ORIGIN

The wavellite chrysalis is small enough to be easily missed, at least until it begins to tremble. Its emergence isn't anything special: the cave wall exudes this thing like its some kind of pustule; a zit, maybe. There are certainly larger and more impressive chrysalis to be found deeper in the caves, and this particular shell is nothing spectacular.

The creature inside writhes in its sleep. It looks to be somersaulting, and when it isn't doing that, its kicking at the walls with untimely jolts of movement, not enough to do any real damage from the inside. After an hour or so of this spastic movement a seam forms in the vertical striations of the wavellite . A dull blue-white glow emanates from that crack, and little by little the stone is worn away.

It looks to be melting.

Then with a dull slap, the individual within the chrysalis falls to the dirt of the cave floor. A dozen or so inches long, not including a tail, four legs, many flexing toes, and an expression void of any awareness at all.

Three eyes though! That's at least sideshow-level cool. The lizard blinks its big gold-patterned new eyes a few times and balks with a vacant stare in to the darkness, head empty; waiting for its tiny brain to sluice off the back of its skull after that drop. After a few seconds it turns its focus to the splintered bits of chrysalis but there, too, is a lack of understanding.

So, let us take stock of the situation here.

The chrysalis is in piece all over the ground. A segment is wedged in the wall where it was initially growing, like the root of a broken tooth. The lizard has been standing and staring in to the dark for - well, who really knows. He doesn't. What is time to someone new to the universe? A little jolt of electricity vibes through the creature's little brain and its body twitches away from the dark, towards a small collection of the shards.

His tongue flicks out to lick his lips; he feels the texture of his own scales and is transfixed a moment. The fleshy pink of the appendage sits like a wad of chewed gum there, before slurping back inside his head. A slow, deliberate blink occurs.

The lizard lowers his head towards the pieces of gem, intrigued by the diffusion of light within their surface, and reaches out to pinch a bit with his mouth, roll it on his tongue, and maybe even swallow some as he studied it. It wasn't food, said some basic part of his itty-bitty brain. Felt like pieces of himself though. He looks down at his bowed forelimbs and then the shards, almost able to piece together a thought before vacancy returns to his stare.

If he's noticed the emanations throughout this massive space, he has given no indication save for the occasional pause and stare, which appears to be his default behavior. He acts by impulse; but also, those movements are stuttered, as if they are half thought-out, or his thoughts jolt erratically across his brain and don't quite meet their end point.

Some hours after hatching, the lizard has yet to leave the area. He's puttered around by the shell shards for the most part, crushing some pieces between his teeth or grinding the fragments against the roof of his mouth with his tongue, entranced as much by the taste as he is the texture.

Something does tempt the lizard away from the chrysalis pieces, eventually. There is no saying what exactly does it - the lights, the feeling of magic in the stones around him, or the basic concept of hunger, all being viable cause - the cavern itself is quiet all around him, so it isn't noise or any perceivable threat; but he suddenly jolts in to a run. His claws catch upon rock. He feels the drag of his belly scales against the ground and doesn't appear to mind the sensation - and the gem set upon his head flashes with a green-blue aura.

Green means go, in some universe out there. Maybe that's all the prompt he needs to force him in to an awkward ambling run, with those bow-legs jutting from either side of his body. He scurries away from his hatching point and in to the near-dark of Polaris; only the flash of his gem indicating where in that darkness he is going, and soon even that is lost among the various shifting lights upon the cavern walls.

[exit!]

Saul

Saul

Saul