In the alleyway, a tall, silvered figure moves slowly through the haze, like something glimpsed in dream, its smooth, high-domed head gleaming like a mottled egg, its torso smooth, sexless, veined like polished marble.
Inside the nest were four mottled white eggs, about the size of footballs.
Baselton found himself looking down into a nest with four mottled white eggs, and two young babies that looked for all the world like scrawny oversized turkeys.
A clutch of ten monstrous, mottled eggs, their shells moving spasmodically as the fledglings within tapped their way out.
Wagers were being made and taken even as Ramoth produced her ninth mottled egg.
Both subspecies nest in pairs or loose colonies on offshore islands, making a cup of grasses and sticks in an exposed position, and laying two or three mottled brown eggs.
With backward glances at the circles of mottled eggs, the two apprentices reluctantly went back to work.
But sure enough, they could really spy on the mottled eggs as they lay maturing on the mist-heated sands.
Two things happened at once: she nearly stepped into a large hollow that was occupied by a number of pale, mottled eggs, and something dove at her, its claws just missing her head.
To relieve her maternal anxiety, however, she snaked her head out across the circle of mottled, glowing eggs, looking all around the cavern, flicking her forked tongue in and out.