Shango had been waiting, but not idly. Some parental instinct in him had risen up, as it had before and perhaps finely-tuned by prior experience. He had, as the chrysalises had grown, circled them--prowling around them, guarding them against nonexistent threat. He'd pulled foliage over them now and then, checking them as though making sure they were warm enough. And sometimes, bird-like, he'd just laid across one--though a couple had grown nearly as large as his body already--and lounged, slitted eyes keeping watch on the jungle while his tail-tip flicked, ready in that catlike fashion to be immediately aggravated by intrusion.

But the childrens' chrysalises had grown without interruption, and they looked, to Shango, to be healthy. At least--two of them did. The third, a slick black thing, looked and felt wrong to him--sickly, almost, faintly heavy with some uncomfortable power. The way the light seemed to slide off it in malformed colors bothered him, and more than once he asked the others, "Do you think this one might be sick?"

He could only hope that wasn't the case. He'd never really bothered learning the magic of the lifegiver he'd never met; he could cleanse a little sickness but if the kid came out with something really wrong? Well, he'd just hope they didn't.

Probably, it'd be fine.

And the others looked healthy, anyway; one zebra-streaked, the other brilliant green, the surfaces of both gems looking pretty in their own way. Heck, the Oilstone did too, for that matter; Shango just didn't know what it was.

hatching thread for @Grootslang @Wicker & @Nekros !

Titanite had come and gone, indulgently ignoring Shango's tending of the 'nest.' The cat hybrid wasn't actually nervous, he knew--just... busy, in the way all the warm creatures seemed to be.

He'd vanished, himself, for a day or two on end--once, he'd forgotten the chrysalises entirely, and only been reminded when he saw a flash of his own green in his reflection in the water, and remembered the chrysalis that matched it. He'd wandered to root himself, to find nutrients in richer soil, and then come back again.

He was here now, root-like toes dug deep into the dirt, basking in a few stray rays of orb-light filtering down through the trees.

"I do not think it is sick," he'd told Shango, and he repeated now, with an unconcerned glance to the Oilstone. It was a stone he'd seen before, and he'd tried to explain that, but Shango had just peppered him with follow-up questions as to whether the others with the stone had been sick.

Now it was just a matter of waiting--of lounging about in pleasant company until the children were ready to arrive.

He was only dimly aware of dark, of silence, and not at all of the small throng of strangers waiting outside his stone. Their voices didn't penetrate the chrysalis, or his sleep, but that sleep had grown restless, of late. A little shift here, a brief awareness of warmth--then he'd drift back into the unconsciousness of the stone.

The Titanite stone had been thinning, though--visibly, even covered as it was by random swatches of foliage left by one well-meaning but ill-informed parent. Almost unnoticed a fracture had broken along its greater length, a skyward crack that was barely more than a narrow, dark streak along the stone. Then another, as the stone had weakened further, until a large shard simply gave way, much of the Titanite's upper shell simply collapsing into the chrysalis, on top of the child within.

The sudden weight, the flood of cold and air, jolted the foal awake with a start of panic. Gangly hind hooves kicked up, out, at nothing in particular. He thrashed and turned, scrambling upright and then falling backwards, out of the chrysalis entirely, landing with a wet thud in the leaf-strewn dirt. He struggled for a moment and then lay there, coughing out fluids, his ghostlight eyes blinking blind at the too-bright light above him.

He was a spindly thing--quite large for a foal, but more than that, twisted and twined with wicker. His face almost looked as though he were more related to Marrow than the rest--a skull-like facade of that same bleached wood. A short mane and tail looked more like dark fiber than hair. Wicker knew none of this: he only knew that he was suddenly awake, aware, and that this was far more than he was prepared to handle.