The Farming Saint in the Starry Wasteland (Elizabeth Schofield) novel Chapter 500

Chapter 500 Hunting for Eggs

Desmond moved next, and Melton shoved his holopad into his pocket and waded in night after him.

Rocket lowered himself into a crouch without a word, spreading the grass apart with those broad, capable hands of his, his movements clumsy but earnest and thorough.

Felix and Sharpie traded a look, then both dropped down and got to work.

Olivia was the only one still standing, wearing the expression of someone whose entire understanding of the world had just tilted slightly sideways.

She’d hunted Cluckoo Chickens before. Slaughtered them, eaten them. But the thought of searching for their eggs had simply never once crossed her mind.

In her entire life, eggs had come from a refrigerated case at the grocery store, stacked neatly in a carton with a price tag and a sell- by date printed on the side.

The idea that you could just find them in the grass had never entered her reality.

“Clara,” she said, turning to look at her. “Have you ever found eggs in the wild before?”

Clara shook her head.

Neither had she.

They were mercenaries. Catching Cluckoo Chickens was already pushing the boundaries of their job description, let alone foraging for their eggs in the middle of a meadow.

Elizabeth’s voice rang out from somewhere ahead, bright and entirely delighted. “Yes! Found another one! A whole clutch!”

She parted a dense clump of grass to reveal a shallow, sun-warmed hollow lined with dry grass and soft downy feathers, and nestled inside it, arranged with the quiet, instinctive tidiness of something natural and ancient, sat six perfect eggs.

She gathered them one by one with the reverent care of someone handling something genuinely precious, cradling them close against her palms.

That was all it took for Olivia.

She crossed the distance at a near-sprint, dropped down beside Elizabeth, and pressed her fingers gently into the little nest.

The dry grass was soft beneath her touch, and the feathers were warm, still holding the faint, fading heat of the hen that had woven

them there.

“I want to find some!” She shoved her sleeves up to the elbow and plunged both hands into the nearest clump of grass.

Tyson’s voice carried from the other side of the meadow. “Got some!”

He held up his hand, three speckled eggs balanced between his fingers.

Olivia whipped around and stared at him with naked, unguarded envy.

“How does everyone else keep finding them before me…”

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round and sold and he went very still for a moment before carefully, slowly peeling the grass

fucked in the hollow beneath, quiet and gleaming like three small, perfect stones.

them out with extraordinary care and sat for a long moment simply looking at them to his open palms.

“Found some” he said, his voice entirely level, but the corner of his mouth had curved upward in a way he clearly hadn’t intended.

Olivia scrambled over and peered at his find, and the urgency in her expression jumped several degrees.

“How is everyone finding them except me?” She attacked the grass with both hands, half-ready to overturn the entire meadow if

that’s what it took

Elizabeth laughed from nearby. “Take a breath! The eggs aren’t going anywhere.”

The words had barely landed when Olivia’s fingers struck something.

Her heart lurched. She slowed down, eased the grass apart with exaggerated, trembling delicacy, one blade at a time.

One egg. Two, Three, Four. Four eggs arranged in a tidy cluster, the largest one bigger around than her closed fist.

“I found them!” Her voice cracked clean through on the last syllable./”Four of them! I found four!”

She gathered them up with two-handed, breathless precision, two eggs cradled in each palm, and held them up to examine them from every possible angle.

The shells were faintly fuzzy with the finest down, warm to the touch, carrying the faintest, wild, earthy scent.

“They’re beautiful,” she breathed. “Even prettier than the ones in the store.”

They were objectively just eggs, the same as any other. But she’d found them herself, with her own two hands, and that made them something else entirely.

Clara watched her and laughed, warm and helpless, before crouching down to join the search herself.

Her left arm was still unreliable, so she worked with her right hand only, sweeping the grass aside in slow, one-handed arcs.

A few clumps. Nothing. A few more. Still nothing.

A thread of restless impatience wound through her chest, and she pressed deeper into the thicker, more sheltered grass.

“Watch your step,” Elizabeth called from behind her. “Don’t crush any.”

Clara slowed her pace, bent low, eyes fixed on the ground.

The grass was dense and tall enough to block her sightline, so she relied entirely on touch, parting each clump with careful, searching fingers.

One clump, Empty. Another. Empty.

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Anofter, and her fingers found something

Her heartbeat skipped hall a beat. She drew the grass aside, slow and steady.

Two eggs, one large, one small, the larger shell a deep and saturated blue-green, the smaller one pale as morning mist

She lifted them with great gentleness, the big one nestled against her right palm, the little one resting in the curve of her other

hand.

The shells were smooth and cool and fine-grained, with the quiet, dense solidity of polished jade.

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