ORIGIN

His tail twitched, the feather-scaled tuft at the tip catching the wind. The tip covered a thorn, and more spines covered his body, and he had saber fangs, and wicked horns, and claws, and so why was he listening to all of this..?

He dangled, leopard-like, along the thick branch--only a few feet off the ground, but he lazed there with mild irritation. He knew Ayr, a little; and Dip, too. He hadn't really spoken to them much, but in passing, at least, here and there. Ayr was kind--and, living in Eridanus, he'd met her a few more times. She was quite tolerable, even for his limited attention span and limited patience. With others, he'd have often left before a conversation was quite complete, by their standards. But Ayr... she had a calming presence about her, so even with the tang of alcohol striking his nostrils from below, he didn't leave. Well--not yet.

"It's not fair," he complained, his voice a plaintive yowl.

Whatever they'd been discussing before, Shango was changing topic. It was the third time he'd brought it up, in fact.

"She'll have a baby, but I won't." And he lowered his head to run a raspy tongue over his bird-clawed forelimbs in thought, as if they were cat's paws in his mind.

It made no sense, if one had any logic to speak of; his daughter was giving life to a stone, so surely he should have been happy to help, soon, raise a grandchild. But instead he found that he missed--fiercely--having children of his own. "I remember-..." and he looked out, blinking into the jungle. "I had my wings up. Like this." (Scalefeathered wings lifted, as if to demonstrate.) "And the rain came down, but it didn't hit them. Because I held my wings over them," he explained, his voice softening to something almost fond.

A gentle rain began to fall, as if summoned--which it had been; a drizzle, the light clouding over gray.

He'd protected them--Ivory and Shida both--guarding them from the inclement weather, even when he himself had caused it. Trying, even, to teach them to control it, though neither of them ever had.

So now, despite the two below trying to be social, friendly, all Shango did was complain. And stare off into the wet as it began to bead on the leaves, wistful.

After a long day of work, Serendipity liked to piss off to Eridanus and drink from Attikias's Forgotten Secret Alcohol Stash. She liked the warmth of the drink, the sweetness and the sourness of fermentation, and the comfortable sleep it drew her into later. It was better with company, and although she knew a little of Shango, she knew very little of Ayr.

"You want some?" She'd offered the drink, but the unicorn politely shook her head-- and with the dawning realisation that talking to someone so... polite, and gentle, and otherworldy was difficult, her gaze drifted to the hybrid above.

Golden eyes squinted in the rain. "You've got two babies, don't you?" Dip asked, albeit good-naturedly. Sure, Shango's kids were technically adults, but he wasn't the only one with children. Serendipity's daughter, although also an adult, was stilll Dip's baby in her books. Even if Shiloh was threatening to grow taller than her mom.

She took a swig, neck craning back. The cool water felt good, especially after working in the forge. "Maybe you can baby your kid's baby, anyway."

Long, pale eyelashes blinked the rain away. Ayr liked Shango and Serendipity though she was more of a listener than a talker. Many of her days consisted of quietly wandering Eridanus looking for fruit to eat without bumping into many visitors, though when they did arrive, she welcomed them quietly.

She wasn't too much of a fan of the humanoid's strange, sour drink, however. Her attention, too, drifted towards Shango lounging above, and the unicorn found her heart aching a little. "Everyone grows up," she told Dip gently. "Even parents can't coddle their children forever."

Many children had came and went. Ayr and her mate, Elspet, took care of them, from time to time. Ayr in particular had liked Attikias's children-- all unique in their own ways, all spirited and good-natured. They were a pleasure to have around the den. She knew, in a sense, what Shango was experiencing.

"That's sweet," she smiled up at Shango-- as much as she could. "You could certainly do the same for Ivory's child. Ahh, have you considered having another child, regardless?"

Shango's unease--not fear, not anxiety, but just general and distant unhappiness--lifted him at last from his paws and claws and from the branch below.

He pushed up, hopped down, dropping into the now-damp dirt near Ayr, pacing close by only to stop again and stare out at the drizzle, tail-tip twitching.

"I have two!" he confirmed, but he gave Dip only a half-glance, distracted. The vague urge to murmur something about a "storm" came and went, and he exhaled in a huff. "Ivory is one. Big. White. She came from a stone," he informed them, and then blinked ghostlight eyes as even he realized how foolish that sounded. "...A pink one." There; that surely clarified things. "And there is Shida. She looks like me. No wings. She came from a green stone." For whatever reason, Shango sounded satisfied of this--or proud of it?--as he stared out.

Then he looked back at them. "I would make more! But I have no stones," he complained.

He could... look for them, he supposed. He squinted, staring into the middle distance--he hadn't thought of that.

He looked back, studying Ayr's horn for a moment, and then figured the polite thing to do was to continue the conversation. He still wasn't eloquent, or even particularly socially experienced, but he'd come a long way from the half-feral creature he once had been. So he did try--bless him--even though his effort at give-and-take was... clumsy, at best.

"Do you have babies?" he asked, his voice still that yowling meow.

It wasn't clear which of them he was addressing.

"I've got one," offered Serendipity, who absolutely did not know who Shango was referring to. The alcohol removed whatever social anxiety might have stopped her from answering anyway-- and if Ayr wanted to answer too, then she could. "Her name's Shiloh. She has hands."

A little flicker of pride. She loved Shiloh, though she didn't see the appeal of wanting more kids. Even Shiloh had just been an accident-- she didn't understand why Attikias had to have... ten? More? Fucking hell, she thought, bringing the bottle to her lips.

"Shiloh's a lot," Dip went on. "And I don't really have it in me to raise another kid or whatever-- but I can give you a bit of my rock, if you want. It keeps getting in the way..."

