Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #11 February 2015 | Page 44

He had learned well as he grew, learned the value of
patience and being prepared. Sometimes the lessons
had been harsh but he had survived. He shifted his
limbs into a lunging position. Memories came to him
of his life. His first memory was hunger.
Part One – Conception
II
It was a harsh world that greeted Big Meg when he
broke out of the egg that had been his home since his
mother had laid her clutch of thirty just eight months
ago in an abandoned brush turkey nest. The search for
the right nest site had taken over a week. She had been
all but exhausted by the search and she didn’t have
the energy to fight for it. Her suitor had won the right
to mate with her after a long struggle with a rival in a
clearing ringed by small acacias. It had lasted several
hours before the rival had fallen. Blood pooled on the
ground under the rival from deep gashes in his side.
The victor was also injured but none of their wounds
would be fatal, both would recover to battle again for
females and territory.

The winner walked cautiously over to the
Big Meg’s mother who had watched the battle from
the safety of the acacias and stood alongside her. He
outweighed her by a big margin and was several feet
longer. She sniffed him with her tongue and he walked
along the length of her and she felt the roughness of
his body. He turned behind her to walk up along her
opposite flank. This was the main part of the ritual, the
battle with the rival was only the beginning. If he made
the wrong move and pushed too quickly she could
react with a savage bite and leave to find another, perhaps the male who had just lost his right to mate with
her. The male couldn’t let that happen so he moved
carefully. He couldn’t know it but the caution he was
showing would serve one of his progeny well. Finally
she accepted him and they coupled with an almost sensual grace for such big reptiles. Both tasted the air and
the pheromones of each as she allowed him to couple
with her. The mating was brief, no more than a minute
and then he was gone, moving off into the scrub, his
battle and victory already forgotten. She didn’t watch
him leave and left in the other direction away from
the clearing, driven by the need to find a nest. Her

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own need to keep her genes alive in future generations
ruled her now.

Inside her body her hormones and enzymes
had already started working, shifting the flow of nutrients to where they were most needed. The mating
had been successful and now her body was working
on producing the eggs she would soon lay. All of her
food intake would be pressed into that service leaving
her the bare minimum to put on the reserves of muscle
and fat that she would need to survive without food
until her eggs hatched. She ate ravenously and took
anything that came close enough. After a few weeks
her body prompted her to find the place she needed
to lay her eggs preferably something ready-made to
save her the effort of digging one herself so she walked
deeper into the scrub forest, her tongue tasting the air
and leading the way.
Finding a suitable site would not be easy, past experience had shown her that. Even if she found one it
wasn’t a certainty she would be able to keep it. On
many occasions early in her life she had been driven
away by other, larger and more aggressive females
and males who had then eaten what she had gone to
so much effort to lay. Like all Megalania females she
looked for a particular place with denser than normal
scrub that would deter predators that would use her
clutch as food. The nests of brush turkeys were highly prized by Megs and she would drive a nesting pair
away but preferred an abandoned nest to avoid confrontation After a week her tongue brought the news
she was waiting for and she gauged the direction she
needed to travel in. Over there, her instinct told her,
that way. She walked in that direction.
Several hours later she came into a small clearing hidden by the dense scrub she needed. In the middle lay
a nest mound guarded by a female brush turkey who
tried to drive her away. After a few minutes of futile
effort she gave up, leaving her own eggs to their fate.
Big Meg’s mother cleared the sand and leaves from
the mound and ate the eggs that lay at her mercy. The
added protein would be a handy boost to the reserves
that would keep her alive while she guar