When I was young.

I remember when I was fresh from the clutch. Keldons have the uncanny ability to remember all the way back to the moment their eyetooth first breaks the eggshell. A wise old Keldon will tell a foolish young human that he, in the past five minutes, has forgotten more than the human will ever know. I remember my clutch-mother nuzzling me free of the leathery egg. I remember the heat and the humidity. You drink the air in the low country. I remember my brothers and sisters bleating out the sing-song lyrics of our local dialect.

Keldons are mobile and communicative very early. This why we get a jump on things.

I grew up in the rather drab conditions that are customary in the Low Country. The city there Keldana Glimmer was the first colony established on the world by the early imperial explorers. It was quickly forgotten when settlements in the resource rich north were founded. The low-Keldons are often looked upon as backward. Often times they are, as backward as a super-intelligent being such as a Keldon can be. The early settlers scorned the space trade that left them behind on the southern part of the planet. Most low-Keldons live the way our ancestors did on Keldona four millenia ago.

My eyetooth needed to break the eggshell atmosphere.