As a fletchinder, Charlie knew he was different. An outsider. A bird in a place where birds couldn’t usually survive; an island so cold, so harsh that, even with an inner flame, he found it uncomfortable at times. Especially during blizzard season. He hated blizzard season. 

Every season was blizzard season.

But it was home. He was home. His friends were here, his father was here. And even though he wasn’t the same species as him, even though he hadn’t seen another of the fletchinder line his entire life, it was okay. Things were great. Life was good.

Charlie went cross-eyed as a fat snowflake landed on his beak; he sneezed, the pressure sending a sharp twinge through his sinuses due to the biting cold. Scrapping at his beak with his talons didn't help, but at the very least it made him feel like it did. His inner fire could only do so much when it snowed for the vast majority of the year.

"Oof, Charlie, that sounded painful!" 

He turned to glare through the snowfall at his weavile friend, Lexi. Despite the context of her words, she sounded less empathetic and more amused.

"Thanks," Charlie deadpanned, sniffling due to his blocked sinuses. "Your worry is greatly appreciated."

The weavile beamed. "You're welcome!"

Luckily, she wasn't his only friend there. 

"Is your stomach feeling better?" Lance asked, tilting his white, vulpine head. He pawed at the snow, ears low. "You were complaining quite a lot yesterday..."

Charlie grimaced. He wasn't feeling better. If anything, he felt worse. As if something were twisting around in his insides, cramping up in the worst possible way. Not to mention the bloating. It was horrible. 

He shook his head. "No… I'd wonder if it was something I ate, except I haven't, uh, had any intestinal issues.” He coughed. “I asked my dad and he didn't know what to think either. Has me eating gross berries." He fanned his wings and stuck out his tongue. "Ugh. Hasn't helped at all."

Lance smiled at him. "I hope you feel better, dude." 

He smiled back.

Suddenly, he didn't feel so bad after all. 

Later, when everyone was engaged in an intense game of ‘who can throw the most snowballs’, Charlie’s cramps returned with a vengeance. So much so that he squawked and dropped the snowball he had been holding with his wing. 

His teammate in this two-verses-two game, Lance, rushed over to him. “What’s wrong?! You get hit?”

“C-cramps!” he managed to gasp out as he stood on shaky legs, his insides tightening hard enough to crush a boulder. “They’re back. Pause the game, I need a moment to—”

He couldn’t finish his sentence as he doubled over, falling into the snow and wrapping his wings around himself. The cramp had released for a few seconds, only to return somehow even worse than before. He couldn't speak with how hard he gritted his beak.

Buried in the snow and the cramps only growing in intensity and frequency, Charlie wondered if he was dying. If this was what would do him in. Terror gripped his heart, but even that was washed away as his gut contracted again, the feeling migrating lower and the tension growing. He curled into a ball, hot tears streaking down his beak. It was unbearable. Not even the worst food poisoning he’d experienced could compare. He wanted his dad.

His friends’ muffled voices echoed in the background, distant and weak. 

Soon, the bloatedness he’d been feeling all week shifted along with the cramps. Like a conveyer belt of pressure and sharp, blinding pain, it moved, and the urge to push surprised him with its intensity. He tried to stop the instinct, lest he did something extremely gross and embarrassing in front of his friends, but it was all-encompassing. Insistent. Holding it in... simply wasn’t an option.

And so, whimpering and gasping on the ground, he pushed. It was difficult at first. Impossible, even. Nothing was coming out. It didn’t even feel like what he thought it was, what it had to be, yet he knew there was something in him. Something that needed to come out. What is this? What is happening? Why does it feel so terrible?

Another contraction hit. Every muscle in his body tensed, and he found himself pushing again, only this time he couldn’t stop. The push continued, the tension holding steady, far past the point of exhaustion. Stars speckled his vision. There was the distinctive sensation of his poor cloaca stretching, sending a final, sharp jab through his loins, then…

Schlorp 

His insides quivered, dancing to a tune he could barely hear at the sheer exertion of passing whatever had been inside him. The satisfaction he felt was overpowering, the dull throb deep in his underbelly fading away in a rush of relief.

