ORIGIN - Spooky Story Time: Eyes in the Dark

Grishia followed her mom deeper into the tunnel. This place was creepy. It had an odd sense of emptiness. There was no life; the strange mist and chill was unsettling. The gnoll cub found herself clutching her staff, and after a moment she signalled her mother. "Wait?" she requested--and bolted back beneath the gate, with its misshapen, snarling monster head carved above it. (Grishia barely spared it a glance.)

She darted back into Canis, and was gone for but a moment. When she returned, trotting along with the clumsy jog of a toddler, it was with a companion: a tiny antlered skeleton clattering quietly beside her. Grishia didn't know what sort of animal it had been. But she knew that as she returned to her mother, hand atop its ancient spine, it gave her some comfort to have it standing beside her. "Okay," she said, nodding, as if to tell Giggle she was ready now.

Then she tried to look somber, to lift her staff and stand it upright (hard, given how TALL it was compared to her) and to stare around.

What sort of lesson could Giggle possibly give in a place like this..?

Giggle herself understood.

She didn't tremble at the shadows in this place, but... it was a close thing. So she waited patiently for Grishia to run off, and to come back with a little housepet made of someone's bones. (Which was weird, but Giggle knew they were, in this case, bringing a child comfort. She didn't think the bones' old owner would really mind, but she'd instill some sense of respect for them in her child later on.)

Then she looked up at the carving, and forward into the misty darkness, and nodded. "I want to teach you about dark and light. Because there's a lot of things in the cave that can be scary, and one of them... is a darkness." She paused, wondering how to best describe it without scaring Grishia too badly. She couldn't show her, mind-to-mind. Even with the distance she'd now gained after Wilder's wish, the aloofness from her emotions and from her reality itself... a madness of a sort on its own... she didn't trust herself not to tumble back into the horror of it all. So she spoke, quietly respectful, and kept a measured tone.

"There was a shadow that came here, once. Through this tunnel, looking like this--smoky and dark. And it went into Canis, into our home. You remember the mushrooms? The ones I keep around our den, and my pit--the ones that glow?" she asked, glancing to the cub.

Grishia looked between Giggle and the ominous carving, her hand never straying from her bone-golem's back. And she nodded earnestly. Despite so often being silent, she definitely understood: and with the pride of children the universe over, tried to demonstrate instead of simply answering. She stepped toward Giggle, studying the spores and stuff that clung to her mother's fur. Then she flicked at them, blinking as she thought she got the right ones, attempting to grow a few with magic.

A few little blooms cropped up, glowing a dim blue, and she pointed at them with self-importance. Questioning, but already knowing she'd done it right.

Those, she thought. Her mom meant those.

My kid's a showoff, Giggle thought wryly, but her eyes fell to the little fruiting bodies, and it said something that they were already withering in the tunnel's inhospitable chill. That sent any humor draining away, leaving an unsettling empty place where it had been.

"Very good," Giggle said quietly, and looked up again, studying the carving absently. "So that's--well, I grow those because of the shadow that came. It put out all the light in Canis--in our home. And there were little eyes, all in the dark, watching me. I found out later who it was doing it, but back then all I knew was I was lost! Lots of us were. So it's important you have a way to make light. In case it ever happens to you," she went on, looking to Grishia intently.

"The mushrooms are one way. Another's if you can make light magic. But there's another, one that's your own magic! Little wisps you can conjure up yourself," she explained. "Like this."

She turned, gesturing into thin air with her snout. And a little spot of energy coalesced: cold fire, wisping with a phosphorescent glow.

Giggle let it bob there, admiring it for a moment before turning to her daughter. "If you can learn to make one of these, you'll never be lost in the dark without light! Want to try it?" she asked.

Grishia considered, studying the wisp closely. I can do that, she knew. Not thought, but knew. That magic--it was hers; it resonated with her as if she'd always known it.

She used her right paw to push the staff into the crook of her left elbow, her left paw still resting on the bone golem. Then she held out her right palm, pads upward, and concentrated.

A tiny wisp, barely smaller than Giggle's own and giving off the same faint, blue-green light, hissed into being and bobbed there gently.

Grishia smiled at it, broadly and brightly, and looked up at Giggle. "I did it," she whispered to her mom.

Giggle nodded, black lips peeling up in a gesture like a smile. "Good job, kiddo. You have no idea what a weight off my mind that is." She paused, looking from Grishia and her wisp--a match to Giggle's own--to the staff, and the bone creature.

