11
Lacotl
Lacotl cradled the egg in his outstretched hands, holding the delicate gold and blue shell over the cliff’s edge.
The egg was bigger than his head, but light as a bird, warm as a stone left in the summer sun. It was hard but soft, bright like a star but also like the moon, a ray of hope for his people, but also the lingering shadow of their five millennia-long despair.
For this egg was the last of its kind. The sacred ehecoatl, a wind serpent—a creature that most of the world knew only as the shishajya. And the egg was neither dead nor alive.
A pulse of energy came from within, like a heartbeat, waiting. Waiting for Lacotl to decide.
His mountain perch overlooked the mires on the eastern island, and he breathed in the sulphur from the nearby volcano. Home, this is what it s
