It has been five days since the last egg slipped free, and still I cannot bring myself to destroy them. Scientific rigor demands observation; sentiment—or whatever poisoned impulse now stirs beneath my ribs—demands preservation. I tell myself the former justifies the latter. I am not certain, but I believe it.
 

In the hours immediately following the oviposition, panic lent me clarity. I gathered the eight pale orbs into a hastily lined satchel—soft wool scraps and a layer of oiled leather to cushion them—then forced myself to stand. My legs shook; the room tilted; the scent of mineral-sweet mucous still clung to my skin like guilt. I paid the innkeeper double what I owed, muttering something about urgent research that required solitude, and fled Whiterun before the market bells could ring fully awake. My own small house on the edge of the plains—more laboratory than home—welcomed me with the familiar reek of dried herbs and spilled reagents. I barred the door, shuttered every window, and placed the clutch in the warmest corner beside the hearth, where the fire could lick at the stones without scorching them.
 

For the first day, they remained as they were: luminous white, faintly translucent, veined with the palest blue. I measured them (circumference 28–31 centimeters, weight approximately 1.4–1.7 kilograms each), noted surface temperature (warm, 2–3 degrees above ambient room heat), and sketched their positions in my field journal. No movement. No sound. Only the soft, almost imperceptible throb beneath the leather-like shell when I pressed a finger to one.

Over the next three days, the change crept in slowly, methodically, as though the clutch itself were conducting an experiment on me.

By the second morning, the pallor had begun to fade, replaced by a deepening taupe that darkened hourly toward rich brown. The shells stiffened—pliable kid-leather giving way to something denser, more chitinous, as cured boar hide stretched over bone. I recorded the progression in hourly increments: color shift from ivory to ecru to walnut; increasing rigidity (indentation under thumb pressure reduced from 4 mm to less than 1 mm); a faint, dry rustle when I held one close to my ear, as of sand shifting inside a sealed vial.

On the fourth day, the first cracks appeared—not violent fractures, but hairline fissures radiating from the poles like frost on glass. I sat vigil through the night, quill in hand, flame low. The room filled with a new scent: sharp chitin dust mixed with the old mineral sweetness, now almost cloying.

Hatching began at dawn on the fifth day.

It was not dramatic. No explosive births, no screams. Only a slow, wet parting of shell segments, accompanied by a soft, chitinous click-click-click like pebbles settling. The first nymph emerged head-first: no larger than my palm, pale and glistening, its segmented body still curled fetal-tight. Six stubby legs unfolded, tipped with delicate hooks; mandibles—tiny, translucent—worked soundlessly. It paused, antennae quivering, then scuttled sideways across the floorboards and vanished beneath the bedframe.

The others followed in quick succession. Eight in total hatched; six survived the first frantic scramble. Two lighter-hued eggs produced only malformed husks—thin, watery contents that evaporated almost at once, leaving brittle membranes. The viable six were darker, denser, their carapaces already hardening to a deep chestnut gloss. They scattered like spilled beads: under the bed, behind the alchemy table, into the rafters, into the shadowed gap beneath the wardrobe. For a full day, they hid, silent except for occasional faint skittering when one shifted position.

I did not sleep. I watched. I noted.

By the second day post-hatch, they grew bolder. Hunger drove them first: they returned to the discarded shells, mandibles rasping against the remnants, consuming every scrap of casing and membrane. The sound was intimate, almost polite—small teeth on leather, methodical, thorough. Once sated, exploration began in earnest. They ventured across open floorboards, climbed the legs of my chair, and investigated the mortar and pestle left uncleaned on the workbench. One perched briefly on the rim of my inkwell, antennae dipping toward the black liquid before recoiling.

They do not flee from me.

If I move slowly, they do not startle. Several have taken to trailing my shadow as I cross the room, keeping a respectful distance of a meter or two. One—the largest, perhaps the first-born—has twice climbed onto my boot when I sat motionless at the desk, remaining there for several minutes while its antennae brushed the leather in slow, deliberate sweeps. Not affection, precisely; no nuzzling, no warmth-seeking like a kitten against a hearth. But recognition. Acceptance. A quiet acknowledgment that I am part of their environment, and they of mine.

I find myself leaving scraps of meat near the hearth—rabbit from the market, cut small. They converge upon it without quarrel, sharing in orderly turns. I have caught myself smiling at the sight. The smile feels foreign on my face. Beneath the observation, the other thoughts gather.

At first, they came as flickers: a sudden memory of pressure, of rhythmic pulsing, of that impossible, drowning ecstasy that overrode terror. I dismissed them as trauma residue, as the mind replaying horror to process it. But the flickers have thickened into insistence. My body remembers the stretch, the filling, the release. In quiet moments—when the nymphs are still, when the fire has burned low—I feel an echo low in my abdomen: not pain, not emptiness, but a hollow readiness. A craving for pressure. For the purpose.

I tell myself it is a hormonal aftermath. The gray fluid, the eggs, the rapid gestation—all must have altered my endocrine balance. I could test it: draw blood, compare to baseline samples from before the incident. I could formulate a counter-agent, purge the influence. Yet each time I reach for the reagents, my hand hesitates. The nymphs are here. They are viable. They are mine—in a way no conventional progeny could be. To destroy them would be to destroy data. To abandon them would be to abandon discovery. To return north… to seek another encounter… would be to gather more specimens. To understand the lifecycle fully. To perhaps—gods forgive the thought—ensure their survival in greater numbers.

The largest nymph has taken to resting against my ankle when I sit at the desk. Its weight is negligible, yet I feel it like an anchor. Its antennae brush my skin in slow circles, and for a moment, the room fades. I close my eyes and remember mandibles pressing—not crushing, but holding. Steady. Purposeful.

I tell myself this is science.
 

I am no longer certain who is convincing whom.