She was worried about accidentally hammering it and shattering it, one day-- which would probably happen if she kept drinking.

Ayr listened attentively-- only passing a glance to lounging Serendipity, who smelled of that strange drink. "Are they nice?" She pressed Shango, gently, for no purpose other than he seemed to genuinely enjoy talking about his children.

"Ahh, I have... none," the unicorn said. "Elspet and I have taken care of a lot of children in the past, ahh, but they all fly from the nest eventually. I'd like one of my own, admittedly."

Like what Attikias had. A family. Was that... envy, she felt? The Elenyas were so very closely-knit, they didn't seem to go anywhere without the whole family knowing. They slept around each other, ate with each other-- did everything together. Ayr wanted that, too.

It'd been... hm. Not lonely, perhaps-- not with all the life around her, but perhaps it would fill the empty space lingering in her heart.

'Her name's Shiloh. She has hands.'

Shango could not--now or at any point in the future--have explained exactly why this statement flatlined his brain completely. Perhaps it was how unrelated it seemed to... well, to just about anything, really. Or maybe it was the fact that he'd stopped, trying to picture hands, to imagine them, despite Dip quite literally holding two in front of him as she carried her booze about.

Regardless, at the mention of hands, he went still and stared into the middle distance again for quite some time... processing it.

A blink, a shake of his mane and--Ayr was talking, now, and Shango struggled to catch up.

-Dip had offered him a bit of stone? Funny, how that had somehow come second to him trying to figure out the mention of hands, but there it was. He blinked. "Okay," he answered, a litlte too easy to convince. Apparently, starting a new family was completely casual for him, and he saw nothing wrong with this. He was a loving father, at least. If... a slightly incompetent one.

And then--as if puzzled, or concerned--"Will it have hands?"

Ayr, though--she wanted a kid, too? He peered at her, for a moment. "You can have my rock?" he said, bluntly; "But I want to know the child!" At least, a little. He wanted to visit them. More kids was better, in his eyes.

Part of it, though he'd not told (and would not tell) either of them, came from a deep and buried sorrow.

A long time ago, Shango had given life to an Aquamarine gemstone. It had been at the same time as the pearl and the peridot that had formed Ivory and Shida, but the Aquamarine hadn't ever hatched. He'd had other stones (and it occurred to him that he should probably find those, too); but he'd waited on that Aquamarine. He'd watched over it, guarded it, checked it religiously. He'd come back to it again and again--and it had grown; but it had never hatched.

Eventually, he'd begun visiting it less and less often.

And in the end, he'd lost where he'd left it altogether.

It had left him with an aching sense of loss: the child he'd made wouldn't ever hatch, and he still, in some sense, mourned it. So as he eyed Ayr, he didn't hesitate: if she wanted children... well.

Shango knew that yearning.

He paced to her, magic flickering, and dipped his head; a thin shard of his horns cleaved, cracked, slid off and tumbled into the dirt before her. "Here," he said, his voice a little quieter than usual, his mind off with an abandoned, forgotten, slumbering blue stone that probably would never wake.

When Serendipity woke up the next day, it'd likely be in a cold sweat upon realising the amount of responsibility she had dumped onto Shango's shoulders. Drunk Serendipity did not factor this in; she saw someone who needed aid, and she had a way to help.

And, it made her hand more flexible. In a smooth movement, a good chunk of yellow-gold stone was cleaved from her palm, leaving behind a smoother, thinner strip of quartz. "Probably," the humanoid answered as she pushed the shard over to Shango. "Attikias has a bunch of kids and they all have hands because he does."

You know. Logic.

Dip spent a moment clenching and unclenching her fist, stretching out muscles further than they'd been able to go before, with some satisfaction. "Just take it back to your den so you can keep an eye on it."

Serendipity and Shango were rushing into it. Before Ayr had time to think about it properly, there were two stones on the grass and Shango was offering his own to her. "Ahh..." she sounded, though couldn't find it in her heart to directly say no. "Thank you," she smiled, instead.

The humanoid had given her an excuse not to revive it right then and there, at least. "That's a good idea," the unicorn said, one cloven hoof carefully pulling the slither of stone towards herself. It'd give her some time, as she returned to her den, to think it over and speak to Elspet.

Ahh, but there was some excitement in her belly. She wondered what kind of creature would come from it-- someone like her, with iridescent wings, perhaps? A slender, white cat with sharp eyes and shining fur? Ayr's neck bent as her nose touched the rock for a moment, reveling in the thought of what the child might look like.

It might be best to take it with her to the alcove now. Was there a time limit on these little shards...? "I think I'll head home," she said, slender legs unfolding and pushing up. She took the stone carefully between her teeth. "Thank you again, Shango-- bring your new child over, sometime, too?""

"I will bring them. We should all meet. Cubs play," he explained, already imagining it: Ivory's child, and both of these, all playing together in the forest.

It sounded nice. Shango pictured himself, too: lounging in a branch overhead, guarding them indulgently. Maybe Dip was somewhere drinking, and Ivory and Ayr talking...

That would be nice.

Magic flickered out, even though Dip had given her warning, and Shango looked up--her stone just taken in his teeth, his eyes wide with alarm.

Hell; it would root, now, wouldn't it?! He turned, springing away, rushing for his den as fast as he could go.

He didn't make it, of course. The stone was swelling with magic, threatening to root to whatever it could reach, and he had to hastily stop and put it down. It was as much as he could do to hide it between the protective roots of a large tree, right up against the trunk.

He covered it with careful leaf litter as it twined its way down into the wood and rock below, and trotted back to the other two, alarmed.

"It's already growing," he told them, both pleased and panicked all in one. What had, mere moments ago, only been possibility was suddenly a reality, and Shango abruptly didn't know what to do.

Despite the fact that he'd done it all before.