ORIGIN - [HATCHING] Shinies... sorta

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Nestled atop a ledge near the top of the cave was a small chrysalis, clearish gold in hue with an array of crisscrossing rainbow lines, ever shifting in color as the lights refracted off the surface. Here, the air was warmed by the hot vents in the ceiling, forming a rather comfortable environment for whoever was about to emerge. Curled up in the chrysalis was what looked like an odd hybrid, a mixture of a lion, owl, hawk, and deer. Along with some another random features thrown in.
Sakhira opened an eye, then another. Her first thought was how pretty this thing she was looking at was. The walls of her chrysalis were so beautiful. She almost didn't want to destroy it, to shatter the perfect gemstone holding her inside. But her body won over her heart. Her wings ached, wanting to open, and so did her legs, cramped up uncomfortably against the walls.
She needed to get out.

She thrust out with her legs, trying to break open the chrysalis, but to no avail. It hurt her heart to have to damage something so pretty, and she almost didn't want to try again. But the thought of being trapped in here forever was far more frightening. Panic seized her, and she kicked as hard as she could, even trying to use the two nubs on her head that were faint resemblances of antler to try and puncture the sunstone.

This attempt worked even worse than the previous time, and she was starting to worry that she was really going to be trapped forever. She had jinxed it! Maybe she should stay here for a bit. Perhaps sleep and then try again later. Considering the current state of things, perhaps that was the best option. But her heart was beating too fast, and worry had seized her mind. Sleep was not an option, not when her body was telling her that she needed to get out of here first.
Why did it have to be so durable? She didn't even make a dent in the thing! Not even a crack! Her strength was flagging, so she paused in her attempts to take a break for now until she would have another burst of energy to try again.

The soft 'thuds' drew her attention to the distant chrysalis, and it wasn't hard to reach it by wing. It took her a moment to pinpoint the sound, ears swivelling, but when she landed beside it on soft paws, she found that she was utterly distracted for a moment by just how pretty it was!

Flashes of rainbow hues, streaks of color across translucent gold, bright-

Thud. Thud.

Oh! Right! Someone wanted to hatch!

Bug shook herself from her brief trance, and pondered how best to help. She raised one paw, placing it on the stone, and batted it a few times. This did not seem helpful in any way, and she thought it over.

The black cat-dragon squinted, looking around, and spotted a few orangey rocks lying nearby--the hefty kind, with sharp edges, that were sort of all over Monoceros. "Hold on!" she told the... stone. "I'll get you out."

Maybe. ...Hopefully?

"I'll try, anyway," she amended.

Bug darted over to the nearest stone, feline nose scrunching up as she focused on it. She tried to lift the stone with her magic--to hover it over to the chrysalis, then drop it down onto it. Maybe that'd crack the thing, at least, and help out whoever was inside?

It was a bit of a strain, but the stone did move, hovering over the beautifully-striated chrysalis--and then Bug dropped it, so it'd smash down to the chrysalis with a crack. Hopefully it'd just let the kid break free, and not actually hurt them, or something!

@Sakhira

She had already begun to believe that this was her fate. She would be trapped here forever, and maybe she was okay with that. It wasn't too ba- wait. A noise. There was something outside. However the thick walls of the chrysalis muffled the speech in such a way that Sakhira couldn't quite decipher what they were saying. Especially since she hadn't exactly met anyone before so she wasn't used to... words.
Maybe this was her only chance to escape. Then the stone dropped down with a large crack! Shattering the chrysalis, sending bits of rainbow colored gemstone everywhere. But there was no much wiggle room to escape, and as a result it landed on her leg. Shakira let out a loud screech, tumbling out onto solid ground. Luckily the rock wasn't incredibly sharp, and only resulted in a bruise. It didn't matter! She was out! She had escaped! The warm air from the vents immediately started to warm up her fur and feathers- well, fluff. She was too young for her feathers to have grown out yet.
Shakhira's head swiveled around, taking in her new surroundings, and her savior. "Thank. You." Though she wasn't sure why she said that. It just felt right to say. Inquisitive eyes took in the whole of the dragon cat, and all she had were questions. "Who you are? Where this is? ...why?" It was unclear what she meant by that last question however.

