In the end, there wasn’t much to see on the tiny, teardrop-shaped island.  

A large black ash tree stood at the fat end that rested downriver, on the opposite end of the islet from where their boat had washed up, with many huckleberry and other annoying brambles crowding out every piece of dirt they could find. 

But it was dry and a few inches higher than the riverbank. They might be able to build a tiny fire from the drier lower branches on the ash tree.

Warm. Cara sighed. Had it only been the night before that she’d curled beneath her two thick woolen blankets in her sheltered attic room? 

And now, here she was, somewhere in the deep swamp on a river islet surrounded by wisps and water horses and gods knew what else ready to munch her and the idiot marque she’d been saddled with. 

And her blankets were probably damp, too, after Dayton’s earlier antics.

But… she was on an adventure. A quest. A Hero’s job, doing Heroic work. 

Cara stopped pushing her way through the brambles and tilted her head back to stare at the strip of stars that spilled over the black velvet sky. 

She took a deep breath and slowly released it, letting the scents of rotting wood and stagnant water and sleeping plants settle her nerves. 

An owl hooted. A fish jumped. A fire crackled.

Wait, what?

She sniffed the air again, testing. This time, she caught the unmistakable odor of wood smoke—coming from the other end of the island, where she’d left the chariot-wagon-boat and Dayton.

She stomped back through the underbrush, bursting past the last branches to find Dayton crouched around a merry little cookfire, circled by rapidly drying river stones. 

He’d extracted a cast iron skillet from the pile of bags; a liquid sizzle told Cara he’d also found something to cook.

She stared, her right arm still cocked back and prepared to sling a stone at whatever trouble she thought had found them.

Dayton must’ve realized that he had company. He glanced up from poking whatever he was cooking for dinner, saw Cara, and smiled. 

“Didn’t find anything, then?” The acolyte swayed a little and hiccuped. Under other circumstances, Cara wouldn’t have let him within ten feet of an open flame. Now, though…

“No, seems clear, but… how did you do this?” Cara stumbled to the fire’s edge and sat down on river rocks. They poked her butt through her thin leather trousers. “I’ve only been gone a minute!”

“More like ten minutes, and I was cold!” Dayton rubbed his hands over the fire for emphasis before picking up his cooking stick once more.

“But all the wood for a fire is on the other side of the fire, unless…” 

Cara blinked, then bolted upright. 

She scrambled over to the hulking silhouette of their boat on the shore. Nothing looked amiss, though she turned herself nearly upside down to run a hand along the boat’s bottom to check for pried-up floorboards. 

She righted herself, pulling her shirt and jerkin down again. “But, if you didn’t use the boat, how did you—” 

Dayton put a finger to his lips and winked. “Trade secret. Can’t tell.”

“You have no trade!” Cara peered over his shoulder to look in the skillet at a swirled mess of yellow and white. “And where you’d get eggs from?”

He pointed at a squat shape, a darker shadow in shadows. “Over there. They’re big ones! Enough for both of us. Though I think some are rotted,” he mused as she grabbed the broken hilt of her dagger and started toward the place Dayton had indicated. “They felt… weird when I picked ‘em up. I only grabbed the sloshy ones.”

“‘Sloshy’ eggs?” Cara arrived at the shape and discovered it was a mound of what looked like mud decorated with sticks. A few round shapes stuck out of the top, a paler tan spattered with dirt brown. Five brown indents showed where Dayton had pried five eggs loose. 

She paused, a frown wrinkling her forehead. “And how did the other eggs feel, then?” 

She squatted down and put an ear to one mud-covered shell.

“Not sloshy.”

“Obviously. How else?” 

“Uh… full. Heavy.”

Dayton continued to ramble about how nice and large and yummy the eggs would be, but Cara tuned him out and listened harder. 

Yes, she could hear it now—a faint scratching noise. She pulled back and saw the edge of the egg begin to pucker slightly. Fine fissures formed on the shell’s surface, wiggling to and fro like an earthquake in an egg.

“Dayton.” She was proud that her voice hadn’t quavered. “Did you try to crack any of the full eggs?”

“The sloshy ones went in just fine, so I didn’t bother with the other ones. Why?” Dayton began to walk toward her, rocks crunching beneath his boots. “Wait, why is your sword out?”

“Because you found a monster nest. And those eggs are full of baby kaprid.”