ORIGIN

At first there was nothing but the dark. Then little pieces flooded her vision. They were different and disruptive, but when she tried to focus on them those pieces became so much bigger. The creature tried to make them go away by pushing them, which worked with one of them but also created a sensation she didn't understand, so she recoiled. Painful yet welcoming. Strength? She wanted to try it again and this time she pushed harder. It felt as though nothing had changed but at least one of those pieces could be eliminated. She reached to black out another one but then the first had returned. Why? Returning to the first left the other again exposed. That was annoying. A tiny battle began to rage in an attempt to block off both pieces she didn't like, and all that wiggling not only caused her to discover she had more than one way to block the pieces but it forced her into a sudden whirl of the unknown.

The creature had pushed herself out of her chrysalis with tiny front legs trying to cover up the small points of light emanating through the surface of the shell. Thankfully she was low enough to the ground that there was only a tiny fall on her way out but it was a confusing event to leave the comfortable darkness of her private void and be exposed to a brand new world. The creature had hatched along the wall of the Polaris room in an area of barren stone where any points of crystal and plants were only a small walk away; or a mile to her. There wasn't much of interest in this tiny lip of the cave, which was good news for the newly born wolf pup who was already struggling to get a grip on reality.

The creature didn't like what she saw immediately when she was forced to open up her eyes. Those big pieces were everywhere now and it felt like there was no comforting darkness left. She tried to stumble backwards to where she had been but only the cold stone was at her back and that new feeling made her reel forward. Her tiny front legs were barely enough to keep her from planting her nose right into the ground.
Being born was upsetting. So much was new and different that she didn't like. Having nowhere to go she sat where she was on the ground and there was nothing to do but to take it all in. With nothing to look at but the big pieces she noticed that they were all different from one another. They were all different sizes and came in from all directions. She also learned that trying to get rid of them did nothing and waving her piece-blockers to stop them made her tired. She found comfort in the surface below her that let her rest the piece-blockers. Though as cold as the stone she had touched before at least it had no rude points in it determined to be her enemy. Focusing on the ground below her had her smacking it lightly with her paws, and then in her genius it seemed an important idea to try and prove her strength against it like she did before. Of course nothing happened and she spent all of her time wailing against it for no reward. Any sounds that she or her nails made in her struggle for power were beyond her comprehension for now.

It must have been a strange sight to an onlooker: brand new pup pitifully attacking the air and the ground for no obvious purpose.

It was only by chance that Tigerlily managed to stumble upon a hatching chrysalis. She couldn't recall if she's ever seen one before, so seeing it for her own two eyes for the first time was something she never expected to see. Slowly, Tigerlily watches the figure inside slowly push parts of the crystal away, revealing the outside world to it.

Once outside, Tigerlily discovers the small creature to be a baby canine. Cute!

It's a little white thing, with no markings in sight. When the pup starts attacking the crystals and various things around it, Tigerlily decides to reveal herself.

"Hello there little one." She says. Can this one understand speech?

All of them are different, so there's only one way to find out, the liger supposes.

@Unknown

The unknown creature was not so busy with her rock and piece war that she didn't notice the new being stepping up into her vision, but she didn't comprehend it in its entirety. The first thing that she noticed about the liger approaching here was that many of the annoying pieces disappeared. The pup was cast in a light shadow that was hardly worth noting to anyone else but to her the return of the darkness was comforting, despite the fact that it wasn't nearly enough to resemble the chrysalis void.

The next thing the pup found worthy of note was that the big new thing didn't stay in one place as she tried to look at it. It got bigger very suddenly and didn't stay perfectly still like the rock. The slightest movements made by breathing seemed big enough to cause a landslide, and if she had the presence of mind to look up to see the new thing blink she would have been filled with wonder. When the big thing stopped moving suddenly there were noises she couldn't understand. The sounds weren't abrasive to her but it was shocking being the first real sounds that reached her ears since it was louder than her own. Then, ending so quickly, she found herself wondering where they had gone but not what they were. Would they come back? Did they need to be found? She was a bit wobbly but she did find the coordination to stand up and walk a couple steps to put her tiny paws on the big new thing. It felt different than the rock she had been fighting: the resistance was different. She pressed into it a little, but feeling the new surface give under her paws made her recoil. Despite the springiness she wasn't expecting the new surface was warm and attractive so she came up to it once more and continued to poke at it with her paws and to touch it with her nose. She had no idea what she was patting and the idea of it being dangerous never entered her mind.

Once again something important went over her head: she didn't pay any attention to the smell. Leave it to the unknown to not pick up the difference between cold rock and a living being despite the sensory boost her species was gifted with. The big new thing that blocked the ambient crystal light was good enough and left plenty to be investigated. Concepts like space, movement and speech were surely just around the corner.

@Tigerlily (Correct to ping like this at the end of a post?)

Tigerlily realizes the child cannot understand her when she walks forward like a lost pup. Perhaps the little wolf is, many do not wake with parents here. She did not - it is not unusual for the caves. When one comes in without the gift of speech it makes her sad - the little pup is unable to communicate with any of the other gembound she may run into, and won't know if any are dangerous right off the bat.

When the pup moves closer, Tigerlily stays still. Her cat reflexes keep her light on her toes even while being on two legs. And then the pup starts pawing at her like she did the crystal. Cute, adorable even. Tigerlily is not sure what to do with this information. Her tail wiggles at the end.

"You are so cute!!" Tigerlily waves her arms about with the urge to pick the little baby up.

She wants to pet the little wolf. So cute. Maybe she should stop so she doesn't get bitten.

@Unknown

The noises were back! She stopped her pawing to listen, but once again they disappeared too quickly and the relative silence she was accustomed to returned. She waited a little bit longer to hear something else, but when only a couple seconds passed that felt like years she snorted in disappointment. The experience left her feeling a little bit sad, a hint of her developing sense of self. This time though, having paid more attention, she was able to roll the sounds around in her mind. Immediately she forgot half of it with the more neutral sounds being lost to the mental void.
She did her best to imitate what she remembered hearing but it didn't come out as she'd heard it. Her first vocalizations were somewhere between a squeak and a growl between syllables with an inconsistent pitch. She managed a "arrrrrrRRRE Cute", and despite the failure she was was very proud of herself for making the same noises. It still escaped her that the creature in front of her was the one making the noises she enjoyed, and the fact that the sounds were coming from anything at all but the air around her were beyond her comprehension for now. She waited a couple moments of years after her own sounds to see if the noises would return.

So focused on the magic of sound it seems the pup had forgotten all about the abrasive lights for the time being. In her distraction of curiosity she'd forgotten to hold herself up as well and her paws came back to the ground. She didn't notice the change in temperature, pressure, or anything else that had previously fixated her only moments ago and she ended up sitting politely for the first time.

Her new relationship with sound left a question of how much of her time she would spend talking into the void in the future, and so far her apparent capacity to focus on only one thing at a time didn't leave much room for hope of improvement.

@Tigerlily (Don't worry about picking her up and moving her or anything like that. Those subtle thread direction changes are something I gotta practice with too. Even if you just want to yeet her across the cave that won't be overstepping anything. Written consent to godmod a bit!)