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The joy that my family brought with them was more than enough for me to break into trilling song. Stalling into a hover, my wings beat back and forth as Irma slammed into me and clung. Kissing her and my other children between breathless whimpers of yearning. Breaking off my loving licks to trill and warble loudly with boundless thrills at seeing my children, smelling my children, once more. To know for certain that they were safe after seeing all the terrible things that had happened in Boise.

I wanted so badly to be able to connect with them! To introduce them to my constellation and place their stars highest of all so that everyone could see just how much my loved ones shone!

Lucy, Luke, Irma. I was so afraid that I would never get to hold you again!

We...miss...you!Lucy managed to squeak and whistle in a broken but understandable expression of our new language. I laughed and laughed. Dizzy with the euphoria that I felt. Rapturous feelings that I shared far and wide. I wanted everyone to know my love! Kim! Can you not feel it? Come home to us and join me! Join us!

Letting Irma squirm free after my twins had crept into my eagerly outstretched hands, I twirled and spun with her at my wingtip. Her goofy grin reminding me so very much of my own. How could troubles ever truly stick to me with my family so near, and so alive? Kim! My Kim! Where are you?

A forlorn scream broke my nearly impenetrable happiness and I cast a tendril of thought outward to see which new Child was in distress. I found Angie, with her mom harnessed to her own back, sprawled on Kim with her head buried against my wife's fin. Alex's head popped out of the tent covering my mate's head to see what was happening and I felt him tentatively reach through my constellation to Angie to invite her towards him. I could see his head rock back and turn up towards me in confusion when he realized that she wasn't connected.

I wanted too so badly. So very badly. But I felt the doubt in the minds of those already in my constellation. Doubt that should have been in mine. Doubt that just connecting to these new individuals without asking them would be the right thing to do. Chewing it over for a moment, I agreed. The emergency that had driven so many to my light (which they were free to leave whenever they wished!) was not shared here. Let them come after being carefully and fully informed.

Surely it would be alright with my own children though? It had to be alright, right? I showed Alex an image of Irma, Lucy, and Luke next to me with strings attached to each of our ears to signify my connection to them. Morose whimpers vibrated in my throat, drawing a confused look from Irma, when Alex firmly sent a thought-image to me of a 'caution' road sign. Warning me to wait and see what they wanted.

Fears I had from days before came rushing out of the dim corners of my memory where I had banished them. What if... what if my children rejected the greatest gift I had to offer them? Would they understand how powerful this was? Would... would they not want to feel my love?

"Mommy!" Luke and Lucy screamed, feeling the bunching muscles of Irma as she cried out her distress by what had drawn her attention below. All the tattoos along Kim's legs and across her sides being a dead giveaway just who was two hundred meters below us. "Dad! Take us to mom! Has she moved or anything?"

I was crestfallen with burning tears stinging my eyes as I felt my children's sadness at seeing the indomitable spirit of their mother silent. The gloom of their tenebrous feelings tore me to shreds. Hurting me in ways that only a parent could understand. I could help my children, but I didn't know if they'd accept it! Biting my tongue between the serrated peaks of my front teeth to keep from crying out. Only a few thin mewling sounds made their way out of my mouth to be whisked away by the bracing wind of my flight.

It wasn't strictly safe for the convoy to stop. But it was safe enough for me to yell down at the driver of the truck to slow to a crawl so that I could set the twins on the deck of the trailer one at a time. Alex and Serena saw them in the flood of the truck's cargo lamp and quickly got them into the relative stability of the lashed down tent. Where the twins could at least take in Kim's expression and know that she wasn't in pain. Which we could tell by smell.

Circling back to a decent overwatch height, I continued to pace the truck and chortle happily at knowing that my family was that much closer to being whole once again. Throwing in a backflip and a solar flare of enthusiasm whenever the energy buildup became too much.

It was these explosions of mental energy, that had all the many greater lights within my constellation radiant with sympathetic content, which drew Irma's attention to me in a new way.

"Father, you are different than when you left. The... feel of you is different. Are you okay? Why do you seem so strange?"

She squawked in surprise as I hit a steel beamed wall. Flying onwards a few hundred meters before tipping into a wide circling turn, she bent her long neck to keep an eye on me questioningly while she returned to where I hovered. Flapping in place with the characteristic jerks and dips as each beat of my wings briefly lost lift before the succeeding wing movement lowered the air pressure enough for me to rise back up again. The vomit comet, Kim had derisively named our ability to hover. Vomiting was certainly high on my list of things that I felt like doing at that moment. Every fear, every despair, that I had suffered in the past days came back with brutal force. Never had such an innocuous question done such an amazing job of ripping me apart.

Why do you seem so strange?

"I did what I had to do! I did it for everyone! Is it my fault that I changed? It was for the best. It was for the best. It was for the best. It was for the best. It was for the best..."

My daughter recoiled, exuding fear from beneath every scale. I couldn't control myself anymore and continued to chant that justifying mantra. Suffering through the eerie disconnect of not realizing how odd my behavior was at the same time I knew from being observed by the others in the constellation.

Maybe if I just ignored that I was different? Maybe I should ignore that I was once human? What should I do? My family, do they need the new me or the old me?

"Uncle Alex! What's wrong with my dad!"

I saw, and heard, Irma cry out while spiraling away from me through another's viewpoint. Landing directly on her mother's back and nosing past Angie to ask my brother. Causing the truck to swerve with her outspread wings disrupting the air and moving the center of gravity of the truck much too high. The truck edged off the road, and my swiftly thinking daughter spread her legs over her mother's neck and clamp onto the edges of the trailer. Collapsing one wing, she left the other raised as a rudder to manipulate the airstream so that the truck could even out.

I stopped talking and centered myself on Kim's form racing away from me. Maybe Irma and Alex could figure out what I should do. Maybe I should just follow my mate and protect her and my two youngest nestlings. I could do that. The Patriarch knows to protect if he doesn't know anything else.

The cool air soothed me as it flowed over my wings. Passing through my head and easing my cares. Simplifying me. Now I understood what lost ones go through. The reeling confusion and the pernicious thoughts that just nothing was right. Why not withdraw a little to make sense of it all in your own time? Let go of human mores and embrace something else. I had been wrong all this time to think that the lost ones were gone. They were instead beings with split minds, torn between the old and the new, and struggling to reintegrate that sense of who they were. Looking for an answer to their defining question.

Something inside of me shifted at that moment.

Why do you seem so strange?

Maybe it was that I couldn't pretend that I was human anymore. Maybe it was because I had to embrace what I had become. Because if I didn't, I might fall apart. Realizing that made me feel freer than ever before. The worry sloughing off like patches of dull scales. I knew I was ready to be a leader. Ready to be a Revered One. A Patriarch. The human wasn't gone, he had adapted.

Why do you seem so strange? Because I had found the answer to who I was. At some point or another, all who changed would need to answer that question to find peace. Irma, my daughter, had you answered that question already? If not, I would be there for you when that time came. Finding peace was not without risk of pain and struggle.

Oh Kim, I have so much to show you when you return. I have learned so much. Have you as well? For the first time, I wondered what strange sights you were being shown. Flashes of what saw were meaningless without explanation. Where were you that you were seeing dinosaurs in space?

"It's okay Irma." I said, exuding calm on my spiral down to flap just above where she had landed on top of her mother. Keeping easy pace with the truck now that it was limited to about fifty-five kph. "Once we get home and get your mom safely to her nest, Alex and I will explain everything. It will be a little weird, but it will be okay. I promise. You might even like what I have to offer. You will see, if you want, everything that me being a Patriarch means.

"Luke, Lucy! Can you please hitch a ride on your sister to come up and be with me? I... I missed your smell."

"That's super creepy, Dad."

"But I do!"

"Still... they might not understand what you mean."

Awkwardness about having a highly developed sense of smell that could pick up scent based emotional and personal markers aside, I carried them with cupped hands close to the heat of my pectoral flight muscles working to beat the vast wings they powered. Sighing with pleasure as I fixated on their presences while asking one after another of the many Children who'd come with us to fill my daughter in on the things that happened in Boise. A prelude for what I'd have to tell her later. Also, because she kept asking me questions that I wanted to wait until Alex was with us and we could all settle comfortably to answer.

