ORIGIN - The Bone King

Thread backdated to be a few hours after the conclusion of FOLLOW ME TO PARADISE
and Giggle's making a single, fateful wish. Sometime in June 2023.

In life, many a bone had been dashed across the dull, drab stones of Canis. Dusty old things, splintering beneath gravity's work and baring their innards to the world and the curve of a hungry beak; fresh new things, too, once the flesh had been picked clean from them and the corpse-cleaners had gone away into their fortresses awaiting another meal. In death, Aza'zel had allowed himself to be those very same bones— let gravity and a cruel end do the grisly work he'd been unable to himself.

There'd been no sleep, after that fateful, crumpling moment. None at all.

... a few more minutes. Even just for one.

There'd just been then and now: Now, the sound of his own wings rustling discordantly in bird-ears and clogged lungs spitting up the last of the amniotic fluid and bones continuing to rattle from where he'd clambered from their pit and strewn them to and fro. Now, shivering and seemingly alone in a dimly-lit vignette of home. It's rotten-smelling to even his dull sense of it; like corpse-stink, but different.

Yet, there's a strange comfort to be found in what slips beneath that cloying odor. He can't recognize it, blinking the sleep(?) from his dry eyes, but—... there is a peculiar feeling of warmth swelling in his chest knowing that the smell is here, still. Fresh.

Aza'zel stops in preening for a moment to glance at the bones he'd scattered about the pit, eyes furrowing into a concerned squint for them all. Feathers rustle again as he tucks his wings close and bows low to gather a sizable half of what may have been a femur into his beak and carry it toward the edge of the pit. It's laid back to rest with no small amount of care.

After a few minutes' work, many of its scattered cousins rejoin it. One by one, meticulously done with so much attention that Aza'zel hardly hears the arrival of another presence at the Pit.

@Giggle

Omen's warning was, at first, given little heed. 'Someone at the bone pit' was notable, certainly, and she was pushing up and making her way but in a distracted manner. Through her familiar she heard the clatter of bone, saw a distant and vague dark figure below. Smallish, too. A child? But her mind was elsewhere, really.

Her thoughts kept drifting—ironically, though she didn't know it yet—to her Wish and her missing friend. Her dead friend. A friend who had been killed years ago, long enough that she might by now have forgotten his face were his son not wearing it still. She had held a feather not so long ago, held it and Wished for his return after the warm promise of anything had rustled through her.

She was halfway to the pit when Omen took wing, sweeping down to get a better look. For a moment she recognized Aure. Recognized, and then faltered, and-

That isn't Aure.

...Was it a cliche to say she stopped breathing? That she froze, one paw midair, eyes snapping wide? Her thoughts, her heart, her mind, everything froze, because part of her knew that when she registered what she was now seeing through that link, she would be well and truly overwhelmed.

Giggle didn't remember the space between that plunge of recognition that now drowned her, and her arrival at the pit. It would, in her memory, be a confused and meaningless rush of dusty terrain and gasping breath. But she slowed as she came forward, as if afraid he would disappear if she startled him. She fell still, then walked with cautious steps, hope and fear each almost painfully powerful in her chest. Is it really him..?

She stopped, paws only softly scuffing the stone, and watched him for a moment. That feathered back, the twitch of his head... familiarity, recognition of his old motions—ones she'd long forgotten, ones she'd never realized—washing over her again.

She tried twice to speak. The first attempt formed no words, only a silent movement of her jaw and the second, a hoarse and broken squeak.

"Aza'zel?"

@Azazel

"Aza'zel?"

He'd stopped to gaze at the last bone, by the time that hoarse squeak had rung across the Pit; stopped to look at a mud-stained keel, paler and newer than the others— its edges dulled already with the use of being thrown time and again. But, any curious thrall is utterly broken by the call of his name. The strangely fuzzy edges of his recall veer sharply into perfect alignment. Only once before had it been uttered with such disbelief, as if one were seeing a ghost—

The vulture turns his head sooner than his own squinting, bright eyes can lock onto their wide, dark opposites. Carmine meets warm brown, and ah, she's stopped gasping (if that was the noise he'd heard subconsciously, focused as he'd been—) and breathing entirely. It almost rings too similar to how she'd been, fresh from that empty Void of nonexistence and ignored because— Why, again?

Aza'zel shakes his head. Here and now.

Her name? "Giggle... ?" Aza'zel breathes for her, stooping to nudge the keel into the Pit before he trots over to meet her.

Wings flutter to half mast as he goes quicker than his own limbs can currently allow, feathers rustling. Brows furrow with concern and confusion all at once. "Hadn't I fallen?" lies at the top of such an expansive list of questions he'd not had a moment ago, followed shortly after by wondering after all the dress that she's wearing and "Where are my sons?" It can all wait.

"Are you all right?" Tipping his beak toward the hyena and straightening to stand more upright and look her over. "Breathe in, please?"

@Giggle

When she'd started running, that confused blur had left thought far behind.

When Aza'zel spoke, turning and addressing her as if hardly any time had passed—as if no time had passed at all—her thoughts seemed to all catch up at once.

There were too many of them. A mind near-healed from that time in the Void still trembled from time to time but now, years later, it never fractured. Yet for the first time in a long time it threatened to: the pieces of her world, like shards of glass she'd fitted back together, shook at their forgotten fault-lines. Her thoughts jumbled together, tangling confusedly.

It's him- -but his bone is still there, look- -it's HIM- -he doesn't know how long it's been?- -...is it really him?- -how can this be real?- -does it matter- -Aure will have a father. The Bonebound will have their old King- -but what of Aure, then?- -did he ever even want- -Eythan-... oh, Eythan...

