Feeling Good About This....

Prompt
The top line of page 49 of the book closest to you.

"Do you love her?"




Begin.

The question took her aback. She did not think "loving" the dragon was part of the bargain that she had struck with the dying man. But the look in Mars' eyes spoke plainly that she was not to be granted custody of the beast unless her answer was satisfactory. She opened and closed her mouth a couple times probably looking very much like a fish out of water to the man who held the egg away from her outstretched hands.
The dying man had said that this dragon egg was the last on Earth and that if she were to possess it then all of her troubles would vanish. No longer would she be subject to her stepfather's whims. Neither would she be alone in this world... and with that thought came her answer.
"That dragon egg means the world to me, Mars."
The man's eyes softened, his lips still in a firm line as he lowered the egg gently into her desperate hands. It slipped easily into the circle of her arms and she could feel the leftover heat from its place in the coals of Mars' hearth. She also felt the vibration--there was a distinct pulse and her eyes lit in a way no one had ever had the privilege to see and it broke Mars' heart to know how lost this young woman could have been had she answered wrong.
She cocked her head to the side, black curls tumbling. "Are you sure it's a female?"
The gentleness disappeared from Mars' face to show his indignation. "Of course it is!"
She raised an eyebrow for a brief moment before shrugging her shoulder. "When will she hatch?" she inquired, the stress of the gender showing her doubt of the man's intuition.
Visibly irked, Mars gestured to the black and gold banded shell, "One week--but you MUST keep her warm at all times. If you don't, she will come out weak and sickly."
"How warm?" she asked, balking slightly as she looked nervously out the window to give a look of concern at the snow. At the moment, she was rather homeless and though she had been able to stave off cold with her thin cloak and hiding in obliging farmhouses, she wasn't so sure she would be able to keep an egg or for that matter a baby dragon as warm as the fire she'd just received her...he... it from.