ORIGIN

It remembered something. A sound, distant within its shell. A voice, and a nudge against the cage it was in. It didn't remember much before that - had it been sleeping before? Had it even existed before? It didn't know, it could just remember the day when something very hard had touched its gemstone gently and a voice, garbled and warped beyond the chrysalis. "Are you hatching soon? ...Don't you worry, take your time." And after a moment longer, the hard thing had left and it was alone again.

Blue eyes opened, searching for the source. But...it was all dark. Pitch black, no sight whatsoever. Strange, could the other one see? Maybe they had super eyes. Too bad they didn't have super eyes too. That would have been helpful here.

It wanted to stretch out. It had been curled up for a long time and it felt ready to move now. The time before had felt lazy and half in between being awake and asleep. But now it was definitely and completely awake. Ready to start. Start what, it wasn't sure. Life? Yeah that was probably it. It didn't seem too promising, if it had to navigate around in the dark like this, but, well, what could you do?

He began to move, making to uncurl itself from it fetal position, feeling a barrier halting its movements, something banging up against the nubs of antlers growing from its head. Frowning, it pressed harder. It needed to stretch really bad! There was a click, as if it had successfully moved something in place, and then everything around them shattered. The darkness, the barrier, the entire world it had known. And it tumbled forward, freed at last from its chrysalis, eyes squinting against the sudden, blinding light.

Nevermind, they didn't want super eyes.

But they did want to actually see! It was taking too long for their vision to adjust from the absolute blackness of the chrysalis to the waking, white world of Ursa. They stumbled to their feet, unsteady on gangly legs a little too long for their little body, and bleated out with surprise as they suddenly surged forward. Whoops, too much on the gas, pull back!

But...it was too late. Without being able to see properly, the creature tumbled right out of the cave and right over the edge of the cliff that it rested upon. The ground disappeared from beneath its feet and it was sent tumbling down the side of Ursa Minor.

Thankfully, the slope down wasn't steep enough to make it an especially dangerous fall, but he was young and small and had no way of stopping his tumble. He cried out in fear, pain, and, most of all, confusion, as he just kept tumbling like a ragdoll, bumping into every rock on the way, scratching up his new, beautiful wide, banging his legs and his head all the way down until he landed heavily in a snowdrift.

Oops.

He lay in the snow for a moment, stunned and winded from his fall before groaning loudly and trying to pick himself out. The second he put pressure on one of his back legs, however, pain shot up his entire leg and he yelped loudly. Okay. Okay, that wasn't good. He tried to drag himself out of the snowbank, but without the use of both hind legs, it proved to be a struggle.

But then a voice nearby, and he looked up blearily at the stranger. A...big stranger. Oh my. Well, bigger meant they could help all the better, perhaps. "Oh, hello," they choked out. "Yeah that hurt. My leg hurts." They lifted the injured foot, gritting their teeth at the intense burn as it raised off the ground. "Do you...think you could help me out?"

Calazeth flinched when she dipped down to sniff at his leg - not out of any particular fear, but he was hurt and she was close. If she touched it, it'd hurt more. He really didn't like the feeling of being hurt - he didn't know much about anything, but that was absolutely something he knew now. Being hurt sucks. And at Astoria's confirmation, he made a grunt. "Yep." Because she was right - it was, in fact, hurt.

He'd expected the stranger to maybe just help him out of the snowdrift, maybe get him to a place where he could rest his leg, but not to pull out a whole "my dad is actually a doctor" thing on him. Mainly because he didn't know what that was or that there were "healing stuff" in the world at all. That was cool! Things to make him stop hurting sounded like a good idea right now. Ears perked up and he nodded, cringing at how it made his head spin more. Yeah, he definitely banged his head too hard. "That would be nice," he mumbled, voice a little slurred. "I'd like to stop hurting."