...Breathe. He was telling her to breathe, and her sharp intake of air came with blinks of shock. "It's you," she blurted, and the horrid grief of the last years rolled over her all at once. Suddenly shaking, she drew closer to him (it smells like him, but... new? like a child, like he was in his stone, but-) but his bone-

She hesitated. What if this was some fascimile, some twisted joke of the universe, some imposter-

"...Is it you?" she asked, her voice thick with tears, her question barely a whisper.

@Azazel

Bitterly unaware of the irony, Aza'zel laughs softly. It somehow sounds less uncertain than he is. "It is me."

Giggle comes closer, and so does Aza'zel— though, one would imagine that he's stepping around the very fragments of glass that threaten to shatter beneath the weight of this reunion. Every step is so careful, and not with the trepidation of an animal approaching a predator but... worrying that he may somehow scare Giggle off.

Not that she'd ever run away from him, he doesn't think, but...

With hardly a wing-length's distance separating them, he pauses. Carmine eyes go searching again and fall into a squint once more. "I'm here, Giggs." An unsure huff blurts a too loosely from his beak, and he holds a wing out and to the side, beckoning. "Real."

Does he believe that? He'd just been cleaning up, but...

@Giggle

It's a bitterly cruel reality that hyenas cannot hug but just then, Giggle gave it a champion's attempt. A lurch toward her old (dead) friend, a loop of her forepaw for his back, a tuck of her head with a sob (the effect ruined only a little by the rasp of her voice); for a moment she forgot herself, deep relief sweeping up years of grief and washing it away. That relief was so powerful that 'a tide' was the only thing one could compare it to: immense in its power, unstoppable, and utterly refreshing.

"...It is you." Because how could it be anyone but-? It looked like him, yes; smelled like him but more than that, the promise of the feather, the circumstance of the Visitor... it had all been impossible and yet true. So this was. Impossible... yet true.

For a moment, she cried, and that's all she could do: more sobs torn from her throat, joy overwhelming as she tried to hold him close. Then the words that spilled out, without her meaning to.

"It's been so long."

Maybe he hadn't yet realized. Maybe he'd been asleep all along, or truly dead and gone, and didn't know how much time had passed but Giggle hadn't thought of that. She only knew that Azazel had been missing all these years and now, now at last, he was back.

Impossibly, yes.

But truly.

Oh, they had a lot of catching up to do.

@Azazel

Giggle envelops him in her mightiest attempt at a hug, and it's then that Aza'zel is assured, too: This is real. Perhaps that gloryless descent was a dream that he's just now woken up from.

Rustling feathers, pristine and new, spread to drape over a broad, shaggy shoulder. Though his sense of smell's still as dull as ever, Aza'zel tucks his beak into Giggle's ruff where he can reach and just... breathes in her scent. Still rotten, still stinky, still her; even with all the paint and memorabilia now attached to her— And what is all of that? He should ask.

But, first— the old King tilts his head in that minute, avian fashion. His beak withdraws from her pelt, brows furrowing. "How long was I asleep for?"

A beat, and that wing of his tucks her just a little closer. "Did I leave you alone, again?" His voice cracks and frays at the edges of this.

@Giggle

Giggle closed her eyes. It was him, from the scent of his feathers to the softness of his tone, things that stabbed through her old memories and dragged them flailing to the forefront of her mind.

Bones, it was him.

She pushed back after a moment, her breathing ragged with pure emotion. "No," she hastened to assure him, ears pinning briefly. She hesitated visibly, pain etching over her face, then turned. She went straight to the pit, because truth be told? She had no idea how to tackle this. How to tell him he'd been... dead.

But then, it didn't stray far from her beliefs, did it? That the dead joined the spirits, the universal energy all around? This magic had just... plucked him back from that. Right?

That didn't help her on how to break this news. So she fell back on her characteristic bluntness, albeit softened by care.

"You weren't asleep," she warned quietly, reaching down into the pit with her jaws.

She turned back, Aza'zel's keel in her teeth, held gently. She turned and laid it at his feet, then sat, looking from it to him with wondering eyes, and almost laughed at the sudden dark thought that shot through her mind: It's going to be awkward explaining the shrine.

"This was yours," she said, very softly, looking at him. "It's been... a very long time. I could show you what happened," and it was a very tentative offer. She doubted he'd be ready for that. Maybe he wouldn't, not for a long time. "Eythan was upset. Confronted you, attacked you-... You fell. I think you let yourself fall. This was-... many cycles ago. You've been gone longer than... you were alive, I think," she added, closing her eyes. "I gave life to your stone. You have another son. His name's Aure. Eythan-... looks after him, a little." She'd not go into all the details now. Later, maybe, if and when he was ready to hear it, she could tell him of her confrontation of Eythan, and what she still hoped had been something of a clearing of his conscience. But after a horrific bit of information like this, she felt the need to soften it, if only a little. She looked to Aza'zel, earnest and gentle. "Everything's okay, now. There's nothing you need to... rush off and do. I'd like to introduce you to them, but... there's no rush, okay? Don't get... I know it's a lot," she tried to rephrase.

"Some sort of magic came through. It granted wishes and I... I wished you weren't gone. And here you are," she finished, staring at him now. She paused, then her black lips quirked upward. "Your sons are going to be so, so happy to see you." Her gaze now was loving; not of the romantic sort, but the kind seeing this old friend for the first time in so long. "You're alive again."

She wanted to apologize. To say sorry for dropping this on him, all at once. To assure him that... everything would be okay? That she'd be here... She didn't want him to be upset.

But she didn't see how that was possible.

@Azazel