The convoy picked up a police escort just outside of town, but it was hardly necessary for the lack of interaction with us on the road. I did see the occasional sign proclaiming that dragons weren't welcome here. But surprisingly little indication of any contention over the fact that there now had to be hundreds and hundreds of Children and their families in the area. It was possible, thinking about it, that the locals were all too happy to welcome the outcasts if it meant the huge influx of federal money and assistance that I suspected it did. A chance to stay ahead of the disasters that were befalling community after community elsewhere around the globe. It was also entirely possible that at 2300 hours there was just no one left awake with the means and desire to wander about the frost-bitten town and welcome wings of Children shepherding a weary convoy of exiles and military.

Bypassing the sleeping city, we headed north to the forests and farms outside of town where our home was. I gave a resounding cry of dismay as I saw what had become of our beautiful ranch.

Stretching from tree line to tree line, were columns and rows of gray scale tents that I presumed were tan and green and of every size imaginable. The military style modular tents were accompanied by self-contained trailers with laundry, latrines, and showers. Those amenities trailers were not alone in sharing the land Kim and I had paid for with generous VA loans and military separation payoffs. Shipping containers, skeletal steel and wood frames, and portable shelter trailers were everywhere in my family's poor, beloved, ranch. Hulking four legged shadows, accompanied by smaller bipeds, walked here and there even now. Heads were raised to look in my direction after my call. Glimmers of interest in the nearly complete darkness of a new moon.

There was a system to the layout of the tents, despite the rag-tag ununiform appearance. Along each row and column, the tents were arranged in a repeating pattern. Like a grid, with each square indicating one section. In each section there were four small tents, each big enough to hold a family of five, and a much larger tent that looked like a maintenance shelter. Beside the smaller tents, there was a shipping container with water and electrical connections running to it that looked to be a latrine and shower. I wondered where the black water would go but was quick to notice (and smell!) an excavation behind each latrine with a pipe running into the disturbed earth. Vault toilets.

The shelters were unpowered and unheated. Acting as little more than a way to keep the snow, frost, and wind off whatever was inside. Which, from what I could see of one that the end was open on, were younger Children that older ones helped make comfortable by sleeping or resting around the construction to focus the heat of their bodies inwards.

There were platforms around the edges of my property and spreading further east and north into the Johansson's farm and the Schneider's sheep ranch. Many were under construction using the towering resident's strength and size from what I could determine from the lack of cranes. In fact, construction seemed to be under way everywhere except around my house. Which I was pleased to see.

What observation decks that were complete were raised high above the surrounding trees. Each looked like the mast consisted of the vertical support segments of a tower crane that had had a round platform dropped on top like a cap. On the platforms, which were mostly bare besides a few blinking lights around its perimeter, was a commercial off the shelf hunting blind for the Small Ones. The one I was looking at even had an orange glow coming from within to highlight the sentries from what I presumed was an electric space heater. The idea seeming to be that there would be one Child and two Small Ones per each platform as guards facing outwards. There was no cover to speak of in the arrangement, only concealment. They were strictly observation. Far closer to the ground I could see bunkers had been erected and sandbagged at the access points from the country road to my home, and along the road itself. Defense in depth with a series of increasingly fortified checkpoints.

A defense that could be turned inwards, the more cynical part of me whispered. A guarded area was only one quick change of orders away from becoming a prison. Was that to be our fate here? Would the welcome and promise of safety turn into a stay forced at gunpoint?

"Hard to believe you have only been gone a week, is it not?" Irma asked me, seeing my stunned expression.

"Our nest!" I cried, earning a brief look of confusion from my eldest before she continued.

"All made possible by the Children of the Egg who have come. Although where we are going to put all the others that you brought with you, I have no idea. Can you believe all these giants in one place?"

"Hey! We helped too! Wait until you see what me, Lucy, and Angie have been doing!"

"Good job Luke, on understanding us. I'm glad that you can hear what we say." I said, proud of my children for what was no easy feat.

"I'm the one that told the little booger what you were probably saying." Lucy grumbled from my right paw. Before I knew it, the twins were bickering back and forth. Even though their tones were sharp, their minds showed nothing but the respect and love they had for each other. I was in heaven. This was what I had needed so badly since Kim was taken away. Just to hear my children's voices and to smell their wild energy made me want to burst. Now, even though they weren't really attuned to my constellation, I could feel the rambunctious tumbling of their minds. Darting from one topic, understanding it, and then on to the next. I reveled in their bouncing thoughts.

Irma was still going on about the logistics that she'd been helping Colonel Stout arrange, and clearly knew that she had lost my attention.

"...and then when I was done mounting Jesse backwards, he said maybe we should have laid down plastic before we had tried coiled snake position number three on top of my mother's comic books."

"Uh huh. That is nice Irma. Maybe if you start flying west now you will be able to live a few more days before your Egg Mother catches your scent and hunts you down."

"Ah...Hold on. She is at it again. Just let her do her thing, it keeps her calm. The password is banana split sundae. It's always banana split sundae."

Puzzled at first by the non sequitur, I then saw where Irma's attention had focused. We had been flying ahead of the convoy with all the scouts fallen back over to orbit the line of trucks, so Irma and I were the first ones to approach the boundaries to my property. And the first ones to encounter one of the watchers launching herself off a platform south of my shelter that swayed with the force of her departure.

"Who is she?" I asked Irma out of the side of my mouth.

"She's Gretel! She's really nice Dad. I think she was an old kindergarten teacher before. But maybe she got hit in the head or something? She might say something weird, but she doesn't mean any harm. Really!" Lucy spoke up, after asking Irma what was going on.

The female, who was so much larger than the platform that it made me wonder if it was a good idea for her to be on it, was greater than all but Virginia. She had a stop sign, taken from the sky only knew where, and was waggling it in her front paw as she flew back and forth in front of us.

"I know you! You scent all over! Who others? I very happy to show you much violence if you do not still! Please tell password or I much rather kill you, okay? Sign say stop so you stop! Then go. 37, 31, 43, 5, 29, 13, 23!"

"Uh... nice... prime numbers?" I temporized a little bit while reaching out to her. This one needed help sooner rather than later. Maybe I should wait for my Matriarch to awake, but I thought I could give Gretel more clarity to her thought. Even if she didn't mean harm, she certainly could do serious damage without intending to. In addition to her size, her scales had taken on an armor like quality not unlike what I'd seen on Shadi or Angry One. Whom I hoped was doing well wherever he and the honor guard I'd sent after him had gone with Frog Hop to sing their grief over her death.

"Banana split sundae." I said, responding to her sentry's challenge. Charging my thoughts with energy to reroute her light around what I sensed was where the truck rammed into my head a severe contusion that really needed special medical attention that no one to my knowledge knew how to provide. Asking for volunteers to guide the respected female to the ground and be her nest mates until she knew her own wings again. She dropped her stop sign unawares in the face of the torrent of healing energy washing over her mind. As it fell I saw that someone had colored the opposite side green with the word GO having been painted in white with a big smiley face replacing the O. Bringing her claws up to touch her head gingerly where I now saw that the scales had been badly cracked, she murmured to herself in slow comprehension before being led with coos and welcoming scents to a place of comfort. A shed set off to the side near the tree line had a gaping opening lit with soft red light that illuminated the trio of tails extending out into the snow.

A HMMWV had met the lead gun trucks and everyone dismounted to stretch their legs as Colonel Stout exchanged a crisp salute with the convoy commanders Bridgestone and Jenson. Shaking hands in the lights of the vehicles after dispensing with military courtesies.

I waved the others on into my nest with my tail to make themselves comfortable where they could. The small one's in the convoy startling with the vast array of wings swooshing by overhead in the darkness. I offered my own sheltered haven for the use of Savannah and the huffing Lieutenant Colonel Amanda Huygens. Giving her a reassuring mental caress to let her know I would release my hold on her quickening as soon as she was settled and ready. She wanted me to find more soft material to satisfy her instincts and I showed her what the interior of my shelter looked like with the myriad pillows inside. Waving away her concern that the laying would stain the black fabric as I promised there would be blankets and sheets that we could lay out for that.

The Children thumped down right in the road alongside the vehicle to meet their families as they unloaded on the farm road running past my dirt driveway. I prodded them gently off to the shoulder to wait so that the semis loaded with the injured could make their way to my home.

Flapping down, I landed on my back claws and carefully set my children down to put all four legs back on the land beneath the sky. Clenching my digits, I reveled in the feeling of knowing we were back where we belonged. Now, on the ground at my sanctuary, I had a singular purpose. Get Amanda and Kim ready to give birth.

