The Egg

Bryn found the egg in the woods and it was warm even though it was winter and that was the first weird thing. It was about the size of a melon and it had a kind of pattern on it like flames but frozen, and when he picked it up his hands tingled all the way to the elbow. He knew he should tell someone. His mother always said, if you find something strange in the woods you tell an adult. But Bryn also knew that if he told an adult they would take the egg away, and he had wanted something that was just his for as long as he could remember. So he put it in his coat. It pressed warm against his chest the whole walk home, and once, he was almost sure, it moved. That night he hid it under his bed wrapped in his only good blanket. He couldnt sleep. He kept thinking he could hear it, a sound like a heartbeat that wasnt his own, and he lay there grinning at the ceiling in the dark.