It’s always rainy up here, which is no good for the house. The walls will rot, things will crawl in. If my daughter changes into a newt, I won’t know what to do. 

The man washed the egg. A white, wet egg. He cradled it wherever he went the way people do before an egg toss. But the man did not plan on tossing this egg. He planned to protect it for reasons he could not understand.