The first thing it registered was that the world was very dark.
The second thing it registered was that it could think, which meant it existed. Did it have form? Yes. A body was forming around its core. A heartbeat pulsed in its throat. Sprawling, ungainly limbs pressed against a hard shell. It was fast outgrowing the latter.
It kicked. Something crunched, satisfyingly. It thought it was the shell and not its own bones, but it kicked again to be sure. It only hurt a little, and suddenly there was air. Filth spilled onto the ground, slick and new. Its eyes only dimly registered light above, blocked by something. A building, maybe. It knew what a building was, approximately.
It pushed sounds through its throat. A nervous nicker came out. That felt about right. Maybe soon it would use words, too. That'd be something.
For now, it wobbled about on a foal's legs, exploring.
She had her bags fastened securely to her cervine half. She'd double, triple and quadruple checked the contents-- dried herbs in one, and in the other were rations and a ragged waterskin her father had given to her. Not a lot, but enough to make it to Cepheus with a few stops along the way to rest. Vivilene had spent the last few days re-working her legs to build up the strength and resting to collect enough energy to go home. She stretched one last time, re-fastened the shimmering shawl around her chest, and--
Crack.
The hybrid nearly jumped out of her skin. She cleared a few feet in the air but landed neatly on her hooves, scraping hesitantly against the cave floor as her tail lashed uncertainly behind her. She wasn't unfamiliar with the sounds of Orion by now-- semi-regularly, large chunks of quartz would break off the ceiling and shatter on the ground. This was no regular piece of quartz.
There weren't many people in Orion. At least, there weren't many people that were... exactly capable of taking care of someone who had just broken out of their chrysalis and was breathing their first gulps of air. For the record, Vivilene didn't count herself among them. Children, like most things, made her anxious.
... but she was fairly prepared with food and water.
She could risk it. Go a little hungry, go a little thirsty for the benefit of someone else. She began stepping cautiously into the forum, scanning rows of buildings with wide, moonlit eyes until she came across a small, wet, wobbling thing. I wonder if I looked like that, the thought passed her by as she bowed her upper-half into the crumpled doorway.
"Hi," she whispered. Her voice was soft and smooth like silk, but barely-there. A little croaky with disuse. She still needed practice with speaking verbally. "Ahh... here."
Padded hands drove into her saddlebag and produced a fist-sized, fuzzy fruit-- yellow-orange blushed deeper pink. A 'pench,' Vivilene thought it was called. She couldn't quite remember what her father had called it. She offered it out to the foal in a careful hand, lips taut. "It's... ahh, food. You eat it."
A beat. "With your mouth," Vivilene added.
Filth's ears swiveled to the hybrid first, then the head entire. There was something living, breathing, pulsing. The foal staggered closer. It only belatedly registered that the thing alive had spoken.
"Food," Filth repeated in a wet wheeze, hesitant and childishly high-pitched. Yes, food was a concept it could grasp. Eating made sense. It snatched at the fruit clumsily, without much regard for not getting its teeth snagged on the hand that fed it; the distinction between food and not food had not yet landed.
It tasted mostly sweet. It was, for a first meal, not bad at all. The foal chewed as much as its still-developing teeth allowed, swallowed, and immediately began nosing around for more.
"Food," Vivilene echoed, smiling. "It's a pench."
She didn't seem to mind too much as the foal's teeth snagged her fingers-- for the most part, the inside of them were padded in thick, dark callouses. The outsides were a little more sensitive, but it wasn't like the baby teeth were particularly sharp or damaging. Yet.
The foal was snuffling, and Vivilene went looking through her bag again. "I don't have a lot more," she murmured. "It's hard to find fruit here. Ahh... here," she offered a handful of small, scarlet berries. Vivilene wasn't sure what they were called, but they were nice and sweet.
"I'm Vivilene," she said. "Do you know what your name is yet?"
"Pench," the foal repeated, grasping at the words. "Fruit." Yes. These were good words. Then there was more of it - fruit? Food, at least. It lapped up the berries eagerly.
It contemplated the taste, then the new question of a name. It knew what a name was, and that it ought to have one. There was one, too, simmering somewhere in the great soup of half-formed memories. It was...
"Filth!" it hissed cheerfully. "Name is Filth." It wasn't sure yet what that meant, but it felt appropriate.
