ORIGIN - The Eye Bone's Connected To The...

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The vulture fidgeted, a hulking shamble of brown feathers perched on a low-hanging branch. He was hardly moving, bar this occasional shift or shuffle; otherwise he'd been sitting there, listless, for hours.

Subject shows greater distress when not restrained. Stress reflexes suppressed when movement range is limited.

His beak clicked once, softly, his strange button eyes staring out over the garden, unseeing. His mind was wandering this way and that. He wondered if the garden were pristine below him--farmed and lovingly tended, as he remembered it--or if it were abandoned, overgrown.

Ligament thicker at proximal attachment point, thinner at distal. Discoloration on the far end. Translucency observed with tissue decay...

Then his mind would wander away, drifting over his old experiments.

Reflexes are greatly slowed after ingestion of the plant's sap. -Does the garden look like I must?

The bird half-lifted his head, as if looking to the plants, but of course he could not see them. Since waking, he could see nothing bar the heat signatures of living things and warmer areas. He was a mess, as a result. He could not see which feathers needed preening--he made a guess, but generally he was wrong and he had slowly given up. He was ragged, dull, and dusty. His feathers were damaged, too, by all the clumsy half-crashes he'd managed while trying to navigate through low-hanging trees. Even now he was only fairly sure he'd found the right place--and only then because of the signs of the lessers telling him of the general lay of the land. Here was the right slope, there a valley, so the garden must be... here.

He hoped.

He shifted again, lifting one taloned foot listlessly to pick something--food?--off his beak. (He wasn't sure. He'd hardly eaten.)

A quiet croak escaped him, miserable.

Maybe someone would come. Maybe one of those Chaos creatures would wander in, and he could... what? Ask for help? Offer up his stone to be remade?

Doctor didn't know. He just knew that living like this--unable to properly fly, return to his work (and what an irony that only now did he guess at some of his own cruelty), unable to find water or even hunt consistently...

It was miserable.

He'd come for... company, he supposed. And because he had nowhere else to go.

@V-Zoisite-One

It was a day like any other; they blended together in a familiar, calming way that having a routine gave Zoey. It was her roots, like the garden she tended, that kept her grounded. A way forward, even though it was almost suffocating in how monotonous it could be. Busy hands were better than idle ones regardless, idle ones would fester and bleed thoughts that made homesickness look appetizing comparatively. The last thing she wanted was to run away, even if sometimes the grass seemed greener back in Eridanus. She stayed. She gardened. She worked for her family, and sometimes, there were things that reminded her why.

She did not notice the Doctor in the low hanging branch, not at first. Even a low hanging branch was considerably out of eyesight for the upside-down monster, though she did pause at the edge of the garden to rear up and survey her garden with a clear view, scanning from east to west for anything that looked out of place. Sometimes a lesser would come by and nibble on the fruit that was growing, going as far to uproot some of the precious plants that she tended to. It was important to locate problem areas first, to save what she could.

It didn't seem like the garden had been particularly disturbed today, however. Settling back down on to all six limbs, Zoey started her slow trek down the rows to look for harvest ready fruit and vegetables. She checked for signs of disease among her plants and threats like lesser bugs that might be nibbling away on leaves, carefully using her mandibles to inspect the crop.

@Doctor

The soft sounds of approach roused him from his self-induced stupor; his head came up and he blinked--he would have blinked--had he eyes. It was the thought of a blink: that split-second reassessment of his surroundings as he abruptly realized he was not alone.

Had he been paying more attention, he'd have noticed the approach well before he heard it: the heat signature of something large, something six-limbed and with a sort of hammer head. For a split second he very nearly--very tragically--misidentified Zoisite as Orthoclase-Alpha. The size was... close enough, compared to him; the limbs, the low-slung body, the head shape.

But--two heads.

Granted, the red shapes were just that--red shapes--but he could still make out two heads.

He hesitated, struggling to place this shape. He'd seen it before, he knew that much--and it took him a moment to remember which one of them this was. (So many of them were related, and similarly shaped.) It was... It had been but a grub when Dhracia had come to the caves. And it had been present when they--when all of them--had come to Draco.

He had left the Forge's company shortly thereafter, around the time it had become the Forge, but he'd lingered off and on enough to recognize V-Zoisite-One. They hadn't spoken much--if at all?--but he knew them, at the very least.

Doctor cleared his throat--a rasping, thirsty sound--and hopped down, a clumsy flap and stumble thudding him into the dirt among a patch of vines.