Serena and Alex proved crucial in leading the Small Ones to gather what they thought they'd need for twin deliveries. Which meant that they had no clue what the female's needs would be as they doubted the eggs would require any special assistance beyond possibly needing cleaned. Doubling the materials that Amanda became increasingly strident in demanding to account for Kim while peppering Savannah with questions once she had settled with her eggs in a corner of my shelter. All to anticipate the needs of my Matriarch. Amanda said she was bothered by the overpowering scent of my mate as was Savannah. They said they both felt like they were trespassing on a more powerful female's area. I assured them I spoke for her while she was unable to and that they were welcome no matter how strong Kim's musk was.

I wondered where Irma and Jesse had been sleeping, then decided that I didn't want to hear about my Egg's rutting behaviors.

Under the cover of night, many of the Small Ones were asleep. But the flights of Children that already called this camp home roused up to greet us with welcome snuffling nuzzles and muted whistling of invitation to settle alongside them. Many fresh from the flight Northward, once they had collected their family members, settled with bone deep fatigue into piles of warmth and comradery.

A medical team worked to facilitate the transfer of the casualties to a set of four well-lit prefabricated structures under the direction of Allie, Alex's mate friend. Who has seemed to have garnered a position of authority around the refuge of wings since our last meeting. Perhaps she had moved her practice here as well or had returned to making house calls with the help of one eager Child or another. The injured Children were moved under a well-built awning with canvas walls that were unrolled to seal the shelter once the immense patients had filled it.

There was a terrible keen when the trailers full of the extinguished lights were discovered. The tarp covering their grounded forms being ripped off to expose them to the sky they had fallen from. My head throbbed painfully as I worked to manage the spreading grief among those who did not know the price we had paid before our escape from Boise. Irma whined with a pained expression, for the first time I could hear her desire for Jesse, who she had sent off to lead a group to do...something, to be with her. My two from one egg looked shaken by the sight of the dead, and I put myself between them and the sight of the body bags and exposed fallen Children. It was their first-time seeing death like this, and my heart felt heavy that they had ever had to experience this cost of violence.

My Egg children and I huddled by their mother, letting the work of the night flow around us as we focused on what mattered most. A throbbing convulsion worked down the passage of my, our, egg duct, and I shivered in sympathy for my Soul partner as we bore our new children into this world. Alex joined us when he was no longer needed hours later just as I was becoming worried about the effect the time and the cold had on my precious little strawberries. A dazed expression on Alex's face drew my sharp eyes to him and the small case he was holding in his hand. In his thoughts was the image of the positive pregnancy test within the case.

"She's... she's pregnant. I'm going to be a father. She asked me to marry her. Can you believe that? What a woman." He said in wonder when I asked him. The sight of Allie telling him how it was going to be flashed in his mind, followed by the tantalizing taste of her lips and the crush of her trim body against his when he said yes. Good for you, Alex. I hoped the mating produced a great and powerful hatchling for the two of you with well-formed wings, long tail, and a mighty glow from its mind.

With the wakeful members of my family with me, I sang the song of what couldn't be conveyed over the phone. Holding nothing back as I described to my Egg children what I had learned about lights, connections, constellations, and the empathy that I could share at will with others.

My fins fold shut against my head and my wings drooped to the ground with my hope that they would see this for the gift it was and be as eager as I was to bond with each other as a Child and his Eggs should.

"Dad..." Lucy started, and then Luke finished as they looked at each other puzzled and a little alarmed. "...You want to see our thoughts? But what about all the bad and private things we think of!"

Irma was even more afraid to ask what she was about to. I could smell and feel her trepidation at the possibility that had entered her mind. "Have you been... have you been controlling these people and dragons?" She waggled her head in disbelief and I shivered with misery at her thoughts. "Uncle Alex too?"

No! I wailed in my head. My distress emanating across my constellation. Alex gasped holding his head and stumbling. No, no, no! This wasn't how this was supposed to go! Egg Children should be linked to their bearers! This wasn't about nosy snouts and trying to bend other's wings. This was a pure expression of love and respect!

"I can feel something... I feel..." Luke said, unsure, and then burst into tears along with his sister.

"Daddy is this how you feel? You're so sad. About this?"

"I am sad, my little strawberry. I am sorry that I am making you sad too. This isn't what I wanted. Not at all. I wanted... I just wanted everyone to be at peace. I just wanted to help. I wanted you to know the love I have, that your mother has, for you both."

My head dropped to the ground resignedly even as my tail wormed up onto the tractor trailer to find my wife's to wrap around. She twitched with a groan and her tail jerked within my coils.

"No, Irma. I can say that nothing I have seen or felt while sharing feelings with my Brother indicated mind control. I know that reassurance is probably empty as that is exactly what someone being controlled would say. We'll just have to work it out later. Right, Tom? This will be about mutual trust and helping others understand." Alex tried to dispel Irma's concerns with only mild success.

Of course, I could see the shape of the horizon for what it was now and knew that I should gentle the thrust of my wings. There was no emergency here driving extreme currents to send everyone into turmoil and seeking my comfort.

"Can you three at least let me know that you still love me?" I whined, plaintively. Unsure if their thinking that I was controlling others, a horrifying thought that I wish I could convince them would never happen, would make them stop loving me. Sagging with relief when I felt the sense of their love wash over me. Their thoughts, no matter how distant and unconnected they sadly were, on the matter bright and strong. Closing my eyes as I thrummed. Trying to forgive myself for ever doubting them. It will be okay. We will talk in the simple ways that we once did. Understanding would be had. All in its own time. Sensing my plummeting mood, my children led the conversation away to other discussions. Roping their friend Angie into our chat to tell me how they had placed themselves in charge of decorating the tents with paintings to make everyone feel welcome. Slowly, my anxiety ebbed as I lost myself in my love for my little ones.

"Tom, it's time for Kim." Alex said, after seeing Allison signal to him in the glare of a flood light.

"...fuck...you...say?" a dreamy voice said nearby. So slurred that I almost couldn't understand it at first. It sounded like...

"Kim! Please wake up!" I whipped around standing at my full height, fins and scales bristling with hope.

For an answer, she moaned heavily and shuffled her rear claws beneath her hips to raise her hindquarters. Her tail slipped from my grasp to rise into the air before slapping down on the trailer with enormous force. I saw the muscles of her abdomen spasm and an agitated shiver of her scales rise in a wave up her sides. The truck driver howled in fury, but no one had any time for him and his protests. We could fix his damn trailer deck later when my Matriarch had been seen to. Muscles that I didn't have clenched painfully in my groin. Leaving me huffing and panting with the alien feeling of my Kim's canal throbbing in undulating waves. Strange, I remember Kim the Small One telling me it was the worst pain in her life. This felt like my stomach and legs cramping from dehydration.

My light called out to the others in my constellation for help and, with my brother scrutinizing the movements of Kim's carbon fiber encased leg, they transferred her on to my back. Irma, being just the right size, was against my flank in lock step to support her Egg Mother's injured limb while the rest of her legs dragged through the snow.

By now all the noise had awoken much of the camp and Children were craning their heads from every direction, or in the air, to see Kim return. Small Ones stomped and shuffled at the paws of their family members in the frigid early morning cold to see a friend to many of themselves as well. Athena and Harry, from the tattoo parlor, started forward at seeing the grim condition of their friend. I stopped the movement so that they could lay their hands on one of their friend's dangling legs.

The curtain had been drawn back just enough for one adult at a time to enter the shelter and I saw a crouched Amanda was already inside turning in place with uneasy discomfort. Kneading and kicking at the pillows as if their presence angered her. Or so I thought at first until I saw that she was forming them into a bowl that she was lining with blankets drawn from a stack nearby by pinching her claw tips together. Adding another, she lifted her head and bent and twisted it to look at the bowl from different angles with judgement written all over her snout. The smell of my family was a tonic that I drank readily of. Feeling myself relax as much as an expectant father could.

Conrad, sitting nearby with a worried scent, looked on nonplussed. I barked laughter at his loud thoughts, causing Amanda to hiss complainingly at the unexpected noise. She wanted it to be quiet and calm. Perhaps this wasn't the best place for the eggs given the noise of everyone's arrival and integration into an armed refugee camp, but it would have to do. It was our home and she and her mate had wanted to come here to start their family in one of the safest places they knew of.

Another clench of muscles, and Kim, Amanda, Conrad, and I all grunted in unison. Chuckling with each other at the unexpected synchronization.