@Bug

Part of her was already looking for some sort of trick to play on the kid. An illusion, something spooky or funny--it'd be mean, though. Right? After all, this was a fresh hatch. Like, six seconds old, and already polite, too! It'd be funny, though, Bug reasoned, before setting the thought aside for later.

She was, after all, part cat; and as a cat, her sense of mischief never quite left her.

For now, she dropped onto her haunches, sniffing curiously at the stranger. She called on her magic briefly, dropping a small banana from thin air, and began to 'peel' it with her claws as she spoke. "...You okay?" That screech hadn't sounded great. The kid had questions, though, and Bug brightened a little. "You're welcome!" And on to the answers--"I'm Bug, this is Monoceros, and--why what?" She looked around. "...Because?"

This was a guess.

"Your stone is BEAUTIFUL." She glanced over Sakhira, looking for any sign of it--oh, yup. There it was. Right smack-dab in the middle of her forehead and HUGE. "Cool. It's on your head. It's got all kinds of colors!" (As if, somehow, the child couldn't see this for herself--but maybe she wouldn't realize, yet, that her chrysalis-rock was permanently stuck on her face.) "I've never seen anything like it before. I've never seen anything like you before," Bug amended, eyeing the child over with surprise.

She looked, sort of, like some kind of hybrid--maybe an owl and a big cat?

"I'm half cat, and I think you might be, too!" she said, enthusiastically.

Then she pushed the now-peeled banana toward the kid--after taking a nip from it herself. "Food," she offered, her mouth full. Then, she swallowed, and began to sparkle. "You eat it," she explained.

@Sakhira

Sakhira's wild cat instinct told her that she should be sniffing back at Bug... but she couldn't smell. Her head was still that of an owl after all, and that meant she simply didn't have a sense of smell. Instead, she had to rely on her other senses. Her giant deer ears that seemed a bit too big for her swiveled around to catch the sounds of the place, though it was mainly just the howling of wind. And what was that! Sakhira blinked, trying to make sense of what she had just seen. "Yellow thing? How?" How did the thing just appear from nowhere? Though she had just hatched, her logic told her something wasn't adding up.
"Am okay." Though the pain wasn't easily ignored, she was much too focused on everything else to really pay much attention to it. Sakhira took in this new information. Dragon cat = bug. Windy place = Monoceros. She took the 'because' as a sufficient answer to her question of 'why', not elaborating on it further. How she thinks can be rather confusing at times.
Her stone? She attempted to look up at forehead, but no matter how she tilted her head back she could not see it. Oh yeah, how could she look at her own forehead. Her eyes couldn't even move! Reaching up a paw, she felt around the general idea and definitely touched something hard there that wasn't fur. "Beautiful stone. I like!" 'Beautiful'. The word sounded so nice to say. Though she couldn't see the gemstone for herself, she took Bug's word for it. The dragon cat had helped her out of the chrysalis after all! They must have good intentions. Though Sakhira didn't really know the concept of evil yet. Her eyes landed upon the obsidian centered on her chest. "Your stone. Also beautiful!" It was dark in color, but still shiny! And all shiny things, she thought, were inherently pretty.
She didn't know what Bug was talking about having never seen anything like her before. Well of course not! The dragon cat was the only living thing she had met, and she had just hatched too, so of course she had not seen Bug, and Bug had not seen her before. Unless they had somehow met before which she doubted. This interpretation of course was rather wrong, but from her perspective it made sense. Ah, inexperience. Sakhira would soon learn what the cat meant once she saw more sights. Met more gembounds. "I no see Bug before too."
"Half... cat?" Now that she looked closely, they did have some similarities, though they were much different in color. They both had a tail. And fur. And paws. Very interesting!
Sakhira bobbed her head up and down like an owl, though deer also did that. It's unclear from which animal she inherited this trait from. The mysterious 'food' that had appeared from the air was now being offered to her. It definitely looked enticing. She tilted her head to inspect it for a few moments before reaching down to try and tear off a piece, but it broke apart upon contact. It was too soft. The only other option was to just swallow it. Using her paw to section off a chunk of the banana, she bent down so that her head was parallel to the ground, and gradually fit it into her mouth. "Food good." due to her near lack of taste buds, she couldn't quite pin point what it was she liked about it. "Yes. Good." She repeated, not having any adjectives.

