The Place
The Hissing Roost is a bare cliff face 800 m high on the eastern escarpment, and the cliff is studded with a hundred eggs. The eggs are the size of a man's body, and each one is set in a niche cut in the bare stone, and the niches run in three rows down the face. The stone of the cliff is grey and bare, and the grey breaks where the eggs sit, and the break is the roost's only color. The grey of the cliff is the roost's only ground, and the ground is where the clutch is kept.
The eggs are pale red-gold at the seam, and the seam glows when the clutch stirs, and the glow is the roost's only light. The red of the seam is the clutch's fire, and the fire is what the eggs keep in the stone. The air on the face is thick with the hiss of the Cockatrices and the smell of hot stone and old threat. A spring runs behind the cliff, and the water seeps out in the niches and keeps the eggs from cracking in the cold, and the seeping is the roost's way of keeping the clutch. The top of the face, where the oldest egg sits, is called the First Niche, and no hand has ever touched it, and the not-touching is the brood's way of keeping the promise. The cliff does not echo the hiss, because the stone takes the sound in and holds it, so the roost sounds like a place that is thinking. At dusk the grey of the cliff turns blue where the light leaves it, and the blue is the roost's way of saying the day is done. This is the nest of the clutch, and the clutch is the roost's only promise.
How They Live
The Cockatrices keep the roost in the cliff, and the roost is not a house but a clutch, and the clutch is kept in the stone. The mothers do not build, because the niches were cut before the current brood, and the brood only keeps them, and the keeping is the brood's only work. The niches were cut by the first brood, and the cutting is the roost's only building, and the building is what the stone keeps. Food comes from the cliff's edge: the small game that the Cockatrices take on the wind, and the spring-water that is drawn at the seep. The game is taken at the dawn, when the wind is thin, and the taking at the dawn is the brood's way of keeping the hunger. In the summer the eggs are turned in the niches, and the turning is the brood's way of keeping the clutch. In the winter the seep freezes at the rim of the niche, and the freezing is the roost's way of saying the cold is kept.
Light comes from the seam of the eggs, which glows pale red-gold when the clutch stirs, and the glow is the roost's only lamp. The defense is the clutch, and a visitor who stands on the face is already inside the threat, and the threat is the alarm, the welcome, and the sentence. The day is measured by the clutch, and the clutch is also the calendar, because the roost is the only clock the promise needs. The rite of the roost is the turning: when an egg stirs for the first time, the whole face hisses once, and the hiss is the brood's way of saying the promise is kept, and the keeping is the roost's only word.
People
Home of the Cockatrices, whose roosts are counted by egg, and the brood numbers in the hundreds of heads that keep the hundred eggs. The oldest mother holds the First Niche, and rank on the face is decided by the age of the egg one keeps, and the keeping is the brood's only rank. No wing is welcome on the face but the cockatrice's, because the birds that come for the eggs do not come back, and the not-coming-back is the roost's way of keeping the clutch. A cliff-climber who has passed the face once calls it the thinking stone, and he says the hiss there is not anger but the sound of a promise being kept, and he says the grey of the cliff there is the only ground that keeps its word.
In Stories
The place where the clutch is the only honest promise, and the promise is the threat, and the threat is the egg, and the egg is the end. Uaellaen passed the face in the second year, and the whole roost hissed at his name. He did not stop, and the eggs did not crack.