>>5502907Your next meeting is a more pleasant one, and long overdue: finally, you meet with your hatchlings, and reunite with their mother (and one of your first and closest true companions) Glowie, While technically you were acquainted with the new family earlier, the circumstances were, put charitably, less-than-conducive to any true bonding, with subsequent interaction hampered by your decision to hide your relationship to them.
“You came!” Glowie buzzes happily upon your arrival, apparently surprised—she must have still been concerned from your earlier distancing of yourself from she and her young in public.
“Of course,” you assure her.
She has seemingly self-segregated herself and the hatchlings from the rest of the camp. While Drow are more comfortable among huge invertebrates than most races, this does seem wise—the survivors are on-edge now, and you heard tell that one of your wriggling offspring was caught attempting to feed upon the dead.
“They’re hungry,” Glowie explains, more amused than apologetic when you bring it up. “They are juzzzt BURNING the bodiezz, anyway. It’zz a wazzte of protein, and the young onezzz haven’t eaten zzinze before the attack.”
You frown a little at that. You can hardly blame the dark elves, whose attentions are necessarily elsewhere and whose stores of food and ability to forage for more have been shaken. Still, a newborn requires ample nourishment, and judging by Glowie’s own appetite when you have camped with her in the past, this is doubly true for a great-worm.
You DO note that the furry grub-things are more mobile and self-sufficient than you would expect of a newly-hatched Reptilian, who (you are told) are usually half-blind, mewling things requiring a great deal of assistance for their first two weeks of life. Your sons, by contrast, require constant wrangling by Glowie to prevent them from wandering off to hunt and explore. They have a curious gait, resembling the side-to-side slithering of a viper but notably wobblier; when Glowie picks one up, you see the kicking of eight stubby legs amidst their ample coating of hair, each of which ends in a small, two-pronged ‘paw’ with curling claws, not unlike that of a great spider. They seem to travel as quickly vertically as horizontally in this way, and to eagerly seize up anything that appears as if it might be edible in their crocodilian jaws.
“Pleazze hold thizz one, my king,” Glowie says with palpable exasperation, handing you a squirming bundle as she rises to retrieve another who is angrily inchworming after one of the Drow’s domesticated beetles with murderous intent.