The simultaneous pains continued like that all night. Every convulsion of Kim and Amanda's wombs and passages locked together by signals that the Children could smell, taste, and feel within our thoughts. Amanda had her tail and hips in the bowl she had created. Now rising into a squat with her tail lifted straight out every time a fresh spasm rocked her body. A stream of well wishers came by in small groups for Kim. Making my heart swell to know just how many cared for her. Although I sensed many more would have come just out of curiosity to see just what it meant for the newest species on Earth to give birth to the next generation.

Those people however were kept at bay by the increasingly surly attitude of Amanda who had stopped speaking coherently all together as her birth pangs lasted longer and longer. Just hissing at people whenever she sensed them peeking at her without any clear intention to congratulate her instead of gawking at her like she was a zoo exhibit. When a woman in the middle of giving birth opens jaws large enough to hold a full-grown elk to inflate her throat and sibilate like an overwrought radiator people took notice. Females that had known the Lieutenant Colonel before our arrival took it upon themselves to ring my lair and politely but firmly control the comings and goings to it.

Irma had banished everyone that had business elsewhere, although as many as Amanda would tolerate remained. Conrad's body trailing outside through the closed curtain, dampening the sound of the wakening camp. His head lie in front of his mate's, tongue flashing outwards to kiss her snout while he hummed soothingly while their thoughts of love twined into beautiful chromatic ribbons in my mind's eye. Their gazes locked into each other's never strayed far even with Amanda's constant moving about. Serena stayed with them as Alex did with Kim, observing the process as Brian whispered to Serena through an open nearby window that his curious eye had filled. In the corner, Savannah slept curled around her eggs with Martin watching through another window near her. In an opposite corner, an excited Angie watched the births sitting up on her haunches with her mother clutched against her like a living stuffed animal. Bending down to ask her mother questions about giving birth.

"Momma? Was this like it was when I was in your tummy?" Helen, flustered, barely knew what to say at all to prepare her daughter for the fact that she would give birth to eggs and not babies that would have immediate needs like she had.

"One day momma, I will have babies like this. It won't be like if I was still a little two-footed girl. I know that it won't be what you wanted momma, but I think you will still love my eggs anyway!" Angie concluded, showing that she understood far more of the situation that it first appeared and leaving her mother stunned into silence. I snorted in startlement when I saw a Tomoko clone come in from outside to settle next to Helen between Angie's paws, before realizing that it must have been the one that stayed here with the Suzuki family.

Kim's time came before Amanda's as she and Conrad turned to watch with fascination. With my tail laying under Kim's to keep it elevated, I smelled the release of her fluids puddling onto the blankets beneath her dilated opening. I groaned, feeling her body heave as the impossible feeling of a prickly egg stretched me open. She was the one to give birth, but I felt with her. I felt our newest child come into the world.

Thank you, God, for bringing us to this moment. For giving me the strength to see Kim to this moment. For protecting our children from the harm that was never far away.

My Egg Child... My daughter... flared with delight at the feeling of her egg tumbling down to rest in the mounds of cloth. The egg rocking back and forth where it lay as she squirmed within its protective cocoon. It had the same classic egg shape that you'd expect from such a thing. But it was far, far, larger than any Earth egg that had ever existed before. Even bigger than Savannah's, which I would have to ask about later, being about 1.2 meters long, and covered in hardened overlapping black scales. Almost resembling a closed pinecone. I could see that the feeling of it passing through Kim's birth canal had been accurate enough.

I felt bad for Amanda and worked with Conrad to soothe her after she took one look at what she was nearly ready to give birth to herself.

"Conrad? I do not know if I am ready for this. Please make it stop, make it stop. I am not ready for this. I am not ready to lay eggs. Please, please, please Revered One." She ended swinging her head towards mine with a note of pleading in her growls and whistles. Using my newfound honorific for the first time. Smiling, I offered her encouragement and the assurance of Conrad's mental presence. There was no more stopping this than there was any other natural birth.

"Conrad!" She squeaked, lifting her tail until it curled against the wall and up towards the ceiling. With a long, low, moan and a spate of fluid she lowered her hips and her first child, a male every bit as excited to roll among the pillows as my first new daughter, came into an uncertain existence. Born to parents who began their lives human, the Child tumbling within his egg would know more about being what he was than his own progenitors. Teaching them as he himself learned to navigate life.

Later, I thought it was all the excitement that drew my wife back to her body so rapidly. Because in the few seconds since mine had been laid while I was tending to a wary Amanda and her deliriously crooning mate, the light of my world had returned.

I sent a startled warning to Luke, Lucy, and Alex to keep back and then lunged to pin Kim in place to keep her from harming her recovering leg. Tears erupted from my eyes as our family was reunited after far too long. With a howl of shock and disbelief Hurricane Kim flew from her forced slumber, and promptly ruined the most beautiful moment yet of our new lives.

"Oh my fucking god!" She exclaimed, the brilliant emerald eyes that I loved zipping around to take in everyone staring at her with tearful emotions spreading across their faces. She looked back to see who was laying on her, and we sighed together as our souls reached to embrace their other halves once again when her eyes met mine. Understanding began to permeate her thoughts, but not quickly enough to top what happened next. I listened with barely contained amusement as Hurricane Kim did what she did best after straightening her neck to look around the crowded shelter.

"Did I just shit myself?"

****

President Ronald Lincoln finished his farewells to the screen that the Canadian Prime Minister and his own advisors occupied just as it went blank to be replaced by the presidential seal. Plopping into a chair that wasn't his, he rubbed his face before turning to look around the situation room at the men and women assembled and waiting to tell him how bad things had gotten.

On monitors behind him half a dozen other talking heads waited to be addressed. Two other monitors were in contact with individuals of which nothing more could be seen than giant eyes filled with brilliant colors surrounding ovoid pupils. The eye's owners only being identified by computer generated ID tags. More than one security official, looking at these eyes, had scoffed with the thought that those eyes could belong to almost any dragon and those in this room would be none the wiser. A huge OPSEC risk if they'd ever seen one. The damn dragons, the officials had thought, just look too much alike. The software to scan their irises and identify them was still a work in progress.

Off to one side, two other smaller screens played scenes on mute from the major national news networks. Each offering their own spin on what was happening and what needed to be done next. Fiery tirades and demagoguery that largely went ignored. Including calls for war against Canada for perceived aggressions. When it was Canada that had every right in the world to declare war the other way around.

The most glaring expression of the scope of the disaster was the image that replaced the presidential seal on the main screen. An up to the minute breakdown of casualties incurred in the United States and around the world showed in a rapidly increasing series of numbers. Staggering amounts of death attributable to the aftereffects of Zero Day.

With war, famine, and pestilence the catastrophe of first contact had badly upset the world order. The moral and social fabric of the world frayed badly by the one-two-three KO of first contact with an alien species, leading to massive upheaval among the faithful and faithless as billions tried to come to grips with no longer being alone in the Universe. Millions more losing their humanity to become enormous animals as alien as anything outside of fantasy and at least as frustratingly intelligent as the humans they once were. But with serious questions about their mind sets and allegiances. And finally, being told that the biosphere of Earth was more important that the wellbeing of every living human to force the greatest and fastest shift in the technological make up of society that the human species had ever known. Or be erased from existence, as had been not so subtly demonstrated by the disappearance of hostile human beings in nearly every nation on Earth to serve as proof of the alien's power. As if everything else hadn't been enough. To the eternal chagrin of some governmental leaders, despite the alien's warnings, much of the world's population had gone on to do exactly what they were warned not to.

The feeling in the room was tense, and it showed on all those present. Ties and collars were undone, and blouses unbuttoned, with jackets draped forgotten over seat backs. No one looked like they had been getting much sleep lately and the drawn faces were pale and slack from a lack of exercise coupled with the corrupting effects of constant stress. Pushing fourteen- or sixteen-hour days at times in a relentlessly grueling crisis response that had navy corpsman working their way through officials to monitor vital signs. More than one had been hospitalized already for a stress induced ailment. These were the regulars who surrounded and advised the president while he was awake, but they were far from the only staff assigned to utilize the situation room as one of many command centers in the crisis. The hallways leading to the room were lined with cots where men and women caught what sleep that they could.

