ORIGIN

"The mud," she murmured, turning to glance down as she lifted one feathered ankle from the moss. Veil was right about that, at least. She looked back to him. "...I can feel myself breathing," she agreed, though wariness lingered. Not of Veil, no; even his closer presence and oddly sweet breath was met with total neutrality on her part. She was too distracted by the idea that she might not, somehow, be real.

"...We must be real, then. Right?" she asked, hesitating. "Let's, ah--let's try this. Where did you come from? Where have you lived your life, and how long have you been alive? What do you eat?"

Surely, if they both had histories--if they had memories!--then they hadn't just sprung up out of nowhere. And, it struck her, they were good questions to get to know a stranger! She'd have to remember them, for later.

She was trying to ponder the concept of it being dark, and then not-dark; it seemed, to her, that this might have been emergence from a gemstone but she couldn't quite be sure. Veil, however, was moving on to his own questions before she could quite parse this, and she blinked as she tried to find an answer.

Where was I born? she asked herself, blinking as she tried to cast her mind that far back. Her first memory was... yes--falling out of a bright green crystal, right here in Pisces, she thought. There--oh, but it was rude not to speak. "...Here, I think," she said, head tilting a little. "I remember... a pile of shining stones, and a--princess?" She studied Veil, for a moment, her beak clicking softly.

"Are you a Prince?" she decided to ask, half-hopeful. She wasn't quite sure how she'd come to this question, but it seemed like it'd be a nice thing for someone to be; a Prince. It had a nice ring to it? "Veil, the Prince of Void," she mused, and then nodded, a little. That sounded good.

Really, she hadn't come all that far, personality-wise, from her day of hatching--the day she'd seen a platypus and assured it, as her Princess, that she would rescue it. She couldn't remember what had happened next (she'd been only a new hatchling, after all) but her declaration of Veil as a (maybe) Prince was much the same: a flight of whimsical fancy that she had no reason not to state aloud.

Kai considered. She had picked her way fully from the mud, now, and was idly brushing mud from each ankle with the opposite hoof, one at a time, but her gaze lay on Veil. "It," she decided firmly, "can be a Prince, if it wants to." Who was going to stop him-? She'd been Astraea, after all. "Kai is..." (And he had her speaking in third person, now.)

She thought about this. Her mind went back, back to her hatching, when she'd declared the platypus Princess. She hadn't been Prince, nor Princess--no; she saved Princesses. Protected them. "...a Knight," she settled on, pleased. But--a Knight of what?

If Veil was Prince of the Void, then what did that make her Knight of..?

"Hmm." Emerald eyes picked over the moss, the waters, the plant. "Princess of Pisces" might've had a nice ring to it, but she'd decided on Knight, hadn't she? "The Knight of Flowers," she decided, after thinking it over.

Owlish gaze returned to Veil. "Princess and Princesses are... good, mostly." Let it be said that Kai had no idea. Her imagination was now running wild, and she went with it; guesses became facts, hopes became reality, dreams were given as utter truth. "Some of them can be very dangerous, but most of them need help with things. And Knights help them." She pondered. "Veil is Prince of the Void, so that means that the Void belongs to him, and he has a power over dark things and shadows."

"And Kai is Knight of Flowers, so... the flowers answer to her," she went on, looking down at her hooves. Around them, flowers blossomed up as if on command: the lightest touch of her magic brought pink petals sprouting all around her legs. Pleased, surprised--and a little alarmed--she looked at Veil. "Does the Prince of Void need help from the Knight of Flowers?" she asked, feeling very self-important, now.