ORIGIN

Where the river frothed white down little falls and over stones, a strange rock stood out. It matched that bubbly white--streaked clear, a little dark with wet; it was unlike the darker terrain around it. It had been growing in the river's fork for some time, but it wasn't all that large, or noticeable: a cotton fluff in clouds, white in white.

Now, the water coursing over its fine cracks in rivulets, it was shattering--time and maturity thinning it to glass. It was not like an egg, with a crack and a hole to push through--when it gave, the entirety of the chrysalis collapsed. Its liquid flooded out, and with it, the equally cotton-like ball of fur that had lain within.

It was... a rude awakening. A quiet squeak, as her pale eyes snapped open, only to be filled with cold water. She gasped, choked-... tumbled downstream. Before she could process what was happening--process awareness, even her own existence or discomfort--the water tossed her up into the shallows. Momentum and the wash of current rolled her out and onto pebbles, wet moss, and she flailed her new body instinctively but with nothing more than clumsy confusion.

First impressions were all that she had.

Cold. The word came to her. Wet. She was heavy as she tried to pull her tiny body farther from the frightening waters, the power that had so easily swept her away. She was lucky it had brought her straight to safety, but she was unaware.

The white baby rabbit took two quick hops up into the grass, and stopped, looking around and cowering down as she saw the breadth of the world around her. She blinked against the bright light. She looked out at the trees, in one direction--the mountains, an unfathomable gray tower, in the other. Ananke didn't know what any of this was; she only knew that it was... a lot, and overwhelming.

A tiny mouth and nose worked for a moment, spitting and coughing water, sneezing a couple times. Then she curled down again, nestled into the grass--white on green, and blindingly obvious. She didn't know what to do--who she was, where she was, why. She knew she was a little afraid, so she squeaked out the first word that she could call up, in a soft and tremulous voice: "...H.. help?"

Ananke was simply too new to recognize her danger, at first: the voice, somehow majestic and fitting to the room of carpet meadow and gurgling stream (as if it belonged to it) drew her around in a startled single hop. But she regarded Morpho with a surprised upward stare, her nose working instinctively to catch a scent. All she could smell, though, was the odor of her own chrysalis, and the water of the stream.

She shivered and cowered down, wet, and as she tried to parse the words that the stranger had said, she began to realize fear. It was an instinct, too: a trickling cold not unlike the water running down her back. Big thing, spiky thing, thing that could eat her. But-... It said it wouldn't. So that was okay, right-?

"Ookay," she parroted softly, blinking over-large eyes up at the mantis. -Talk of oversized eyes-! She wasn't sure which one to focus on, so she looked between them both.

Ananke's mind, supplying words a few at a time, could find nothing in its instinctive memory for what Morpho was. It was-... beautiful; but it was... moss, and tree, and moving and speaking. "Are..." Hesitation, and the little voice was distinctly soft and as tiny as its owner: "...you... the--f-forest?" she tried, struggling for each word.

She stared up in awe.

When the fluff of fungus was offered, she was... hesitant. But the promises of family, of belonging, were a lure she couldn't refuse, a whisper in her ear.

It stank. It smelled rotten. But she nibbled at it, politely: and she felt, at once, the flood of something wonderful. Then it faded, and the two Gembound parted ways--but that feeling would return, given time.