In the middle of the long table, resting in a way too serene for being a major cause of all the chaos that was afflicting those in the room, was a tiny black dragon just over a meter and a half long. A far cry from the titans who existed outside and around the world fighting for their rights to exist and remain free. Things that the dragons had taken for granted once when they were human. Things promised to them by the nations in which they still considered themselves citizens, regardless of what their governments now thought of them.

A vexing problem among many others, as was just discussed with the Canadian leader.

"He is furious, and he has every right to be! A flagrant breach of his national sovereignty and what does he hear all over the news? How media outlets in his country and ours demand war! The United States, and Canada, to go to war with each other? Are these people insane!? Where are we on keeping our own citizens from breaking Canada's borders?"

"The dragons are difficult to track sir. On radar they appear similar to flocks of birds..." said General Becker. Commander of USNORTHCOM.

"It's not the damn dragons he's angered about General Becker. You heard the same conversation I did! There has not been one instance yet where these dragons have gone on the rampage that everyone is still terrified will happen. No, it is not these pacifistic beasts that we need to worry about. What can we do about these militias? Twenty RCMP officers dead, and a hundred Americans when the Canadian army was fired on while moving in on their camp. Which they had every right in the world to do. I don't care what the damn opinion pieces or my poll numbers say. We're not going to war with our northern neighbor because of something that our citizens brought down on themselves! What kind of pushovers did they think our northern friends would be?"

"Sir, the problem with the militias is that cracking down on them will just recruit more to their cause. The heavier handed that we are, the more there will be. It will be difficult to prove that many of them are acting in ways that aren't protected by state and federal law."

"Then we starve them of support, people that are happy are not going to be causing trouble of this kind. How is that going?"

"Not well" answered Vice President George Hamlin from a monitor that all turned to focus on at the end of the table.

"With unemployment reaching over thirty percent and the economy sitting at eighty percent of its value as of two years ago we are having a hard time discouraging people from giving up any hope that we can manage this. The worst adjusted numbers in history to the best of our knowledge. Consumer goods and services of any kind are nearly impossible to find and what can be found is being sold at many times their normal value. Poll numbers for the public's general happiness and the government's response to the crises are..."

"Okay, okay." The President stopped the conversation and listened to something whispered into his ear by a page who had come running into the room before returning to his council. "Let's step back a little bit and begin again with the usual basics. I can't help that no one is able buy the latest and greatest new thing, but we can and should be able to ensure that the necessities can be found for our people. Security, food, water, medical care, and shelter. Lastly, I need an update on what we're doing to get the unemployed back at work again. Remember, this meeting is about immediate needs. Save the policy discussions and our international work for later.

"Go around the table starting with security. Veronica, how are things going with redeployment of the TSA?"

Veronica Morningstar, a dark-haired and dark-skinned woman of short and stout stature who served as the head of the Department of Homeland Security, sat uncomfortably in her chair. Tugging at her ill-fitting pants, she grunted thickly in a meditative manner as she pulled a computer closer to type her response so that it was displayed on a monitor just behind her head.

"I bet you twenty that she would speak if we gave her a head of lettuce." An aide whispered, a touch too loudly as it turned out, to the assistant next to him.

In a rage, Veronica slammed her fists down on her computer keyboard and then flung the whole thing onto the floor with the clatter of cracking plastic. Jumping to her feet at the same time she kicked her chair backwards to hit the aide behind her, she whirled on the man with her finger pointed at him and her mouth opened wide. What came out of her mouth were not human words however as she instead broke into the braying protests of an enraged donkey. Hearing her own voice and the deafening call she made, her anger only spiraled to new heights until she stopped suddenly with her eyes fixed wide and unfocused in terror. With creeping movements her ears were sliding up the sides of her head to part her hair and grow long and pointed as they settled near the crown of her skull. The skin of her elongated ears darkened from her mocha coloring and coarse hair grew in as a dark gray shading to black at the tips. With tufts of similar colored fur blending in with her longer human hair and a thicker mane growing from her scalp and down her neck to disappear beneath the collar of her blouse. The room gasped, and the woman froze as her new ears flicked at the sound.

She shook violently as she reached up and grabbed the ears to yank them down until they were pinned to the sides of her head and covered by her hands. With another braying hee-haw, she ran sobbing strange bestial cries from the room.

The President buried his face in his hands in disbelief that this was happening within his administration. Ever since the fiery woman's first outburst just a month after Zero Day, this had become her torment after she had ignored the dragon alien's warning to behave in its presence. She had always been terrified of what would happen to her next and as a result she had been calm for months with no other changes. Until the day that she came in wearing clothes that no longer fit her quite right after an eruption of bitter anger and strident braying in a hallway in the White House basement. No one knew what had changed in her that day, although many were quick to suspect the flickers of movement seen in one pants leg and the awkward way that she had sat in chairs ever since.

The Chief of Staff stood up and pointed at the aide who was trying to slink out the door beside him. The other aides around him inching away from the man as he turned radioactive in the harsh spotlight that he had called down on himself.

"You're fired. Leave your credentials on the table and get the hell out of here. Corporal Bellham! Make sure Brad here finds his way out with his things and that he is evicted from government lodging." She said with cold fury in her eyes.

"Why do you do this?" President Lincoln said in exasperation to the dragon as it shuffled its front legs into a sitting position. A stout marine was beckoned in from outside and stood mutely by as the pallid Brad stumbled from the room in a daze before the guard closed the door behind him.

"As I explained at Veronica Morningstar's first outburst, I have no tolerance for neither you nor your kind's acting out your base behaviors in my presence. You can be assured, that I have little interest in debasing the proud and noble Equus Asinus of this world by incrementally shifting one of your underlings into realities where she is less and less human. But here we are, at the whims of what constitutes a debasement for contemptuous behavior in your society. Instead of uttering her pathetic whimpers, she should have been proud to be, at least partly, something better than human. Perhaps when she spends a few months contemplating what really matters after her temper frees her of her current biology she will be more pleasant to be around."

The president bit his tongue, not rising to the bait of being tempted down a road that nearly everyone in the room had trod too many times already to no point or purpose. Instead glaring at the dragon before shifting his attention to the FBI Agent whose only thankless job was to follow the alien everywhere it went and record everything it said or did. A difficult proposition at best, when the creature was just as apt as not to walk straight through walls or disappear altogether with no consideration for any of the six people that shadowed i. He drummed his fingers and then snapped his attention back to the dragon.

"Are you ever going to turn her back to normal? Please?"

"When she sees humor in what she has brought about on herself."

Jesus, she's going to be eating grass from the South lawn on four hooves before that happens, the president thought to himself. I'll try to have a talk with her later.

"That depends on her being able to control herself. She will still be every bit as intelligent as she was before I had the unfortunate experience of meeting her on the same plane of existence."

"And stop reading my damned mind!"

"No, and do not shout at me like I am something that you can control. Your arrogance is astonishing."

"Hah!" The president scoffed, incredulous. "If that is not the pot calling the kettle black coming from your kind. Patrick, how many more of our citizens have died over the period of time since Zero Day as compared to the preceding years?"

"1.5 million." The secretary of health and human services said immediately.

"That's genocide! And that was just in this country alone! We have gone to war for far less, and you can be assured that I do consider us to be at war with your kind for what you have done. It does not matter to us whether we have found a way to harm you yet or not."

The dragon shrugged and stretched itself to lie on its side sprawled across the middle of the table. Batting a phone back and forth within the reach of its tail. A veritable picture of dismissive belligerence in the face of the President's threats and accusations.

"Genocide was wiping out an entire species of fish unknown to your sciences because they dwelled within a stream that didn't fit your myopic vision for a tract of land that you just had to erect another ostentatious monument to your vanity upon. To us, your species ranks no higher in the ultimate importance of things in many respects than the species of guppy of which I speak. Unless you have something novel of a value that rises above the rest of your meaningless drivel to say to, or ask of, me you should get on with your daily attempt to get your portion of your civilization under control. Time is, as you incorrectly say, fleeting."

Two of the men present, who accounted themselves as scientists, jumped up to ask just what it meant by that. But were pulled down reluctantly by their other conference attendants. Now was not the time for scientific revelations. Although the dragon, given the sterile unimaginative name of Subject A1 in place of the colloquial name of Thumper, would have thought more of the average intelligence of the room if the scientists had been allowed to ask their questions.

