Even after Teru had washed his hands twice - with soap - the dust from the old photos remained.  He smiled and absently rubbed his fingertips against his palm.  He still had to put the photographs back in their plastic bags and return the bags into storage boxes and stow the boxes into the cupboard... but he sat on the corner of the bed with the mess sprawled out behind him and looked out of the window.

 

The mountains were lush and verdant after weeks of rain.  They reminded him of Annh and his upcoming visit to Song Yan.  Must he go?  A finder like him reduced to taking an airplane when he had raised a perfectly good plant that produced perfectly good leaves he could fly on?  Oh yes, he couldn't fly.  And oh, his sister and her ... friend ... had offered to take the airplane with him.  It was a generous offer.  He sighed.

 

The birds had come home to roost.  They were spectacularly noisy at this time of day, as if cackling about their conquests, boasting boisterously about the insects they had caught or the cats they had successfully evaded.  Teru shut the window, blocking off their cacophonous cries.

 

He returned to his bed and picked up a handful of photographs (he would have to wash his hands again).  The first one was a close-up of Cria as a fledgling standing inside her shell.  She had hatched a few days before and was getting used to life outside of it.  She would take a few steps out of it before running and jumping back into it.  Eventually, she cracked the thing and started wailing as she tried to put the pieces back together.  Orla (Mother) had been away from the nest at that exact moment and Teru had been the only one old enough to know what to do: offer his own eggshell to Cria and persuade her to stay put inside it instead of running in and out of it.  He had successfully coaxed her into the eggshell and put a heating mat under her feet to simulate life inside an egg before hatching.  Cria had stayed in her new "egg" for another two days until she had had enough and left it forever.  Teru's egg was still in Orla's nest in Song Yan along with the fragments of Cria's egg.  Teru seemed to remember that his sister had put her eggshell parts in his own eggshell.  Meaningless, really, since the feathered only kept them as mementoes; there was no practical use for them after hatching.  Some people went so far as to painting them.  Teru didn't see the point.

 

The second photograph...