ORIGIN

Dragon had heard the quiet crack of gemstone, the familiar sound bringing his head lifting from the muck. In silence he listened, but through the murk he heard little else.

A sweep of muscled tail sent him into an advance up the water channels that would wind him from the black Heart up toward the muddy terrain farther from the center of the room; toward the pines, the forest of the Groves.

His senses stretched out before him: the scents the mingled odors of mud and carrion and pine; the sounds, the haunting calls of Cetus's birds entwined with the constant rattling of the insects here. Vision was limited by the shifting fog, and magic-? What would that show him?

The scar-backed alligator cast out his magic, seeking a new heartbeat, a new pulse; a new being birthed into the swamp. Distant red shapes filled his vision and he slowed, the marsh bubbling here and there around him as he floated in silence. He picked out shapes one by one, discarding them from his attention: this one was nothing but a cave deer, that a flock of birds, and so forth. When at last he spotted the cub, it was with bolstering interest: there were few freshly-hatched Gembounds quite so large, with such promise of immense size at their adulthood. At least, as best he could gauge; certainly such things seemed to vary widely. He himself had been a mere handful at his hatching, and look at him now!

Dragon began his swim again, swifter now, angling through the silt-stained waters for the stranger. He called out, as he drew closer (for he didn't intend to frighten the child, if that's even what it was--if his senses had informed him correctly). He wanted to greet it, instead: to welcome it to the world. To aid it. All else aside, the alligator had always valued children.

"Was that a hatching that I hear-?" he called out, his voice rumbling but friendly. And now there was a shape in the distance, visible here and there through the mist, something tawny and feline. Dragon slowed, rising to be more visible so as to give less an impression of the lurking predator and more that of an open greeting. "Ahhh, there you are. I am Dragon!" he offered, and after a brief pause, "Are you new, child? -Do you have a name?"

Haides. He rolled the sound around in his mind for a moment, memorizing it even as he studied the new countenance before him: young, a light brown, streaked with mud and shining with earnesty.

"Good to meet you!" Dragon responded, his booming voice now cheerful. "It is good to meet a polite new child, and rare too," he observed, swimming a little closer. "Half of the fresh spawn either cannot speak or have no concept of manners!" Amusement died down a little as he went on, his dark eyes shifting over the lion cub's form.

"I have lived here a very long time, and I imagine you might have questions. If you do not, you should! But I offer to answer them for you, Haides, and freely--which is more than many will offer you. You have hatched into the caves, and they can be dangerous, at times, in places."

The old alligator paused, his slow momentum taking him into a bump against the muddy shore. Slowly he hauled himself out, into the sucking mud and the half-flattened reeds, until he lay half on land and half in the water; and there he rested.

"But perhaps I can give you a head start, hmm?"

The cub's earnest questions, coupled with the endearing gesture of paw swiping face, settled Dragon deeper into the muck with a warm feeling in his chest. He'd always had a soft spot for children; he'd raised a good number of orphans (so to speak) whom he'd found wandering the swamp, and he'd hatched and guarded his own, as well. It was perhaps instinct to some extent: the old alligator was very liable to come running to any child that he heard, and to protect them as best he could.

And Haides? Haides was adorable already: innocent and, again, earnest. Dragon waited with a sense of warm patience for the cub to finish speaking, an air of grandfatherly indulgence about him, and when he spoke it was kindly and unhurriedly. Granted, his voice was the bass rumble of a massive reptile, but his tone was unthreatening, at least. "Well! As for the caves," he began--and he was careful not to speak too fast, to overwhelm the cub--"They are a series of... hmm... large, open rooms, all surrounded by rock. I think there are other things outside the caves, but no one I know has ever seen them! I imagine they are our home," he mused, and didn't voice the rest of what would undoubtedly be more philosophical thoughts: would Gembounds ever find their way free? Had they originated from somewhere else entirely? Practically speaking--yes, this was home; and so the old alligator continued.

"This cave is called Cetus! It is full of black water and mud and fog, and it is my home," he explained--not in a possessive way; he was not declaring his territorial boundaries or the like, but more to clarify the concept of "home" as a whole. He elaborated carefully. "There are many other caves, and they are all different. Some are full of water, and some have none at all--only sand or rock! Some have bright light, or they are hot, or full of crystal. Some are more dangerous than others," Dragon went on. "You might choose to explore and find your own home; but it may be dangerous to go alone, at first," he warned. "At least, until you are a little older. I have seen creatures something like you before, and I imagine you might grow very large and fearsome!"

It was meant as a sort of encouragement, and Dragon gave that statement time to settle in; he'd met his share of lions, leopards and tigers, in his time. If he was any judge, Haides was another of the bigger cats. "We all hatch from rocks. Gemstones." Dragon would've probably explained, too, about all Gembounds still having stones, if he'd known. His own was so hidden that he'd never seen it with his own eyes: embedded in his chest like a scute all its own, if a rock-hard one. "That is how we are born, how we are made! Sometimes we can give life to stones we find, and make new children, too. But I do not know if someone made you, or if you only came from the rock. As for food," he went on, and looked around, thinking.

It was always better, he knew, to teach a child to hunt instead of simply feeding them.

"There are many things in this cave to eat. Never eat a creature that speaks! They are like you and I. But there are stupid creatures, ones that cannot speak! Birds, and rats--but some of those are dangerous," he warned; many of the cave's rats were huge and vicious, and some of the scars criss-crossing Dragon's back attested to that. "Deer, which... I think are too large for you for now! And fish! The fish are usually good. The very slimy ones," (and Dragon now turned, sliding back into the muck with a loud 'thwap') "are better cooked. In fire--that is my magic," he explained.

"-We all have magic. I can use mine to burn things, and to see them in the dark. I do not know what kind you will have! There are many! But maybe one can help you to find food, or at least to kill it."

"I will try to scare some fish toward you, and you can try to catch one! You must be quick and quiet, and use your claws," he decided, after a moment's thought.

He dipped down, vanishing beneath the water's surface: and there, with his dark-adapted eyes, he sought out the nearest few fish. They were small, but he judged that if he were to angle around them through the narrow channel, he could drive them back toward Haides and let the cub try to catch one of them himself.

Ridged tail swept Dragon forward, and rather than neatly slipping around the fish unnoticed, he spooked the entire school of them: in full view of Haides, the silver bodies leapt from the surface and splashed back down, darting well away from the surfacing gator.

"Ahh--a lesson... things do not always go as planned. That is how not to hunt," Dragon said, humor in his voice.