Whatever else the dragon might have said, it was right. They had other business than trying futilely to extract concessions from the recalcitrant being who claimed it was there to help them if necessary. When it had done no such thing other than antagonize the United States government after its initial appearance in the oval office. The security measures undertaken to eliminate it when if first popped into existence in the west wing having done much to degrade its opinion of its charge's intelligence and willingness to listen. Poisoning the well for all future interactions given its adoption of a cynical attitude. Constant reminders that the humans wished it nothing but harm kept its attitude from softening and requests for it to leave or its dismissal by whatever agency it answered to had been roundly ignored.

Virginia Morningstar's deputy took over her place in the briefing and answered the President's question.

"Mr. President, the armed TSA agents have been distributed to the regional warehouses where perishable food items are being redirected. We have reassigned, as of yesterday, approximately fifteen thousand from that agency to free up an equal number of civilian law enforcement and active-duty troops. With the redeploying soldiers evicted from the combat zones by the foreign dragon forces we will be able to provide security for an additional 600 facilities."

"And security of food and water supplies?" the president turned to his commerce secretary. "Are we getting more, are they secured, and are they being distributed?"

"The um... the dragons seem to be a great deal of help in moving food products within the individual regions and eat at surprisingly rare intervals given their sizes. However, they do need to consume substantial amounts of....

The commerce secretary stopped when the president held up his hand.

"I didn't ask about the dietary habits of the dragons. Aren't they just eating the wildlife anyway?"

"At most times, sir. But they still apparently need several hundred pounds of simple grains at least once a week in combination with whatever fauna they hunt to keep up the energy for flight. Which is important sir if we are to further integrate them into our resource distribution networks over the short term. At least until alternatives can be developed to satisfy our transportation needs."

"Our transportation needs? Using dragons to ferry goods around within the country still does not solve the problem of what to do for international shipping. What in the name of God almighty are those creatures that wrecked the ports in the Puget Sound area? Why did they do it and why are the fish talking to us now? What is next? What else could possibly happen in this world now? Do we need to sacrifice a simpering maiden to the Krakens that are now inhabiting the five oceans of the world to allow us to continue what we were doing? Who really cares what the hell happens to the dolphins? I will not allow humans to come second to Flipper at Sea World!"

The head of NOAA, on participating in the brief via monitor raised a finger to make a point about everything the president just said that was factually inaccurate. But the Secretary of Commerce hurriedly muted the man and shook his head to warn him off that it didn't really matter at the moment if the President knew the difference between fish and marine mammals or that Flipper was never at Sea World. A mistake that the two would later pay for when it was discovered that several of their scientists had volunteered to become those marine mammals and Krakens.

Veering onto the new tangent, the President called on his science advisor.

"How are the fuel alternatives coming?"

"On the project to replace conventional petroleum in commercial processes, we have made significant progress using algae produced oils and are working around the clock to move the results outside of the lab. As for the nearly complete transition to alternatives for fossil fuels, we think it best at this time to continue the four-pronged complimentary technologies we have briefed you on before sir. With the suspension of sales of gasoline and diesel fuel for privately owned conveyances..."

"That I must remind you we are locked in litigation with thirty-seven states, the automotive, and petroleum industries over. I cannot promise you that an injunction will not come down against the President's executive order." Robert Cranshaw, White House lawyer interjected.

"...we have sufficient energy reserves to keep power flowing to the electrical grid and keeping homes heated for at least the next six years at current rates of usage. If the courts are going to rule against us regulating all fuel and oil sales as a national emergency, then time is even shorter than we had calculated. The corn that once would have been used for ethanol is all going towards making food rations instead not that that was a sustainable practice anyway. Which is just as well since the market for that has folded.

"The invaders have told us that we had a ten-year supply of oil reserves but failed to let us know just how that fixed quantity was allocated. Any guidance we could be given to that end would be most welcome so that we don't continue to drill and further degrade the environment. Which is what they continue to insist was the impetus behind this invasion."

"From existing wells and fields." The dragon said, now lying on its belly and curled up as if to sleep. Only betraying its wakefulness by keeping its solid gold eyes open to watch the briefing and await being addressed once more.

"Yes, but which ones damn you!"

"It does not matter. Any attempts at armed seizure of additional oil reserves will be useless as all surpluses, realized or unrealized, will be destroyed upon reaching the ten-year mark. We anticipate that no less than two thirds of Earth's armed forces will disregard this warning. Including your own nation's forces. We are actively managing existing wells to provide you the exact resources that we have promised you. There is no cause for further attempts to burrow into your planet like ticks in search of blood. They will be fruitless. Alas, you will try no matter what we say and sorely strain the boundaries that we have established."

"Stop letting this creature lead you by your noses!" The president snapped, having heard enough. We can't worry about what will happen over the next ten years if we can't solve our problems of the next month!"

"More of the short-sighted nonsense that landed you in our gentle care." The dragon said with a sigh.

"The problem Mr. President is that many of these alternative technologies require rare earth metals and other ores that need located, extracted, and processed. With a substantial investment of our remaining oil supplies. Not to mention there is the fact that many of these undertakings would increase our burden on the environment in the meantime. Which these aliens have indicated is their real red line, and not how many humans die in the meantime."

The dragon in question yawned and looked at its paw as the phone skittered back and forth across the table with a scratching noise. "Stop replicating like a virus that is seeking to exploit its host until all resources are extinguished. Why are you seeking more when you already have so much?"

"Recycling? Everything? How? How could that be economically..." the Science Advisor trailed off with realization. No, it wouldn't have been economical before. But now, economics were no longer a reasonable factor.

"Dr. Strangelove, I need you to get some facts and figures together for my press secretary. I need tangibles to show the American people that twenty five percent of America's federal budget is being put to good use at the Universities and National Labs. Are there any technology demonstrations that you can make? How are we on the jobs program to make those project's research and implementation divisions work?"

"Mr. President, our jobs outreach program has been shut down as of this afternoon by the DC district court as a result of the lawsuit brought against you by congress for exceeding the powers of the executive branch."

"Great. Get on it. You know the routine. Has the appeals court responded to an emergency stay?"

"We haven't heard yet."

"Next, why the hell am I still getting reports that people are being thrown out of their homes for defaulting on payments? Who do these landlords think are going to occupy this housing? How is it that law enforcement is still available to evict people with everything else going on?" "

"Local and state law still allows the practice. What we have come to understand is that many of the banks and leasing firms who own these residences are forcing the people out to write off the properties in liquidation. It's a fire sale that we can't legally stop as everyone tries to cash in while there is still a profit to be had."

"And just who are they selling to?"

"We're trying to track that down. But it is a significant factor in the manipulation we are seeing ongoing in home and real estate values. We are seeing a similar ruinous operation in progress with foreign owners abandoning their farms and their crops for insurance money. The claims are that the losses are due to acts of god."

"What did the court say when it threw out my program to ban evictions for those without the money to make ends meet? What did they say to the millions of Americans without jobs? And these farms, are you telling me that we still cannot make any progress in getting these farms to produce food for the domestic market?"

"The court urged congress to take up the issue. But we don't have any buy in on and there is no one willing to line up behind a push from the White House on either the forced evictions or the collapse of the foreign interests owning the commercial farms. Congress has fallen into their usual internecine behavior of it being more important to put ideology ahead of any kind of consensus building. Also, there are no procedures set up for conducting legislative business remotely in a time such as this. Half of congress is in hiding with their constituents, the other half are in hiding from them."

"Hmph." President Lincoln grunted wryly. "Finding out they actually answer to the people that elected them when all the special interest groups have fled and their cozy beltway lifestyles have evaporated isn't sitting well with some of them is it? They will stand for partisan politics and let the masses starve in homeless squalor?"

"In the meantime, many American citizens are left without purpose and with their futures unsecured. They are ripe territory for radicalization or for other irrational actions. Violent and property crime rates across the nation are trending upwards by double digit percentages. Besides theft and attempted theft of military equipment and weapons, the biggest problem is securing transport of fuel, food, and medicine. Which is why I would like to expand our pilot effort to hire the dragons to protect the bulk transportation sector."

"Is congress actively trying to make this worse with the courts, or is it just me they want to watch burn? Are principles worth this suffering and indignity?"

"I don't know what you expected sir." The Chief of Staff said. "You ran on the most balanced, neutral platform in recent presidential history. Your name is even a conglomeration of some of the most cherished names of the left and the right in American politics as if you were someone's poor attempt at creating an inoffensive presidential stereotype. Liberals don't think you're doing enough to lock down the country to keep everyone safe, and the conservatives are convinced that this is a ploy to justify the federal government turning the country into Soviet Russia.