@Bug

"Hey, thanks!" Bug exclaimed, looking down. One of her own paws raised to prod at her gemstone. "I got it from my dad." She eyed the golden rainbow of a shattered chrysalis, then, and wondered.

Was this someone else's stone, left here like a giant egg? Does this one have a parent? Or was it one of those kids who'd just fallen out of a wall, basically? Oh, and that reminded her-

"Do you have a name?" she asked, settling on her haunches. Her tail curled neatly around her.

Otherwise, she was patient; she had nowhere to be, and so she just kinda watched Sakhira munch away at the banana, content.

@Sakhira

"Dad? What is dad?" This made her wonder if she had perhaps gotten her own stone from this thing called a dad too. Whoever they were, they must be super cool if they could just give out gemstones like that. She wanted to know how to do that too!
She continued to munch on the banana as she thought about the matter of names. Names had to be fitting. Just like Bug seemed to fit the dragon cat. Did she have a name? Were names something you were supposed to have, just like they both had stones? She knew she did not have a name though. Yet. She would just have to come up with one herself. "Sa..." Like the sound of the wind here. She liked that sound. "...khira. Yes, Sakhira." It sounded right somehow. Sakhira did not have a name before, but she had one now. It was nice.
Since that matter was settled, she looked out across the cave. The banana was finished now, and she wanted to see what else there was to do now that she was energized. Her eyes narrowed, trying to determine whether it would be possible to somehow fly down from this ledge. An instinct inside of her told her that she should be able to fly. But she was not yet old enough to have the feathers to do so. "I want go down. Bug help? Please?"

@Bug

Bug sat thinking, the pointed tip of her tail twitching in thought. "Um," she began, a signal to wait just a sec, okay, she had to ponder this deep question...

"A dad's a kind of a parent! Like a mom." For an instant she considered the question answered, then belatedly realized that without context this told the child nothing. "It's--uhh, when you grow up you can give a piece of your stone, if you like, and someone else can put magic into it, and then you get new babies! The parents are moms or dads!" The whole "moms are generally female" and vice-versa thing was lost on her, so she left that entire bit out.

"But! Some kids just hatch right outta the walls, so," she went on, looking toward the big, pretty chrysalis. "Hey, can I keep a little piece?" It was a genuine request--the sparkle kept catching her eye, and as she stood and paced over, she found that she sort've wanted a chunk. Jewelry, or decoration or something--she didn't know. But if the kid said no, well, it was their stone and as much of a troublemaker as Bug could be, she wasn't going to steal it.

Anyway! "Sakhira's a good name!" she said, encouragingly. And it was, too. Somehow it put her in mind of wind and warmth. ...Oh. Maybe that's just Monoceros.
...Anyway-!

"I can try to get you down?" There was clear doubt in her voice, and she pushed up, pacing to the edge and peering down. It was kind of a high ledge, but Bug shrugged. What was the worst thing that could happen? The kid would go back into her chrysalis? She was just in there, so it should be fine.
That made sense.

"Okay, c'mere. I'll try to get you down, but don't panic!" She'd try with magic--she was too small to fly the cub down there. Cub..? Hatchling? Baby owl-cat-deer? She didn't know, and it didn't matter right now, right?

Bug reached out with her magic, trying to grip Sakhira carefully with it. She eyed her, ember eyes studying the cub's body, trying to heft her up and test for a center of balance. Then--again carefully, silent in her focus--Bug tried to hoist the child over the edge, and lower her down to the ground. It was a slow process, and she'd keep her quite close to the wall... just in case.

"Right-... you doing okay?" she called down, aiming to deposit Sakhira on Monoceros's floor.

@Sakhira

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