ORIGIN - Babe: Pig in the Tunnel [HATCHING]

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Hog tilts her head left and then right, eventually finding a way to catch just a glimpse of Rei's feet on her back. So, that's what that weight was. She still couldn't look up, but if she tilted her head to one side, she could just about see upwards, not directly up, but just enough to catch a glimpse of a few degrees higher than her typical eyeline.

She didn't make any complaint about being ridden, her subconscious reasoned; that if she couldn't look up, perhaps having Rei here would warn her about those big things he spoke of. Not to mention, she quite liked his company. He knew so much.

"A river," she started as she trotted her way towards the brighter opening of the Polaris, it'd take awhile on such small trotters. "And the blue thing, and the big things. But, I get to feel excited? All the time?"

Hog hums, the noise coming out as a tuneless grunt, "I think it's really nice to be excited. I like it! I think I was excited when I saw you."

Her teeth gnash idly as she quite literally chews the thought over. It was nice to be excited, she'd felt tingly and light, as if her trotters could take her as far as she'd ever dreamed. Excitement was good, she concluded, she'd like to be excited again; it only brought her wonderful experiences so far, in her sparse moments since emerging.

"I'd like to be excited even more!" One thought, one nasty little thought wriggles its way into her immediate attention. She didn't know anything about Rei, and that didn't feel good. It made her throat feel tight with an odd cloying sensation, so she settled to amend that. It was easy. She'd feel good again, right? And she'd know more about her new companion. This 'friend' stuff was easy! "Do you like to be excited too?"

@Rei

"I think so," Rei said slowly, contemplatively. He tried to think about the things he got excited for-- food, water, sometimes a nice shiny thing he found. "Sometimes it feels like a lot, though."

As Hog started plodding forward, Rei let himself relax up there on the top of her head. He nestled down, firmly loafing. It wasn't often he got to be off his feet-- even when he slept, he often felt a little on edge. He liked to have the ability to start skittering and flapping away if he were in danger. He didn't feel very 'in danger' here, though. He trusted Hog to listen to him to run, if they had to.

But, surely, they wouldn't have to.

"Sometimes being excited for a really long time gets tiring," he elaborated over the sound of little pig steps. "And then when you try to nap, you feel all buzzy and awful and you don't sleep." He glanced down at her. "You should try napping sometime, it feels nice."

@Hog

"A nap?" Hog's snout wrinkles up at the idea. Why would she want to nap when everything was so exciting a new? How could she possibly sleep when there was everything to see? "I don't know about that.. I've already been napping forever! How am I supposed to do more?"

A perfectly good question, she thought.

Trotters made a rhythmic tapping against the stone, her ears wiggling with the same rhythm. She couldn't wait to see the big place, even if the idea of a big place made her tummy clench all over again.

"What do we do when we get to the big place?" She thought to add, her thoughts already alight with ideas. Would they eat more? Would they see the river? And the blue zappy thing? Would they nap? She hoped not. Not when there was so much to see already.

@Rei

Rei supposed that was a good point-- he wasn't very tired when he'd first woken up, but he definitely didn't like the feeling of being drained and tired, either. "I nap whenever it goes dark," he said. "It gets hard to see, and you get sleepy."

What would they do, though? "We can try to find tasty things," he said. "Lots of people go through it and they eat, so they leave little bits we can eat without having to hunt. Hunting is hard because we're small and everything else is big. And if we can't find anything we can eat more crawlies."

He'd offer fish, but he didn't want to go near the river again.

"And then... I don't know," he said. "Whatever we want?" He didn't really do much other than wander, eat and sleep. "Sometimes I go walking around until I find something shiny and then I take it back to where I sleep."

@Hog

Hog had so many more questions, but a nagging feeling told her to slow down a little. Even if she was dying to know why it goes dark and what they do when it gets dark.

"Can we talk to those people too? Are they all nice, like you?" She instead asks, eyes focused on the path ahead, her voice lilts with a genuine curiosity. "Even if they are big?"

She feels like she has to add that last question, the idea of big things sent off a feeling of warning in her head, though she couldn't pin down the reason for it. Big things could be friends too, surely. Or could big things not be filled with friendship because they were too big that it was so small to them? Maybe the big things would squash them under their big friendship, and that wouldn't be good either.

"What are shiny things?" She also adds, Rei seems to like these shiny things, so maybe she should like them too.

@Rei

"I've never spoken to them," Rei admitted. It seemed like a good idea to steer clear, actually, especially if they were taking down deer and eating them. He surmised that getting eaten would be bad. "But maybe we could try?"

It did seem like something that would be easier to do with a friend. The things that got hunted and eaten were usually alone, so maybe if they were together, other gembound would be less like to turn and try to eat them. It might also be a good idea to talk to them when they weren't eating or hunting, but Rei kept that particular thought to himself for now.