"The problem is there is so much disfunction in the country at the moment, that the heavy hand of big government is the only force keeping things moving. Pissing off nearly everyone in the process."

"What happened to the... what did we call it... the individual action plan? What are the responses we're getting on that from the field? Donna?"

Donna Hutchins, the secretary of the interior, took a moment to go through her notes before answering.

"The effectiveness of getting people to change their behaviors for the crisis has been meeting with only limited success and is regionally dependent for levels of implementation. Arizona, Maine, Texas, Oregon, Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wyoming have essentially stopped providing us any information whatsoever. We've been reduced to having to watch the news to determine what people are willing to do to mitigate the strain being put on the infrastructure and community services that they've taken for granted all their lives. It has become a fad, I'm afraid, on social media for people to brag about being as wasteful as possible with energy, water, or food."

"So, some of our country's citizens have been acting as stupidly as this creature thinks we all are. Is that a good summary of today's brief?"

"There have been scattered reports that there are communities undertaking the projects that we have been providing advice on how to accomplish. But we have no concrete information on the scope or results of these programs through the national news outlets. It's just not breaking through the wall-to-wall coverage of the violence."

"That sounds like a problem that could be solved by getting some boots on the ground to report directly to yourself. So...what are you waiting for?" Donna grimaced at the president's scathing glare and reached for the phone in front of her as the president stood and paced with agitated energy.

"Those individual action plans are not just misnomers. I don't like having the government involved this deeply with how people are living their lives any more than they are. That is why it's so important that they act on the advice of the panels of experts that we've got operating around the clock to come up with these suggestions to weather the worst of these changes. Where are we failing in communicating these facts to our populace?"

No one had an answer for the president as to just why there was so much resistance to the thought that people were going to have to take a level of accountability for their own actions that was out of place in the 21st century. Supplementing their diet with food grown by household or within neighborhoods. On roof tops where the climate was mild enough, and anywhere else where it was not. Reducing water and energy consumption. Sorting their garbage. Composting. Curbing discretionary travel when the general public could even afford it. Just a small sampling of the things that were strongly being urged for citizens to undertake. Economizing tasks that large swaths of the population were refusing to engage in.

How is it... the president internally seethed... that countries in Africa are having an easier time dealing with this chaos than we are? Did all our infrastructure and disaster planning amount to nothing in the end?

The deputy Secretary of Defense tried to usher the conversation in a new direction as his own turn to brief was time sensitive given the fluid nature of what he needed to discuss.

"Sir, there are two more concerns. First, there is more evidence that our interspecies engagement teams our being targeted. Also, we have more information about the so-called 'Alpha Dragons'."

"Oh, those dragons that are leaders? What about them? Let me guess... have they started eating people as an intimidation tactic?"

"First let me begin with our IET program. The intel we have been getting from the defectors that were captured in the attack on our Boise element strongly indicate that a motivator for at least some of the more moderate members of this so called "Purity Movement" is the simple matter of the presence of uniformed military acting in a police capacity. Martial Law. We are pursuing opportunities to utilize the disparate factions within the movement to destabilize it and keep them on the defensive instead of conducting more of these strikes at population centers and the IE teams.

"The latest report I have to share with you Mr. President is what happened in Boise after our team, led by Major General Boyd, were ordered out after the outbreak of violence." Picking up a remote he switched feeds on the monitor behind him and pushed a button on his laptop. A video of a crowd with emotion laden faces appeared driving a few dozen men and women in their underwear before them on a road. Many in the mob had tears streaming from their eyes in the footage that appeared to have been taken through a second-floor window with a powerful camera.

"This video was taken by plain clothes elements of General Boyd's force that volunteered to remain behind to report on local conditions as they liaison with the city and state government. Those men and women you see stripped down to their underclothes are suspected to be some of the worst facilitators of the violence that had just occurred."

"I fail to see the reason why this heinous action rates a mention during this Security Council session with everything else going on."

"Mr. President, I think what we are witnessing here are more of the effects that these Alpha Dragons, whether intentionally or not, are having on humans by their presence. Or, in this case, their lack of presence."

The president had been walking back and forth distractedly, but this grabbed his attention and he cast an irritated scowl at Subject 1A.

"Well... Thumper? What about these Alpha Dragons? Are they controlling these people? Are my citizens no longer safe even in their own heads? What new horror have you inflicted upon us with these creatures that you've transformed? Do they even remember what it meant to be human anymore? How much of who they were is left, or are they your puppets like these movements believe?"

Conversation in the room stopped as everyone broke up their smaller groups to listen to the alien's response. Two smaller meetings that had been ongoing and involved the dragons filling the monitors with their giant eyes had a special interest in the answer. Fear making the great eyes in the screens constrict their pupils to razor thin slits at the possibility that their worst nightmares were being confirmed as true in front of the very center of power in the Nation's capital. That they were no longer who they thought they were.

Subject 1A opened its mouth and a long oscillating call came from the base of its throat. The yowling broke into a series of soft grunts that incurred the wrath of all the humans listening with the realization that the alien was laughing at them.

"I hardly think that that's an appropriate response to my question. Lives are at stake here."

"Well, I think it's amusing because you will not be willing to accept any answer that doesn't make dealing with this situation easier for you by dovetailing with your firmly held preconceptions. No, those people are not being controlled. Yes, these "Alpha Dragons" as you call them do have a manner of affecting the emotions in those around themselves. What you are seeing in your news feeds is the result of a Patriarch being forced to remove the support he had been at times unknowingly providing to the region he occupied. You can rest assured that he, and the others, are agonizing over the righteousness of their actions just as thoroughly at the most learned of the jurists your country has."

"That... they have... they are messing with people's minds! There is no arguing the righteousness of this! We do not care what your morals are elsewhere. This is Earth and this is the United States of America! Tampering with one's thoughts is an abhorrence that we will not tolerate!"

"Ask them to stop then. Have you tried that? Do you want to see more scenes of mob violence as the shaky structure of your judicial systems fail? Where will you turn when mental health disorders and suicide attempts in your nation skyrocket in addition to your species' pathological predilection for violence? I have been here to remind you that I'm attending all high-level discussions of policy within your nation and I have yet to witness that you have a firm grasp of the mental welfare of your people. Or what these "Alpha Dragons" are doing for them. Before you come barking at me like one of your pet domesticated wolves, you should learn more about the Matriarchs and Patriarchs and the steps they are taking to prevent themselves from enacting the very abuses that have you terrified.

"You presume much, and are mistaken about even more, from the shape of their bodies. I can assure you, that none of these individuals are different even if they themselves may fear that they are." Subject A1 finished with his head turned to stare right at the twin monitors that showed the eyes of two different Children of the Egg. Eliciting startled movements of the facial scales surrounding the orbs just at the outermost edges of the screens.

An elderly woman, Dr. Johana Singer who had said nothing and been asked nothing up to this point raised her hand to gain the attention of the president. She was a psychiatric doctor under the secretary of Health and Human Services, and she was there to provide personal mental health care as well as to help develop policy matters related to the same issue.

"Mr. President, I must caution you not to let appearances force the solidification of your thoughts on the matter prematurely. What we are dealing with at the moment is a crisis of enormous proportions that is exacting an unknown toll on the psyche of ours and other's nations. As of yet we have not witnessed any kind of newly instilled antipathy or hostility to either themselves or others within these... dragons. Indeed, from what studies we've conducted so far, their current mindset is pacifistic to a much more widespread degree than in a similar array of representative humans. Neither have we observed any evidence yet that their profiles based upon standardized personality assessments vary from their prior human baselines in a substantiative manner. Phineas Gage underwent more of a marked shift in personality than these souls have despite the staggering trauma they continue to undergo. I realize that some of their behaviors may seem different, but what I and my colleagues believe we are witnessing are actually many of the same human habits they once had adapted for the structural differences in their bodies and abilities."

"This creature has been doing nothing but tell us these dragons are smarter than humans." President Lincoln rejoined, pointing at the dragon in the room. "How are we to know that they aren't skewing their results to fool us? How do we know that they aren't manipulating us in the schemes of these aliens? How do we know that they aren't the aliens themselves and that the humans they were are completely lost to us?"

"I believe those questions can be readily answered by asking why would they need to do each of those things? What would creatures that can change the world in ways that we still have no inkling how stand to gain from misleading and misdirecting us?"

"This could be a game to them! An amusement! With the awesome power they seem to command what would they stand to lose by playing with us? Does a toddler care for the ants within the ant farm when he turns it upside down?"

