Why the Eagle Swallowed the Quail

“How dare you leave me? This sort of thing is a problem.”

On his seventh birthday, Kiliyan sneaks out of the banquet hall and happens to pick up an egg that is about to hatch.

A quail in a raptor’s habitat? He brings home the feeble-looking thing and plans to raise it a little before sending it away, but why can’t it fly? Are you even a bird?

The quail, never understanding the troubles of the one raising it, only keeps following the beautiful Kiliyan because it has fallen for him.

The two spend many years together. Can Kiliyan really let the quail go?

[Preview]

Kiliyan, who had gotten up after taking his eyes off the pebble, hurriedly tried to move away. If he got caught, he would surely be dragged back to the banquet hall. But his feet could not move forward and were pinned in place. The pebble had rolled over and stopped at his feet.

“What is this?”

A moving stone was enough to give him a little interest on an otherwise boring day.

“Hm.”

Though frowning, he sat back down on his cloak. Then he picked up the smooth pebble and inspected it from all sides. Was it magic? Among the invited guests today, there was a mage or two.

The pebble began to crack when he rubbed it with his thumb. He felt movement inside the stone. It reminded him of a fairy tale from some distant kingdom, about rubbing a teacup and having a fairy come out.

Crack—!

With the usual cracking sound that comes when an egg breaks, the stone split open. Since it was small, the sound was small too. Kiliyan knew this process well. It was the hatching of a chick from an egg.

So this tiny thing that looked like a pebble was actually a real bird egg. Frowning at the egg, whose shell was even thinner than expected, Kiliyan muttered.

“Peep...”

From the broken egg came a tiny sound so faint that you would have to listen carefully to hear it. Soon, what emerged from the fully broken shell was a newly hatched bird that had not even opened its eyes yet.

“Huh?”

“Peep...”