IV

Three days before Returin's death however, I woke up one morning with my red father and my green mother in my face.

"Come and see what we've got, Dy!" my mother smiled.

Knowing my mother Kara, she was likely to have got something ordered from Gold City, to my father's anguish. I'll write more about the "Gilted Island" later on, but anything from there is flashy and expensive. So, it was natural when I asked, "Is it something from Gold City?"

"Even better," Reuben smiled. I instantly knew something was up.

My father and mother paused before the door to their room.

"In here," she said.

I opened the door slowly to find a nest - the same one as I hatched in, ordered from a cheap department chain store, R-Market, in Yoshiville - and in it, an uncoloured egg.

"A…an…egg?" I stuttered.

"Yes," my father answered. "That will be your brother or sister."

I was a mixed bag of happy and surprised emotions, naturally.

Day after day, I would spend about an hour, or even more just sitting and watching the egg. I often had to get kicked out of the house to go and get my fresh air - and it was the first time, three days later, when I would be told to go outside and play, to see Returin die.

After his death, I became reclusive - partly out of sorrow, but the majority of it out of fear from Keroco. The egg became more and more special as I waited for someone with whom I could become a close friend with - and even more so as it was pretty much the same flesh and blood in those spherical walls of calcium carbonate.

Gradually, the spots appeared: a very light rose pink at first, but they became redder and redder. I've never really understood why the colour on the shells formed the same way - we believe it's the combination of my red father and my yellow mother's mother that formed my colour, and my father and my pink mother's father in the other case. And to have a green daughter…my mother's side relies on the work of Yoco, the Yoshi God of Skin Colour, in my opinion.

After a few months, the spots a deep magenta, the egg started to shake as I was beside it. It was the 18^th of Pegaru. My parents had, ironically, gone to the Kippo Post Office to look up names, on the Interworldnet, from a planet linked to Yamauchi - since they would have two children, and as I was named Fa'Dieli names, they decided to have names from another planet - and they chose Earth. They wanted the same as me - name of someone good and their nemesis. Looking at the history of Earth - or one of the many "Earths" out there, they found someone called Ark: a teenage boy who had, more or less single-handedly, come from the Underworld on that Earth to find the Overworld a barren, lifeless wasteland, and resurrect life, humanity, and knowledge. Such a person excited my parents, so looking at Ark's nemesis, they found some being called Dark Gaia. They put the two together, and decided that Ark Darkgaia Yoshi was not a good choice sound-wise, so another nemesis they found was someone called Beruga, a mad scientist who misused technology and was the root of all evil on the Overworld.

Combining the two, they had the name of the Koyoshi which popped his head out from the top of the shell and cried.

"Parano and hello," I said.

Then one of the most eerie things that I have ever experienced occurred then - I distinctly remember the chill up and down my spine.

He stopped crying as he looked at me, just like that. With only a few Fa’Dieli years of life and wisdom under my belt, I crouched down - I was still small, and the egg wasn't much smaller than I was - and I broke away the last bits of his shell, and held him in my arms. I believe that decision of mine was what created the strong bond between us.

Just then, my father came home and called out as he came towards me that they had decided on the name - and saw that he had hatched. But I didn't hear him because was in a world of my own - our own. He looked up at me with his big green eyes and a smile spread across his yolk and albumen stained face.