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Katalina reached out and caught his arm lightly. "First, 'soon' means 'in the next few days'. So we're in no hurry. Second, I'm sure he wouldn't have told me to tell you if he hadn't expected us both to be there. Third, it's this way." Laughing a little, she struck off in another direction after letting go of his arm. "From what I could tell, Kra was very excited. He's been waiting a long time for this," she said idly as she swam. "It'll be good for him, to know he's not all alone anymore."

Katalina, moving along quickly despite her claim that they were in no hurry, smiled over her shoulder at him. "He'll be able to see them through the skins on the eggs, he said. That will be his signal that they're getting ready to hatch. If they hatch when we're not there, he'll send a messenger to let us know, I guess. We'd probably make it in time to see at least one or two, and even if we didn't, it's a rare creature that gets to meet a baby kraken, so it would still be pretty special."

She watched the beach start to vanish and smiled to herself. Joshua seemed to be greatly overestimating the amount of time needed to get there.

Katalina only chuckled. "Not a problem," she assured him. "He would probably send a fish or some sort of creature that wouldn't mind coming to visit us - something that doesn't usually live around there so that we'd know it when we saw it. I don't know which gender usually does the baby-raising, and I don't know about the knowledge thing. I assume Kra would have to teach them at least a few things about this new world they'll be living in before they took off."

With a little shrug, she sped up in the water and said, "Well, you'll be able to ask him yourself soon. It looks like he shortened the trip for us again."

"There you are," Kra's voice rumbled pleasantly as he stirred. "I assume you brought your boy, Sorry?"

Katalina smiled. "That I did. He couldn't bear being left behind," she told him as she sank towards the nest. The boulder that had covered it before now lay off to the side, and the nest was fully exposed. She could see from here that the layer of 'jelly' in the eggs was nearly gone, and inside them, she could see the forms of many-armed creatures. "How many are there going to be?" she asked brightly.

Kra's big eyes seemed to smile. "Many. Not one dud, I believe."

Katalina gestured to Joshua to come down. Come see this! It's amazing! she thought at him.

"You can," Kra explained in an absent sort of way as he watched the eggs, "because the eggs are no more than a thin skin, really. I have most likely already mentioned that, but humour an old man and his excitement," he added with a twinkle of humour.

Katalina went closer still, being careful that she was out of range of the eggs, just in case.

Still, Kra cautioned them both, "Be careful. They will come out of the eggs at that size, and a few of them may be hungry. They won't know any better." Katalina grinned at Joshua. So no getting too close, she teased, the brightness in her voice giving it an added lilt.

Katalina grinned back cheerfully. Good. Glad to know we don't need to lecture you. Then she turned back to the eggs as well, fascinated. She, like Kra, had been waiting for decades for this.

Kra continued watching the eggs. "They will break it. The skin is not nutritious," he replied blandly. "As you will be able to see for yourself in just a moment or two. Look at that back one."

Katalina immediately turned to look at aforementioned back one, and her eyes widened. The skin of the egg was actually clinging to the perfectly formed baby kraken. 'Baby' seemed an odd word for the creature, seeing as it was roughly the size of an average dolphin. The skin of the egg began to tear as she watched. Wow, she breathed silently.

The creature squirmed out of the clear skin that now lay like a giant garbage bag on the ground. It turned wide eyes on Joshua and Katalina briefly before looking up - and up...and up at Kra. It waved its arms at him in something that looked like a greeting, and gave a low chirrup.

Once the baby kraken was totally out of its egg, it was obvious that it wasn't just a miniature adult. It was softer-looking and its skin had a fresher sheen to it. It also seemed to have much less muscle in the arms that it was now waving at Katalina and Joshua. Even as it dragged itself slowly out of the nest, others were hatching to join it.

Kra watched the babies breaking out of their skins with a quiet, unmistakable pride, which made Katalina smile. He'd been waiting two hundred years for companionship, and now he had it. Knowing how old he was, though, she could only hope he would have time to watch them grow to full maturity.