And again she hoped that the Visitor's gift was just that: a gift. She wanted Grishia to be safe. And loved. Well; anxiety aside, she'd do what she could toward that end, as a mother.

"So if the darkness comes, if there's shadows--you can call up that wisp, and it'll keep you in the light. I don't have any magic to make it darker or I'd show you," she added, with a lightly teasing tone.

Grishia listened solemnly, and then looked around.

She tried to picture it, as she stood there, a wisp in her palm and a bone beast at her side. She tried to imagine darkness. She tried to picture the eyes blinking from it.

What was strange, was... she could. She felt it in this place: felt a magic calling to her. Felt the nature of those shadows, as if they still lingered here, as if she could tap into them where she stood.

She slowly bent down, setting the staff to the floor with a soft, careful click. Then she stepped away from the bone creature, which watched her in skeletal silence; away from her mother, too, by a couple more steps. Silent and somber in her focus, she wove her now-free hand through the air... and in its wake came shadows. They wreathed her, rolling off her like a stormcloud, and as she turned to peer at her mother--as if to ask if she'd done well--her eyes glowed silver in their depths.

Giggle froze up a little.

She stared at her child, first sidelong and then head-on. To say a chill ran through her wouldn't have been a lie, but--Grishia was still watching her with a cub's earnest hope of impressing their mother. There wasn't anything sinister about it, but Giggle couldn't help but wonder: is this to do with the Visitor's gift? Was that part of it, having a child who could not only repel but control those shadows..? Was Grishia here to protect them all?

She smiled, forcing it at first, but then it came naturally. "That's really impressive. I can't even do that," she told her, quietly. A nod, and then she eyed over the rolling shadows. "So let me tell you the rest of the story! Omen found me. It's good to have a familiar. A pet, a friend. Someone to go in and out of the shadows, and Omen can do that. And she brought Kerberos. You'll meet him. He's one of the Bonebound, and he brought me out of the dark. The rest of us were all there--all the Bonebound, and then some. They went and turned the lights back on! The lights have gone out a few times..."

Giggle went on, telling her about the white wolf, Kera, whom Giggle predicted (in the bones, of course) would return lights to the cave--she'd called her Lightbringer or some such, and her prophecy had indeed come to pass. She told her of the eyes, of Senka--in passing, sketching detail--and Vathrahi. Of the generator. Of her passing through dreams to speak with others...

And all the while, Grishia stood there, a light in one hand and her body steeped in shadows.

Grishia listened intently. She let the shadows fall away, her mind wandering with her mother's words.

She found it hard to picture things she'd never seen before. But as she listened, she knelt, and began to sketch a black-clawed finger along the ground.

She drew, half-absently, images on the bare, black rock. Below the mist, in the thin layer of dust and dirt, her claw marked scenes: creatures among bones, a cat with no fur, eyes in the shadows. And at some point, as Grishia worked, light began to trail in the wake of her claw.

A soft blue-green glow flickered there, gleaming, the scenes she imagined taking shape. They weren't perfect, or even accurate; but they were a child's interpretation of her mother's stories. A generator poorly drawn, with the wheel lopsided; a 'wolf,' in this case with gratuitous wings. When Giggle had finished Grishia looked up from where she was now squatting, peering at her as if to ask: was the story over..?

Giggle, finishing her tail, paused and looked down. She'd been looking at Grishia already, but she'd looked away partway through, her mind wandering--and she was stunned into silence for a beat as she stared down.

Stared at the rock. At the light. At the magic she had never seen before, that her child had created. "Is that-?" she asked, brow furrowing. She drew closer.

Her own magicka flickered outward, touching the painted imagery, but... Giggle could sense nothing of it. Not whether it was arcane or something else entirely: it had no... taste, so to speak. She furrowed her brow, eyeing it over, and her expression cleared as she looked back to Grishia. "That's amazing, kiddo," she said, smiling. She looked at the winged wolf and the fucked-up water wheel. "Exactly as I remember it." A secret grin crossed her face, and she nudged Grishia gently. "C'mon. We can go back and you can show all this new magic to your siblings, huh? You're doing great. Keep it up, and you'll be the strongest Bone Witch in the caves--after your old mom, of course."

They'd spent enough time here. Too much, she felt.

She nudged Grishia forward, watching her child pick up the oversized staff, watching her guide her bone pet back toward Canis--and with a last glance up at the awful carving, and another back at the glowing artwork on the floor (what IS that?) she set off toward home.

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