"Oh!" Vivilene said, smiling-- but she wasn't very sure why. That was, all in all, kind of a terrible name to have. Filth was something you buried and didn't think about-- it was something you washed away. It was something people didn't like, but Vivilene didn't quite have the guts nor heart to really say anything about it. A part of her wanted to suggest new, nicer names-- Pebble, or maybe Ebony, but instead she just nodded and smiled.
It seemed... happy, at least, with Filth. "Okay."
She was definitely far and away, not cut out for this. Attikias would have been good for taking Filth in and giving it a nicer name and making sure it grew up happy, but Attikias and the rest of her family were rooms and rooms away. It was a lot of travelling for something that was just born a few minutes ago-- and Vivilene couldn't exactly... leave it here. It wouldn't be right.
She wondered if Pride was still in Orion. "Do you have a family?" She asked Filth in the meantime. "Ahh... a dad, or a mom. Siblings. You... might have heard them?" She'd heard Attikias milling around when she was in the chrysalis, for days before she broke out of there. Vivilene went with the gentle assumption that parents simply lingered very close to their childrens' chrysalises before they hatched.
That seemed like the responsible thing to do, at least.
@Filth
"Mmm... no," said Filth. "Didn't hear anyone. I was in the dirt, and then I got tired of being in the dirt, so I started making something else and now I am me." That felt true. True enough, at least. The time in the chrysalis had mostly been taken up by silence and the anticipation of becoming.
It stumbled while talking, tripping over itself and nearly faceplanting on the ground. It kept talking without any pause but a slight wobble in tone as it rolled right side up and stood up again on its new, spindly legs, reminding itself that there were at least four of those. Yes, four seemed like a good number of legs to have. Vivilene had four too, after all - she was blurry, and something in the back of the foal's mind said this is not how it's meant to be, but it could just about make out the shape of four limbs pointing ground-wards. And Vivilene, Filth decided, was very good.
"Do you have family?" It asked and began to walk, bumped into a wall, shook its head and tried a different direction. "Is it good?"
"Are you called Filth because you were in the dirt?" Vivilene asked softly-- though it was an absolute apparition of a question, despite it being quietly earnest.
She lifted her hands out in front of her and towards Filth to make sure it didn't fall over too heavily; only once or twice did she try to guide Filth to proper balance by shifting its flank one way or the other. She knew the legs were difficult to handle, especially in the begining. At least theirs seemed considerably sturdier than hers.
Ahh-- her family. Where to start? There were a lot more words about them than Vivilene could ever handle. "I have a family. Ahh... it's good," she said softly. "I can show you them, I think, if you want?"
Filth bumped into a wall and, gently, Vivilene guided it into open space. "I have a big family. It's... ahh, it's a lot, sometimes, but it's nice." Some Gembound just didn't have families: she knew this. The Caves were a strange place to be in, but it did seem sad that some had to go it alone.
And, speaking of-- "My, ahh... my grandfather, Pride, might be near," she said softly, like it were a secret. "He might have more food."
@Filth
"Maybe?" said Filth as it wobbled onwards in some direction that did not have wall in it. It nipped at Vivilene's hands as she reached out, not maliciously, simply because they happened to be close. "Think my name came from somewhere. Maybe someone, but I don't remember." It was learning, slowly, how legs worked, and put one hoof in front of the other with determination. The result looked something like a horse-shaped marionette on invisible strings.
"I want to see a grandfather," it continued, having acquired the notion that a grandfather was someone who could, potentially, provide food. "Never seen a grandfather before. Is he nice like you? Is he..." It hesitated, searching for the word. "...Purple?"
@Vivilene
Now that Vivilene thought about it, she wasn't really sure where her name came from, either.
Attikias and her siblings had been calling her Vivilene for as long as she could remember, but the name had to have come from somewhere, hadn't it? Her sister, Hunter, had told her his name. Vivilene told him hers, but she couldn't remember where it came from. It wasn't Attikias: that much she was certain of.
Maybe names, like most things, were just magic.
"That's okay," Vivilene said at last. "I don't remember where my name came from either." And then-- because Vivilene had already forgotten if she'd said it or not --"My name's Vivilene."
At Filth's question, Vivilene looked down at herself. Being purple was also something she hadn't quite thought about before, either-- but she was very purple, sure. "Oh, ahh... no, Pride is white," she said. "But, ahh.. he's nice. He's... he's kind and gentle, ahh... he looks a little like you, but white."
She placed a gentle hand on Filth's hide, leading it out into the open forum. She called out-- barely. "P-Pride?" The way the forum was set up to reverberate noise helped, at least, carry her words further than they might have achieved otherwise. "Are you here?"
@Pride @Filth