Panting and feeling only slightly delirious, he opened his eyes; through the haze of exhaustion, he made out the shocked faces of his friends. 

“Am I dying?” he whispered in a daze. He could still feel his cloaca twitching. “I… I feel like I just squeezed out my insides... ”

There was a moment of silence.

“Dude. You just laid an egg.” 

The weavile's worlds didn’t register at first. It was impossible, of course. He wasn’t female. Males couldn’t lay eggs. He glared at his ‘friend’ for making such a poor joke. Or perhaps she was trying to break the tension, because his intestines were splayed out across the snow, or something equally as horrible. It would explain the hollow feeling inside.

“I’m not lying! Look!” Lexi pointed a claw to the snow near his tail feathers. He tried to follow the digit with his head, only for his muscles to protest and for his head to collapse. He shivered with his beak in the snow. 

Gentle paws lifted his head up, and he found himself staring into the worried blue eyes of a vulpix. “Oh gosh, Charlie, are you okay?” Lance asked. He just stared. Of course he wasn’t okay. Lance flushed. “R-right… That seemed really painful. Um, Lexi isn’t lying. Your, uh, your egg is over there in the snow, covered in… stuff.” His friend winced, and inside Charlie was a rapidly growing anxiety. Not that Lance noticed. “I didn’t know males could lay eggs.”

There was a clear accusatory tone in his voice, a stress on the word male that didn’t sit right with Charlie. 

“I didn’t lay… an egg,” Charlie panted out, glaring at what he thought was his best friend. What best friend would go with such a stupid lie? “I’m a boy, all of you know this!”

“Then what’s this?” There was something in Lexi’s paws. Something large. He stared at the impossible object for what felt like an eternity. It was an egg. An honest to Arceus egg. Orange and red, with brown spots sprinkled over its oval surface, it would have been pretty if not for what its existence implied: something had to have laid it. And recently, too, given its wet sheen and the steam rising from its surface. 

My egg, he admitted to himself, his beak falling open in silent awe. I laid that. Me. It was inside my body, and I… pushed it out. But how? I’m not female. Males can’t lay eggs... can they?

His third friend there—or, well, Lexi’s friend—who had remained quiet until now, likely from shock, suddenly cried out, “Ewww, Lexi! Why are you touching that? It’s still dripping with… Charlie goo!”

Lexi glared at the young lapras, and something about that made him feel warm and fuzzy inside. “Our friend is having a crisis right now, Nicky, I had to do something to snap him out of it! And I thought showing him the fruits of his labor would do the trick!”

Despite the circumstances, Charlie found himself groaning at the pun. 

The pain had lessened enough that he was able to stand on shaky legs, though his cloaca and everything within still ached, throbbing like crazy, like he had… forced an egg out of it. 

Shaking his tail feathers, he realized they were soaked. Thoroughly, in fact. Ice crystals were forming, and soon he knew he’d have a frozen crotch. So he increased his body temperature and flash-boiled the scummy fluids clinging to his feathers. 

Sufficiently dry, though still feeling dirty, Charlie stood up straight. “Well. I can say that, without a shadow of doubt, laying an egg sucks.” 

He couldn’t take his eyes off the egg. His egg. Steam rose from its still-warm surface, slick with fluid he did not want to consider the origin of. At least there wasn't any blood… that meant he would be okay, right? It passed smoothly. 

He realized that his breathing was shallow and took a couple deep, satisfying breaths. That was nice. A blanket of calm fell over him. 

“I guess male birds can lay eggs," Charlie concluded, trying desperately to avoid even considering the other explanation. "Weird, but—”

“Actually,” Lexi interrupted, “I think, and don’t get mad at me for suggesting this, but… I think you might be female? Your voice has always been kind of, well, girly?” He glared at her, and she held her claws up in defense. “I’m just saying! I thought that was a bird thing, you know? But now I’m not so sure.”