"You humans have just as little sense as I'd thought since being assigned to this world. I would show you the formula to explain to you why you are so foolish, but it would be a waste of resources."

"Can... can you please show us the formula anyway?" A voice spoke from one of those watching via teleconference. Marsha Currie, head of NASA, was involved in ongoing discussions with the alien in case her organization needed to be consulted. "Please?" She asked, plaintively. Who knew what new branches of math or physics the aliens may lead the humans towards with a simple innocuous display of their own understanding? The administrator could only hope that she and her colleagues would be so indulged.

"The fact remains sir, no matter what we can guess as to their motives, wherever these Alpha dragon sub-groups are the general well-being of the surrounding communities only improves. I have been in integrating our response with leading religious authorities such as Cardinal Gregory and they are seeing the same things we in our department are..."

She pushed a button and nodded at one of the video screens containing a giant eye. The immense lavender colored eye twitched as the pupil expanded and moved to take in the room now that the Cardinal had been called upon. Beneath the eye in one corner a small inset image appeared to show the titanic dragon where he lay draped across the steps of the Basilica of The National Shrine. Wrapped around his neck was a white sash that had had a golden cross prominently stitched into it. A delicate balancing act the Vatican had had to tread in the times of change. Having to reconcile the obvious intelligence and steadfast devotion of the dragons with their inhuman forms and centuries of canonical precedence.

"President Lincoln. What the good doctor says is just as I have learned. Many grieve at the loss of their certainty in the affairs of their lives and seek understanding. The Matriarchs among us have opened their hearts to strangers and the communities that they call their own have been truly blessed."

"Mr. President." His chief of staff said, impatiently tapping her watch as a reminder drawing his fascinated gaze away from the holy dragon. The briefing was running long, and a planned conference with the Mexican president on the matter of the trade of produce and livestock was fast approaching. The President begged the Cardinal's pardon, leaving him and Dr. Singer to continue their own discussion in how best to gather the raw data of emotional assessments to generate sound policy.

"Alright, back to the issue of the Alpha Dragons. What can we do about it? We have no evidence that anything is in fact occurring near or around these individuals. Can you even tell me who and where these dragons are? What they are doing? What they intend? Can someone please explain to me how psychic anything is actually real?"

"In addition to Mrs. Dorothy Campbell, who has been working with us to understand her formidable nature at Fort Belvoir, General Boyd has reported that there were two in Boise, Idaho. Those two have just reached their home in center of the regional safe zone in Northern Idaho yesterday where the female, a retired Major Kim Schwarzkopf, has begun to give birth."

"They're reproducing? How many of them are there? Do they have the abilities that their parents do? Is that right? These Matriarchs and Patriarchs are married couples, aren't they?"

"Sir, the dragons don't give birth to live young. The eggs are...

"Never mind. Can these two be monitored or contained? Will they cooperate like that woman dragon in Virginia? That retired schoolteacher that's the size of a jumbo jet, you said her name was Dorothy?"

"Well sir, they already are under a form of house arrest while multiple criminal investigations are being undertaken against them. The local prosecutors think that...

"Let me guess. That they want to float a trial balloon and see if a judge will be willing to allow non-human intelligences to be tried under our judicial system?"

"Mr. President..." The Attorney General spoke up. "We will have to discuss this one later I'm afraid. The implications of what is working its way through the courts is... far beyond the scope of the present meeting. The Solicitor General will be on video with us to discuss our current cases facing the Supreme Court. Including the number of emergency appeals."

"Alright, the engagement teams then. Earlier you said you had new recommendations for their usage. What have you got for us?"

"To start with, I recommend removing all the changed from their commands given the sensitive nature of the extreme levels of organized violence that we're now seeing."

"Now hold on just a damn minute!" General Tecumseh Patton hollered with a formidable scowl causing veins to rise on his bald head. The stout bulldog of a four-star Army Chief of Staff was wearing combat fatigues as a sign of the direness of the country's situation instead of the more formal dress blues. A jarring sign of the crisis that always made some of the cabinet flinch upon seeing the wartime dress in the civilian setting. "I've known some of these men and women for decades and I would vouch for every one of them..."

"General, your personal feelings aside, they are not human anymore and the optics of having them issuing orders to those that are is not one that we need right now no matter how competent they are!" Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Ryan snapped back.

"So, your plan is to cater to these terrorists? How is that possibly in the nation's best interests to have the best and the brightest sidelined because the criminal traitors shooting at them don't like them? Who should we ask for advice from next? Al Qaeda? These people are nothing but damn traitors walking away from their oaths as far as I'm concerned. You don't uphold the Constitution by burning it."

"Why not let the public relations liaisons do their job and keep their commanders out of sight to run their commands like they're supposed to be doing anyway?" The President cut in to dispel the growing argument before one of them started to become an animal for testing Subject A1's patience.

The last thing I need, the President hated admitting, is the White House zoo turning into an actual zoo. What good would my advisors be, even if they could still think on the same level that they could before, if they were losing their minds because they were animals. God, I feel sorry for those people out there that became these alien dragons. I can't imagine what it must be like for them...

"No. The General officers leading these units will remain in command unless they are derelict in their duty. Regardless of whether they are dragons. Which I don't think the courts have ruled on that yet, have they?"

"The emergency stay has been approved. The Supreme Court is reviewing the lawsuit from Florida that the dragons are not entitled to any rights under current law. As of right now continued employment of them as who they are is allowed."

"If they rule against the dragons, what will we do?"

The President sat back in his chair with a sigh and dug his knuckles into his eyes before he responded with a hollow look to his expression.

"Watch our citizens murder each other."

"Sir! It's time for the call with the Mexican President."

"Alright," he said as everyone else rose, with the dragon pretending to fall asleep, while he left the room. Grabbing his suit jacket and tie on the way out, he had a walking brief with his attendants. "When is today's conference with the African and European Unions about..."

The door shut off the rest of his conversation with his Chief of Staff and Secretary of State as the remainder of his cabinet slumped back into their chairs with empty looks at each other.

"How are your son and daughter doing?" Jennifer Garcia, the Secretary of Energy, asked General Patton gently between phone calls to electrical grid operators. The four-star officer sat staring blankly at a die cast toy dragon he was fiddling with in his hands. A keepsake from his son, who might not even be legally entitled to the rights that that should have meant for much longer.

"I finally got approval from the embassy for them to cross legally into Canada. Had to set an example that we hope all the others fleeing will follow. They flew out last night. Andrea rode on Sabrina's back in the survival shelter we fitted to her back. How is Daniel?"

"I think my husband is doing better. Yesterday he was able to go a whole day without forgetting his real name and reverting to that language of theirs."

Tecumseh stopped his fiddling and looked up at his conversation partner. "I'm sorry that this happened to him... at least my children never forgot who they were. I can't imagine how much it hurt to know that somewhere inside that scale covered head was your husband locked away from you and all the world."

"Star Fire was nothing but kind and gentle to me. I mean, the way he showed his love for me was cute and all with the way he was so protective. But I am convinced that Star Fire knows that he is not the one I love. He is not Danny. Tecumseh, you should hear the way he sings when he thinks I can't hear him, the way that it makes your heart break to hear just how sad those sounds are. The piercing cries in the night when he flies over our home. The way those violet eyes bigger than my head look right through me with a terrible understanding that I don't know if I can match. Slowly he and I have been able to get those two pieces of himself to bond with each other more and more. It's been hard, but we're doing the best we can." Jennifer said glumly.

"Aren't we all?"

"No. I don't think that we are. Not anymore. Maybe we never have."

In response before he was called away the General grunted his agreement and stowed the dragon figurine safely in his breast pocket once more. Troubled creases lining his face in worry.

The nearby agent took note when Subject A1 sat up attentively with its focus on the two. Ignoring the rest of the room as the staff worked diligently to assemble the data for the evening's briefing that would focus entirely on the catastrophic damage being done to the financial and economic order of the world.

The FBI agent didn't know what to make of the change in the alien's expression or the jerky twitches of its tail tip, other than to note it in her activity log. If a Child of the Egg had been on hand to describe it for her, with the tilting of the ears just so along with the way the mouth was held open and the bristling rise of the scales along the edges of the bridge of the snout. They could have reported to her that it was an expression of happiness.

Finally, Subject 1A added to the recording of the scene that she transmitted to her brethren, some of them begin to understand.