"Hello," he offered, after a hesitant moment and as he picked himself up and straightened. He'd been about to offer a good morning, or good evening, but he couldn't truly tell what time it was. Sometimes the birdsong was a hint, or the bugs, but he hadn't spent enough time back in Pegasus to catch on yet to which was really which.

"I apologize, I am--blind, now. We've met--a little--I'm Doctor."

Would they remember him? Could they help him?

Would they, at least, be willing to keep him company, if only for a little while..?

With luck, they will not just eat me, he thought wryly, but with less feeling than he might once have done.

@V-Zoisite-One

Zoey froze at the sound of a large bird thumping into the dirt nearby. Too large-- likely-- to be a local lesser fauna. She swung around, rearing up to see with a row of golden, faintly glowing eyes who had nearly ambushed her.

The familiar face of Doctor sent a ripple down her belly of quills. She stared as he collected himself, offering an apology and an explanation, and it was then that she noticed that his gleaming silver eyes were not what they once were.

They looked... Flat, stitched on. Zoey did not know what buttons were, she had never experienced them, but they did not look organic. They looked deeply wrong.

"I--," she began with a clack, "I remember. Hello," she greeted softly. She hesitated, not wanting to impose on him to explain what had befallen him. (An experiment gone wrong?)

The sight of the vulture filled her with a dread and a guilt that she couldn't place. She lowered herself to the ground, angling her head back to continue to meet his false eyes as if to feign polite procedure.

"Are you alright...?" The answer was obvious. The question may as well have been hypothetical. All the same, she asked out of concern. And once the words left her jaws, she winced with shame. It was not what she had intended.

So, she tried to amend herself, her words quiet and hushed, as though asking something she shouldn't: "... is there anything I can do to help?"

@Doctor

The sudden movement, the rearing up, had him flinching and nearly stumbling back. He cowered down, fear briefly taking him, a brief shout of instinct telling him to flee--but where could he flee to? Fly blind, straight into a tree? The spark of terror quickly faded as Zoisite calmed, apologized, greeted him--and Doctor tried to laugh it gently off, though his heart was left thudding unpleasantly fast and heard in his chest.

After Zoisite has spoken, he bobbed his head in the old familiar way--his little salute--though he could no longer really see what sort of effect it might have. "Ahh, well-... I was hoping you could tell me," he answered, a smooth amusement covering both his fear and his aching misery. He likely seemed a little melancholy, but mostly... coping, despite the bedraggled feathers.

"I-..." Ought to have better planned what to say, he thought, visibly faltering. He'd come here--but why? Hoping for some miracle cure, or-...

No, he realized.

"I was hoping, I think, for some company?" He hesitated again, in a polite manner, as if to indicate he didn't want to intrude. Part of him instinctively moved to scan the surroundings, as one might do to show that they are idle, not wanting to impose... but he realized how foolish he must look, glancing around with buttons on his face.

"I'm sorry, I-" and again Doctor paused, taking a rather shaky, brief breath. He tried for honesty, instead of the friendly facade, if only for a moment--letting the veil slide long enough to apologize. "I admit I didn't exactly think it through."

He didn't outright say that he was terribly lonely, tired, and afraid--but that seemed a fairly awkward thing to blurt.

He tried to fall back on small talk. "Ahh-... I'm--all right, thank you for asking." A polite and blatant lie. "How have you been?" Not that he wasn't interested--he was; he hadn't ever known that much about Zoisite. But it was a change of topic, that was for sure.

@V-Zoisite-One

Zoey blinked, an awkward tingle in the back of her brain telling her how uncomfortable it would be to have those strange objects in her eyes, making her incapable of blinking. It made the creature want to raise a talon to scratch at her lids, a sensation that she ignored by instead digging her claws into the loamy soil under foot.

Company? It was such a simple request. It pulled at her insides, twisting painfully in her stomach. "... It's alright," she said to his strangled apology, one that he didn't need to give.

Awkwardly, the conversation shifted back on to Zoey, away from the pained physical condition of one and into the strained emotional condition of the other.

"I am good," a simple response. "I tend the gardens," she explained, automatically jumping to her go-to explanation of her current life status that was as natural as breathing. "To feed the Chaos Forge. Are-- can you eat plants?" Her memory paired the strange vulture with injured rats, and she couldn't recall if he ate those experiments.

Regardless, there was enough to share, and even if the Doctor was only a sometimes recruit for the Forge, she was confident that Master Vargas would want him to be treated well, as a guest. He hadn't done anything to mark himself as a traitor... Even if he had, Zoey wouldn't want him to suffer.