Charlie squawked with indignation. “What, no! I’m definitely male. I feel male. I was raised male. I’ve even, um, ejaculated.” His cheeks flushed just admitting that, but he had to show that he was absolutely positive. “Just like a male is supposed to!”

“You sure you didn’t just get really wet and squirt?” Lexi suggested, not-so-subtly implying she had done exactly that. Ew. “Tell me how it felt, and what your ‘ejaculation’ looked like. And Lance,” said vulpix squeaked at being brought into this conversation, squeamish as he was about sexual stuff, “tell us if Charlie’s description is accurate.”

All eyes were on Charlie now. Not that they weren’t already, but still. “U-um.” He hoped in place, his backside starting to throb again as whatever had dulled the pain was wearing off. “W-well, I, uh, you know, rubbed myself on something soft until I ejaculated? Felt the orgasm and everything. Was, um, good?” He could feel his feathers fluffing up with embarrassment. Kill me now. “When I was done, my tail feathers were soaked with my seed. I felt it squirt out, too. Like, um, I felt my insides pumping. So I’m definitely male!”

Lance and Nicky looked as mortified as he felt. 

Lexi, however, just just rolled her eyes. “You forgot to mention what this ‘seed’ looks like. What’s yours look like, Lance?”

All eyes were on Lance now. His ears folded back and he let out a whine. “U-um, kind of white? Not like snow, or my fur, but cloudy?”

Charlie’s heart fell. That’s not what mine looks like… Oh no. 

Lexi saw his expression, and instead of smirking like he expected, she actually seemed sympathetic. “Your ‘seed’ is clear, huh?”

Licking his beak, Charlie nodded. 

“Yeah, sorry, dude… you’re female.” The weavile held out the egg. He took a step back. “Don't you want your egg?”

“N-no,” Charlie stuttered out. “It’s… I’ve never had sex, let alone with a m-male, so it’s not fertilized.” Then, like a hyper beam, it hit. He had laid an egg. He could breed. A male could get him pregnant. “Oh, Arceus… This is so weird. Am I just going to keep laying eggs even if I don't have sex? This is so unfair. Being a bird bites."

"How did you not know you are female?" Nicky asked, slapping a flipper on the snow. "I have a cloaca, too, but I know I'm female! That’s no excuse."

Charlie felt himself heat up at hearing a girl talk about her cloaca so brazenly, but then he realized he was a girl too. Somehow, that didn't help his embarrassment. "Your cloaca is different, though," he countered, looking anywhere but the lapras' eyes. Her flippers were nice today. Very flippy. "My dad told me that male birds don't have p-penises. But I have definitely seen lapras with penises." He coughed. Now that was an experience he wished to forget. It was larger than he was. 

Nicky seemed ready to retort, then she closed her mouth. "Oh. Good point." She nervously twitched a flipper in the snow. "Guess that would make it easier. Sorry."

Everyone grew quiet. That was, until Lexi spoke up, "Do you think your dad just guessed?"

Charlie blinked. "Uh, what do you mean?"

"He's a ninetales. Obviously he wouldn't know much about bird pokemon. So he, you know, took a peak when you hatched, couldn't figure it out, and then said you were a boy and hoped he guessed right? I mean, he did have a fifty-fifty chance."

That… made too much sense. His heart fell. Was this all really just the result of an unlucky guess? He didn't want to deal with the implications.
 
Exhausted, he sighed. "My rump hurts, I'm tired, I'm confused; I'm going home." 

Eyes flicking to the egg that Lexi still held, he felt a strange longing. He had made that. It had grown inside him. All that pain, the least he could do was… keep it. Just for a little while. Despite knowing it was fruitless, just a shell and some yolk, he didn't want to leave without it. 

Lexi seemed to understand. "Here," she said, carefully holding out the egg with her claws. Charlie took the egg from her and gently cradled it to his chest with his wings. It was still warm, the layer of… fluid long since dried. "And if you ever need anything, or, you know, need help with girl stuff, I'm here for you." Lexi's eyes twinkled mischievously as she whispered, "We can even talk about boys~"

Charlie choked.