Hog's next question had pulled him out of that particular thought. He echoed a brief brr-like noise before answering, "shiny things are things that are shiny," very matter-of-factly. He turned on her head, feet tippy-tapping as he gestured vaguely towards Hog's shattered chrysalis. "The thing you were napping in was a shiny thing," he added, indicating to the smooth shards of golden pearl.

"I came out of a shiny thing, too," he said. "And the crawlies come out of a shiny thing. And the bigger things, too. I think everyone does, so there's lots of shiny things everywhere."

@Hog

Hog has to turn full-bodied to see what Rei had been gesturing to, turning this piglet-ship a half rotation to look back the way they'd came. "Should we take some? If shinies are good, and there's some right there." She reasons, tilting her head to the side. "I'm not using it anymore, so you can have a shiny for your nap spot!"

At least, she was fairly certain she didn't need it anymore. There was no particular feeling of attachment to the remnants, they were simply there.

"Are all shinies the same?" The thought had bubbled to the surface and complete bypassed what little filter she had. Her eyes widened as she hadn't expected the thought to leave her mouth. "I-- I didn't see one on the skitter thing. Did I miss it? Are they all yellow?" Not yellow, her subconscious suggested, but gold. "Gold? Are they different colours?"

There was so much to know, the thought of befriending big things had left her mind as quickly as these new ones had came in. There was a deep knot feeling in her stomach again, this time there wasn't a word for it, just an almost painful awareness that this place was big. Huge. With so many multitudes inside of it.

Hog stops in her tracks, she realises, she feels small.

@Rei

Rei shook his head, not that Hog could see it. "No, they're not all the same," he said. It was a short journey to flutter over and pick up a tiny little shard of golden pearl in his beak. He hopped back quickly and fluttered back up onto the helm of the SS Piglet and settled back down, angling his mouth downwards to hold the shard in his foot. "The things that we sleep in feel different from the things that are in us. The things that are in us are... cold. Mine is blue, yours is yellow."

He bent, then, tapping his beak against the little gemstone embedded into her ear. Tip, tip. "Yours is here, and mine is on my back. The skitter-thing had one, too, but it was probably really small and you didn't notice." He didn't seem bothered that she'd swallowed the gemstone, which was a good indicator that she shouldn't really be concerned about it, either. "The ones that are in us are kind of warm until they're off us," he went on. "When they're off us, they're really cold and it's kind of gross to touch them, so I don't keep those."

Settled, Rei was prepared for the trip to Polaris again. He hadn't realized there was something up with Hog until she stopped in her tracks again. He looked down quizzically, lifting himself back up onto his feet to tip his head upside down to look at her eye. "What's wrong?"

@Hog

The tapping on her gemstone causes Hog to blink, returning from the thoughts that momentarily consumed her. Those big thoughts, much too complex and disheartening for a gembound her age.

S. S. Piglet makes another full 180 turn, back on track to Polaris. She uses the moment to stall, to gather her thoughts into words. "I feel small. It feels like there's too much to know and I'm not big enough for it." Her trotters resume their toddling in the direction of the bright cave mouth. "Does it make you feel little too?"

"Or.. did you just know it all? When you came out of your shiny?" Hog's eyes lift up, to look at Rei; a dangerous task for the person steering the piglet ship through slippery tunnels. "It feels like there's too much and-- and I'll never know it all!" She huffs, turning her eyes back to the path, brows scrunching.

Her bottom lip sticks out slightly, looking all the part of a petulant youngling. "It's not fair!" She grouses, her mood soured, albeit harmlessly. The movement is good, the walking, she picks up the pace a little; it makes the tense feeling inside feel just a tiny bit better.

@Rei

Honestly, Rei had never really thought about it that way. He often thought about little individual things about himself: if his feathers sat right, if his face was too scruffy, if he smelled bad-- but he'd never quite thought about himself in comparison to how big everything else was.

"Well, I am little," he said slowly. "I'm littler than you are." Though, he supposed that wasn't really the point.

Hiking himself back upright as Hog went trotting forward, he considered a little more. There was some deep-rooted feeling in his gut telling him he had to find a way to make Hog feel better. He knew she didn't have any friends other than him yet, and he sure didn't have any other friends yet, either.

His wings flapped once to keep himself centered as she picked up the pace. "No, I didn't know everything," he admitted quickly, his foot stumbling around the shard of gold pearl to stop it from falling overboard. "I knew some things, like... you can eat crawlies and my name is Rei. I had to figure out everything that I know, and I don't even know what I don't know. That makes me feel small."

"But," he went on. "What else can you do about it? I don't know everything. That's okay. One day I'll figure it out. One day, you'll figure out something I don't know, and you'll tell me about it. And because there's two of us, we'll figure things out twice as fast."

That's what friends are for, he was fairly certain.

@Hog

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