dragon. Can you imagine trying to fit it into our apartment?”
Piper giggled at the mental image. “It doesn’t matter. You can come out and learn to ride with me.”
Math homework was abandoned as they spent the rest of the trip trying come up with the best name for Piper’s new dragon.
At the party, she was sure she was going to explode from excitement. Dad had tried to be sly about it, but there was one present that dwarfed the others. It was nearly twice her size. So big that they had covered it with a colored sheet and tied a bow to it. All her friends whispered to each other, wondering what it could be. She and Kayleigh managed to keep quiet. Though every few minutes, they would look at each other, glance at the present, and burst in to giggles.
She barely registered the other presents. There were the usual clothes and some books. Aunt Edna got her some sort of weird stuffed animal, like she was still a little kid. She was dutifully thankful for each of gift – even her aunt’s – but her attention was firmly rooted elsewhere.
Finally, when all was said and done, her father stood up and made a show of looking around. “Well, I guess that’s it.”
“Mr. Kane!” Kayleigh bounced up, pointing at the huge box. “What about that?”
“Behind this, you mean?” Her Dad made a show of looking behind the huge present. All the adults chuckled.
Kayleigh rolled her eyes. “No, right there! With the bow!”
“Oh!” Her Dad grinned. “Almost forgot that one! Thank you, Kayleigh! Pip, this is from your mother and I. I think you’ll like it.” With that, he swept the sheet up and out.
Underneath it was a simple wooden box with wire walls.
They all stared. Paulie Dodson snickered. “Is that a chicken coop?”
Her Dad’s grin fell, but just a hair. “Kind of!”
Piper felt sick. She tried to speak, but couldn’t get anything out. She fought to blink away tears. Her Dad came over and leaned over.
“I did some reading, kiddo. There’s a lot of problems if you adopt a dragon.”
Piper bit her lip and nodded. She was afraid if she spoke, she’d start to cry.
“That’s why we got you this instead. It’s an incubator. If we’re going to get you a dragon, we’re going to do it right.”
She heard the words, but they didn’t register at first. When they did, all she could get out was, “What?”
“You’re going to raise your dragon from an egg. Best way to do it, I’ve heard. We’ll get your incubator set up and inspected before your egg gets here next week.”
They got the incubator set up out in a corner of the barn. It had its own heat lamp, light, and thermostat. She even got a set of special gloves to help her handle the asbestos batting they packed the egg in.
The egg itself was… not what she had imagined. It was a brilliant ivory, true. She kept turning her head, trying to catch the “iridescent gleam” that she’d heard was the mark of a healthy egg, without any luck.
“Maybe you can see it better in natural light,” her Dad pointed out. “Anyways, Pip. You’re going to have to change out the bedding every other week for the next few months. That’s got to be your job.” He looked very serious. “You have to be the one who handles it, so it will imprint on you.”
“I will! And I’ll be careful! I’ll check on it every day!
“I know you will.” He tussled her hair. “Don’t just touch it. Talk or sing. Maybe read it a story.”
She nodded eagerly. “I can do that!”
Over the next few months, there wasn’t a day that went by that she wasn’t out in the barn, sitting with her egg. She sang songs to it, told it about school, and even did her homework out in the barn, reading aloud. She changed out the batting every two weeks, though she wasn’t quite sure why it needed it.
Then – one day, well into summer vacation – she was out in the barn, sitting with the egg on a hot, lazy day, when there was a loud TIK TIK TIK and then a tiny little “crack” from next to her.
She jumped up, staring. There was the tiniest bit of crazing in the shell of the egg. As she watched, the egg trembled slightly, then settled.
TIK.
“Dad!” She tried to yell, but it came out in a whisper. She turned to run for the house, almost falling over herself in excitement as she burst out of the barn.
“Dad! DAD!” She found her voice. “IT’S HATCHING!”
“I know exactly what I ordered! Yes, a dragon. You know? Scaly thing? Claws? Breathes fire? I was supposed to get a Shetland Dragon, not… what do you mean? Of course I checked the receipt!”
His wife raised an eyebrow and handed him a folded-up paper. He shook it out, peering at it.
