Author : TJMoore

Lightning struck her left wingtip sending a twinge all the way down to her ribs. Finally it had begun. She flapped her enormous wings, increased her speed and altitude. She needed a body strike.

It had been twenty rotations since she had mated and the time was right. She could feel the clutch of eggs, dormant and unmoving in her womb, waiting.

Another lance of lightning flashed in the swirling clouds above her and she started her localized spiral up into the maelstrom.

She had never been pregnant before so she was a little nervous. The unknown was always two sided.

Suddenly, a blazing hot arc of static electricity that enveloped her whole body in a corona of blue energy slammed her, causing her to shudder. That was a good one, she thought.

She could feel the energy pooling in her womb as the eggs reacted to the static charge. Some of the eggs would burst and some would char, but a small percentage would transition to the second phase of development and become children.

Unsure of how much energy was required, she circles in the permanent storm getting hit time and again by the ferocious bolts until, finally, unwilling to risk burning another egg, she dove down to the relative calm of the lower stratosphere.

The orange clouds of Jupiter surrounded her like lilies on a pond as she flapped toward a distant flock that was her family, a bluish train of ions trailing after her leaving sparkles in the sky.

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