If he preferred meat, Zoey could... Well, she would make do. Assuming he was hungry-- but judging by his haphazard appearance, he wasn't doing amazing for himself. He looked an inch away from returning to his chrysalis...

@Doctor

...Ahh, so these are its-? ...Its? -His? Her? He hesitated. He'd never asked someone how he should refer to them, before, and it seemed an awkward question. First things first.

"No--ahh, I eat meat, but..." I'm not hungry? More like he wasn't eating. He wasn't all that hungry, really, but-... Best to keep things simple.

He nodded hooked beak out toward the garden, tucking his wings back and attempting some semblance of a normal conversation. One that didn't hurt to hold, one where he could get to know this near-stranger he'd mostly overlooked. "How is the garden? I came because I'd seen it before," he went on, head tilting. It wasn't the garden he'd ended up tending, himself, but it was still a familiar spot for him. "-and somehow I was thinking I could check on it. I forgot I cannot see!" he added, amused, and this time the humor was genuine. It wasn't that he had forgotten, really; he just hadn't... thought it through. "Are the plants doing well?" This, too, was asked with real interest. He'd grown his own plants. He had pots of them, back home--probably dead, by now, but eh. The "pots" were bones--mostly upturned, hollowed skulls--but he'd enjoyed testing their properties. The farm hadn't exactly been his type of gardening, but it had interested him nonetheless.

He paused, politeness returning to him in a sudden rush of faint shame. "Ahh--if you are busy?..." he added, hesitating and trailing off, the "I can come back later" or "leave you be" left unsaid, dangling off the end.

@V-Zoisite-One

The Doctor ate meat, naturally.

Zoey's jaws opened to speak, and shut with a near silent click as he trailed off. The offer to hunt for him seemed... Insulting, perhaps. It would be better offered at another time, or... Or, she could just do what she usually did, and bring him something later without a word. If neither party acknowledged the gift, it was like it didn't happen. A pride could be maintained. A lie between liars could continue to grow like weeds.

It wasn't healthy, of course. Just another little coping mechanism created by the cogs of the machine that inhabited Draco.

For now, the conversation moved to the garden, and Zoey was happy to oblidge, turning away from the vulture to admire her work. There was not a lot she was proud of, but the garden was one of them.

Rather than insist that she wasn't busy, she instead began to, well... ramble. In the spirit of someone who was quite enthusiastic to share what she knew. "It's doing well," she told him, "it is the same plot of land you might remember, but there's pumpkins now. There's some that are bigger than you... They are an orange gourd, round and wider than they are tall, with warty skin and stringy flesh with large, flat seeds." She explained this to him, not knowing if he knew what a pumpkin was, but... If she couldn't see, she would like someone to explain it to her.

"We had melons ripen a few cycles ago, but those have been harvested. There's berry bushes lining the far side... But some of them have thorns, so be careful if you go over there." The thorns didn't do much to her tough exoskeleton, but she wasn't made of fluff and feathers.

... What else? "There's some fruits on the near side, and some fruit trees that have been getting bigger... But I don't know the names of all of them. A gembound named Diot brought the seeds--" Had they met? "-- the fruits are sweet and colorful. We have a mango tree." They were delicate, and she was always worried about crushing them in her talons when she went to pick them.

"Sometimes there is an infestation of bugs, or a lesser steals our hard work," she went on, "but the farm is doing well. I use magic to help any of the plants that are struggling or injured." Her head swung back toward the Doctor, meeting those lifeless button eyes. Her weight shifted from one limb to the next, uncertain and plagued with a guilt that she couldn't place.

She wanted to help him like she helped the plants... But she didn't know where to begin.

@Doctor

Doctor listened, fascinated. And it wasn't a fake, polite attentiveness, but rather it was very real: his mind, keen as it was, had had very little, gardening or otherwise, to latch onto. And the farming reminded him a bit of his own work: trial and error, learning and adjusting. It wasn't as bloody, perhaps, or as quickly progressive, but it was something.

The pumpkins and melons were of interest to him--gourds he knew, though not their varieties. The idea of one larger than he, however, had his head tilting to one side in thought. His voice, when it came, was almost eager; he was wholly unaware of Zoisite's concern for him, his mind instead on the topic at hand.

"Tell me--these gourds, the--pumpkins? The melons," he began, shuffling excitedly closer by a couple steps. "You say they are very large. Do you know the magic that--ahh, stops plants from rotting, yes-?" Excitement would have twinkled in his old, single eye. As it was, however, the buttons stared lifelessly. "I have a strange thought, but--can they be hollowed to form a shell? It was always difficult, in the tunnel beside Hydra to store water, food, and such things--even soil to plant other plants. I wonder... could those be maintained, in a hollowed state, to serve as vessels for other things?"