“Here! It clearly shows… oh, bugger.” HE sighed. “OK. Look, can I talk to someone about an exchange, please? Yes, I’ll hold.”
His wife shook her head. “You didn’t check the receipt, did you?”
He closed his eyes briefly. “Obviously not. How’s Pip doing?”
She put a hand on his shoulder. “Surprisingly well, I think.”
“Taking it like a champ?”
“Actually, a little better than that. No, strike that. A lot better than that.” She nodded at the phone. “Since you’re on hold, maybe you should come take a look…”
“Well, it’s certainly not a dragon.” Kayleigh put her hands on her hips. “If you’re keeping it, we’re going to have to come up with a new name.”
“Him.” The baby roc bumped up against Piper’s legs, cooing. It was the size of a big dog, and already growing. “There’s a thing on the internet that shows you how to check. He’s a he. And yes, I’m keeping him.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” Piper thought about trying to explain how the baby roc had followed her around, chirping excitedly. How it had trilled and purred and leaned into her when she first paid attention to it, and actually licked her face with its long, rough tongue. How she had tried to put it back in its nest, and it had peeped plaintively at her until she finally relented and sang it to sleep that first night while her dad was on the phone with animal husbandry firm. In the end, she simply shrugged.
Kayleigh nodded. “OK, right. Keeping it. Him. So ‘Wildfire’ won’t work. That’s definitely a girl’s name. How about ‘Rocky’?”
“Seriously?”
“You’re right. That’s got to be, like, the most common name for a roc evar.” Kyleigh perked up. “So maybe that means nobody ever uses it!”
Piper tried to follow that logic and gave up as the roc nudged her again. This time, it let out a high trill and fluffed its feathers, nearly knocking her over. She giggled.
“Watch it, you big lug!”
“Wait!” Kayleigh held up her hand. “Big Lug, maybe? No. Lug? Not quite.” She snapped her fingers. “I’ve got it! You know how they call fat guys ‘Tiny’ sometimes? He’s going to get really big, right?”
“You think I should call him Tiny?”
“Nope!” Kayleigh grinned. “I think you should call him Bug.”
“Bug.” Piper crouched down to look into the roc’s – her roc’s – eyes. “Whadya think, boy? Would you like to be a bug?”
One excited chirp and head bump later, she was on the floor. Kayleigh tried to help her up, earning a head bump of her own, which put the two of them together on the floor, giggling as they tried to fend off excited roc kisses.
“I think he’s OK with it!” Kayleigh gasped.
Piper threw her arms around Bug’s neck and hugged him until he started purring.
Bug continued to grow over the next year. Piper and Kayleigh spent every day after school on the farm, doing their best to train him as best they could, which was only so much. Thankfully, her Dad somehow managed to talk the husbandry firm into agreeing to provide discounted live feed and a trainer to give her riding lessons.
“It’s still going to eat us out of house and home,” her dad grumbled sometimes. But he’d smile a little bit as he said it.
That summer came to an end, as they always do. Piper and Kayleigh swore that they would stay best friends as they went off to junior high. When they found out they were going to be in different classes, they swore a solemn oath that the would at least sit together at lunch every day.
On the last day of their first week in junior high, Piper navigated her way through the lunchtime crowd, looking for Kayleigh. Her friend was sitting at one end of a table. At the other end were a gaggle of ninth grade girls, including Paulie Dodson’s older sister Penny.
“Oh, look, ladies. It’s the farm girls.” Penny Dodson smiled with narrow eyes. “We were just talking about what her Daddy got Celeste for her birthday.”
One of the girls batted her eye lashes. “My daddy got me a spa day. It was sooo amazing!”
“Sounds fun, I guess,” Kayleigh said. Penny zeroed in on her.
“Oh? Did you ever get a spa day? Didn’t think so.” Penny turned to her. “How about you? What’s the best present your daddy ever got you, Piper Kane?”
Kayleigh giggled. The other girls scowled at her, but she waved them away. “Don’t mind me. Go ahead. Tell her, Pip.”
“Oh, you know.” She shrugged nonchalantly. “For my tenth birthday? I got a roc.”
She got a roc. Play on getting a rock. Giggle.
A fun twist on the classic girl-gets-pony story!