ORIGIN

Azure was preparing.

Not for a child--she'd done everything she could, on that front. At least for now, and without worrying herself half to death. Only yesterday she'd given a piece of her gemstone to a dragon; now she and her small clan of friends were preparing to raise a family together. But the stresses of it--the worries, born of old traumas--had left her sleepless and fretting. She'd finally drifted off sometime in the afternoon, then slept through the night. Now--in the early hours of morning the next day--she was trying to distract herself from all of that.

Her hobby, her self-appointed work--crafting various jewelry, trinkets, and so on--was something she could work on now, something she could do to keep herself occupied. It was a process, for sure. It meant collecting long, dry glass to twist into twine; pretty, small plants and flowers to Preserve; and whatever other pretty objects she might find to weave into her work... Then she'd imbue them with glowing light.

Sometimes, of course, she'd summon up a gemstone around a Preserved blossom, creating a beautiful pendant or the like that would last for years to come. Right now, though, she'd discovered the Workshop and its Underforge. While hot, blisteringly so in fact (so that she sweltered beneath her thick coat of feathers), it held a treasure trove of abandoned goodies that she now picked through.

Most weren't things that she could work with--or at least, she had no experience with them. Weapons, armor, that sort of thing. Even the few tool-looking objects were things she didn't really know what to do with--and truth be told she wasn't sure those weren't just some other type of weapons, too.

Chains, though.

Chains were useful.

Mostly she'd found were too large, and most of the ones small enough to serve as jewelry were so rusted they turned to dust as she touched them. A couple, though, were made of some sort of metal that had stood the test of time. She left the big ones--the ones, though she didn't know it, meant to tether a Valkhound to their weapon so that it could not be lost. Smaller ones, she carefully wove over her beak and then settled on her own back between her wings, so that when she picked her way deeper in, it was with a soft clanking at every step.

Nearly an hour later, she was as deep as she could go: picking her way through long, hot channels of anvils and flowing lava banked by stone, her body growing weary. She couldn't, despite her curiosity, take much more of this heat.

Near the back of the forge--or this corner of it, at least--the ceiling grew lower, and the lava, more dim. Shadows clung here, as though it had been built for smaller creatures, smaller workers or perhaps smaller armor and weapons to be forged. This drew her interest--and she hoped, too, that the darker area might be cooler. It was, but barely. She picked over it briefly.

This forge's anvil was old, smaller than some of the others, and well-worn and cracked. To one side was its flow of banked lava, slower and dimmer, darker, than the rest. Steam still hissed and rose now and then, but without the noisy violence of elsewhere. Here was almost... soothing. The raw ore piled to one side was old, coated thick by dust. And the few finished pieces seemed to have been cleared out, with empty spaces where the other forges had racks. But--here.

A small trough, wood or the like, with color sparking out. Gemstones, she realized, in some surprise. They were probably ancient, although some looked oddly fresh compared to the rest, as though someone--or something--had continued to collect them through the years. Most were cut and polished, and Azure recognized at once that they were likely to be for decoration: to create inlays of gemstone in armor and weapons, just as she used them for jewelry.

Carefully, she plucked out a few that caught her eye--she couldn't carry them all, and some part of her was reluctant to greedily steal the entire tray and carry it off. Maybe she could come back here, later, but for now she took a shining cut topaz, something else dark purple and streaked dim with gray-black, and a brightly shining ruby that seemed to catch the lava-light like a drop of blood. These she settled in among the chains at her back, like eggs in a nest, before turning to plod back the way she'd come.

It was just too hot in here to stay.

Azure could be forgiven for not even thinking about "more children" from the stones she'd taken, given how damn hot it was. She was panting, beak parted, feet dragging by the time the sweet, cool(er) winds of Leo swept back around her like a welcoming embrace.

It was only here--pausing to stand eyes-closed in the wind, breathing in the sea air and letting the cool temperatures tug through her feathers--that she let her mind wander a bit. Being in the workshop and the forge had been a good distraction from parenting. And her mind strayed to the growing gemstones, and then-

"Huh," she said aloud, turning and squinting at her back.

Could they be alive-?

She was so used to using her own magic to create gemstones that she hadn't even thought about it. And she knew she'd have to check--not because she wanted to create a huge family, exactly (even the idea was scary) but because she'd feel bad ripping up a potential living kid and turning them into fucking jewelry.

"Hell," she breathed--and her face twisted into a bit of a grimace. She was hesitant to fly, for fear of dropping her new acquisitions from her back--so instead, she plodded off toward the den. It'd take awhile to get there--and all the while she'd be half-panicked about it.

Hell, indeed.

It only took a brief touch of her magic to the ruby to sense that it held life. Her breath caught, and she froze--but instead of making a decision at once, she turned to the topaz next.

Another distraction, maybe, but she had to be sure.

Also alive. Distant anger took her: who the hell had been taking others' gemstones to use as fucking trophies, as decorations?! Her beak clicked once, hard and she turned last to the purple stone streaked dull with gray-black.

This one, at least--the rather sinister hues to it--was dead. Somehow it was a relief to know. It looked almost ominous, but--she supposed--it could at least make good jewelry.

Azure pushed that one aside, then regarded the topaz and the ruby with an apprehensive eye. It wasn't that she wanted to jump ahead and start a giant family out of nowhere. Given her past, especially, that wasn't a priority for her. But... someone had done wrong by these Gembounds. And somehow, she pictured them as children, without realizing she was doing it--murdered children, their stones hauled off to serve the caves somehow. That filled her with a righteous sort of fury, one that tied in and twined through her history.

Fuck whoever did this, she thought, almost savagely, and shook herself out as she pushed up. The chains slid away, pooling loosely in the dirt beside the camp. And the Charoite stone she nestled in there, nudging it in among the metal.

The other two she plucked up cautiously in her beak, and carried them--blue eyes ablaze with righteous indignation--toward near where the other children had been 'planted.'

At least we have enough parents. Four of them, plus Blight's family, here in Leo. Babysitters, she thought, that could handle it all together. Still, she hated to drop the responsibility of two more children on anyone. But... she couldn't just leave the stones.

She nudged the topaz into the dirt first, and sighed, closing her eyes with her beak-tip touched to it.

Life flowed to it, and she turned, pressing the ruby a few feet off beneath an overhanging plant cluster. Belatedly she wondered if either stone might prove to be aquatic--a fish or the like. She sure hoped not; a child hatching only to suffocate would be awful. She'd have to make sure she was here for the hatching, at least, to help them to the water if needed.

And now, the ruby.

It was draining--but the last of her magic, sapped as it was, trickled to the stone. This one, too, she buried--and then she turned, head facing toward where she knew the others would be. Well--Blight was out fishing; but Titanite was somewhere in the woods nearby, Thalia asleep.

And now Azure had to confess she'd brought two more kids into the fold. What will they be like? she wondered, and oh no, her anxiety had tripled.

It was exhausting to worry this much. To concern herself with a murderous past when she knew the future could be better. These wouldn't, after all, be the first kids she'd have helped raise... they'd just be her first kids. And the others--well, they'd turned out all right, had they not?

"I can do this," she breathed, and set off with a firm stride toward the center of the camp. For the first time, she actually believed it.