It was an almost comically Halloween sort of thought: carrying hollowed pumpkins full of other food around, but it was a practical one. He himself could never carry something so large, but the Valkhounds-?

Progress? he thought, hopeful. Maybe even blind, his mind could thrive enough to help.

Unless, of course, they'd already thought of that; or maybe Zoisite was already doing it. Maybe there were hollowed pumpkin boxes scattered about even now, and he simply could not see it. He cleared his throat, shifting the topic a little just in case, so that any 'we're already doing that' wouldn't be so awkward.

"That is not to say... to downplay what you are already doing, of course. I always thought that growing enough food for the groups in Draco was a... an ambitious plan! Those are very large bellies to feed." There was warm humor in his voice.

He could not remember if he'd met Diot; the name had slid through his mind without much recognition. But--"It sounds as though you are not having to work it alone, at least?"

Polite conversation was an offering, a tether just in case his pumpkin idea would prove disastrous; but his mind kept drifting back to that concept, hopeful and interested. The idea of preserving things for something other than decoration or food was an interesting one. They'd mentioned thorns; could those be used for armor? Or-...

He jerked his mind back to the present, trying to focus on Zoisite, on the voice and heat signature before him. Belatedly he realized how kind she was being: speaking to him, taking time away to explain everything that he could not see. He dipped his head a little, and his voice was somewhat quieter as he spoke again. "Naturally I cannot see everything, but you have a gift for words. I can imagine it quite well. Thank you for describing it so clearly."

It was kind of her to do that for him, though to say as much might be too pointed, so he left it at that.

@V-Zoisite-One

Zoey visibly perked up when the Doctor mentioned magic that could "stop plants from rotting"-- it was the first plant magic she ever learned, imbuing plants with some of her magic, similar to the magic of baubling, so that it stayed in stasis, never rotting.

Doctor spoke of the old tunnel, and a pang of nostalgia and painful memories reared their ugly heads in the back of her mind. Sometimes, she considered going back... Back to where she had been born. It was a long trek... And only to make herself feel... Feel too much. Too much of something she didn't know how to describe.

This would be a good excuse, though, wouldn't it?

"They have fruit and seeds in the middle," Zoey replied, "but you can scoop it out and get a decent shell. It should hold other things well, with preservation magic." Though the Zoisite did not normally have much emotion in her clacking tone, the way the words stumbled forward in rapid, sharp clicks could maybe, just maybe, be described as excited or enthusiastic.

"Especially for water," she agreed. Clean water, stored in the larger gourds, would be useful. The idea of putting soil in a pumpkin to plant other plants in was a curious one. Could she get a foreign plant to grow in Draco? But that wouldn't be as practical as the farm, so it would be a personal project more than anything else.

Zoey shifted from one set of feet to another and another, shuffling in a way a more energized way than normal for her. The eagerness to try, manifesting in pure kinetic movement.

"We all work together," she echoed in the affirmative, pacing down the row towards one of the large pumpkins, and snapped her false mouth down on the stem, cleaving it free from the roots. "Master Vargas had us learn reading and writing," she brought up out of the blue-- had the Doctor known about that?-- "and build shelters. We are a community." The word "family" stayed in the back of her throat. "And I am proud to help us... Not just survive, but thrive." She said these words as she rolled the medium-sized pumpkin down the row back toward Doctor, stopping short of him.

Come on, she encouraged herself, almost missing the Doctor's softer words. As the magic worked its way through her body and out into the gourd, her attention jolted back to the present, and his words caught her off guard.

A gift for words.

It was one of the kindest things someone had said to her, one that made her freeze from jaws to false-jaws. She-- she was only being earnest. It was the kind of description that she would think Khavur would give Maximus, the one who practically wrote poetry in their free time. Not a lowly gardener who just...

... she did think flowers were pretty, though, and wanted a pretty name like Mary to go by...

Did those kind of things lend her toward a gift for words? She didn't think so. She didn't really...

But her jaws clicked open and shut a few times, and like a factory reset, she managed to get the frog free from her throat long enough to respond: "I was only telling you what I would want to be told. Thank you." It was such an unbelievably kind sentiment, one that sent a quiver through her quills.

"I brought over a pumpkin," she went on, "It's just in front of you, here. Do you think it would be a good size to hold water in?" Considering he was blind, it might be helpful to have a source of water somewhere convenient. It could gather rainwater, too... Transportation might be an issue, but there was magic that could move and gather water...

@Doctor

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