Untitled fragment based in Devorian continent

there is a potential for a side story set in the Devorian home continent to wind with the rest of the novel. As yet I'm undecided, but thought I'd share some of the existing draft.

The hatchling climbed from it's shell and looked around, taking in its environment. It took an unsteady step, and disappeared.

'Where did she go?' Barne asked.
'To her other home,' Broodmother replied.
'I don't understand.'
'Which is why you are learning to be a broodmother.'

The elderly devorian smiled at the younger one, whose scales were barely past the dullness of youth. Eight years the clan had been searching for a potential replacement broodmother, looking for someone with the inate nurturing desire who could be taken into the nursery and grounded in the culture of the clan, instead of heading off to experience the standard indoctrination the majority of younglings were subject to.

'It's not an abomination, is it?' Barne asked.
'Such a vile- quick, catch her!'

The re-appeared youngling wobbled on still uncertain legs, and was close to the edge of the bench. Barne scooped the hatchling up and cradled it under her chin, blowing gently on its head. It was an act of instinctive nurturing the likes of which the broodmother still had to think about after decades.

'What makes you think our youngling could be an abomination?'

Barne immediately started to recite the The Rite. Her lilting cadence which, depending on mood, broodmother found endearing or annoying was replaced by a dull drawl, the flat tone of rote repetition, of ideas learnt by indoctrination and not reason. The words echoed in its own head, a litany of exceptionalism and hatred of difference which every Devorian for half-a-millenium had learnt

But already here, in this clan, there was change. Barne knew the rite, had intoned it with the wit of an automaton like the y all could. But she hadn't recoiled from the hatchling, hadn't mindlessly demanded its destruction. Broodmother remembered thirty odd years previously, before deciding to become broodmother, she stood beside the clan's mentor, protector, nurturer, and watched it take a hatchling with aether-affinity in hand and then casually slice its head off and toss the body into a waste bin.

It was several years before she realised the broodmother had been able to identify the hatchling so swiftly because it had its own limited connection to aether. By then she'd already began transitioning, had begun to divest herself of the things which marked her as individual, to take on the mantle of a broodmother and the clan memories which went with the role.

Barne said, 'The Rite tells us aether users are abomination, and we must protect ourselves, protect Devoria, from the tyranny of those who use it.' As she spoke he stroked the hatchling, who was nibbling the chitinous ends of her fingers.

'You look in danger of being tyrannised,' Broodmother said.

Barne looked down at the hatchling and smiled, scritching it at the nape of the neck. The hatchling stopped its attack on Barne's fingers and rocked back and forth in her hand, revelling in the sensation.

'Maybe,' Broodmother said, 'you should care for this one until its naming ceremony. Under my direction of course.'

text by stuartcturnbull, art by Vika_Glitter via Pixabay