ORIGIN - Babe: Pig in the Tunnel [HATCHING]

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Rei had been right. In all her several minutes knowing him, he'd always been right so far. He was small, but that confused her further, he didn't feel small. He felt huge, a fountain of knowing that she couldn't yet wrap her head around. She felt lucky to have met him, otherwise she would've been stuck not knowing forever and ever!

"I suppose you are littler, but," she didn't finish the thought. Letting it trail off to close as she considered his other pieces of wisdom. It was a sound argument, but she couldn't shake the feeling that it just wasn't fair somehow. It was okay to figure it out slowly and not know it all day one, but if there was already things so much bigger than them, then they'd both always be on the back foot.

"Maybe we can't do anything about it," she concedes eventually, not really having any idea what they were supposed to do about it. "Maybe, we can learn everything together, and then we can be the cleverest in all the.. this place!" She parrots back to Rei, though obviously unable to look at him.

That felt better, that they could achieve something together, she didn't feel so small when there was two of them that could put their heads together. She may not know anything yet, and that still made her tummy feel funny, but Rei was still correct.

They'd have to be the best, and learn everything together. "We'll be so good at figuring it out that all the other smalls can come to us, and we can help!" She nods firmly, her voice sounding much brighter as it reverberates around the cave.

Just like that, her mood seems to be lifted. She hoped it would always be this easy.

@Rei

Something about that really resonated with him.

Helping other people, maybe even smaller than he was, helping them understand and eat and learn. There was some profound sense that it was his entire purpose to do just that: which in turn came with a sort of feeling of baby's first existentialism.

Which he shook off, because he was all of seven days old and you could just do that, when you're that young.

"That's a good idea," he said, and he genuinely thought so. He didn't care about being most clever, of course-- just helping people who needed it. "We'll have to figure out lots more things."

But where would you even start? Like Rei had said, he didn't even know what he didn't know. His nail tapped against the shard of pearl thoughtfully, but soon, he shrugged that thought off, too. "Maybe if we wander long enough, we'll figure out more things."

Then, an idea occured to him. "You could help me figure out what the churny-thing is."

@Hog

"Yeah!" Hog yelled in her excitement, though the sound of her voice bouncing off the cave walls seemed to give her pause enough to lower her voice when she spoke next. "If we wander really good, we'll know everything!"

And that, was perfectly sound logic to someone who had barely seen the outside of her chrysalis; after all, how much could there really be anyway? They were almost at the end of the tunnel and that had taken only a little bit of their time.

"What's the churny-thing?" She asked, looking with her eyes upward, not that she could see Rei, but if felt good to look in his direction regardless. "Is it like the river?"

@Rei

"It's a thing that churns," Rei said matter-of-factly. "It's in the water and it makes noises, and it has things spinning in it. I don't know what it does." It'd actually been quite difficult to get a look at it. The water was knee-deep to most things, but Rei was knee-heigh to most things, too. Not to mention the golems that frequently passed by.

After a beat, he considered, "It must be important. I'll show you it."

He indicated forward, into Polaris. "It's in there, in the big room. There's a river you shouldn't go into, but there's a shallow part where you can stand. I can't stand in it," he added, because he was short. "But you can look in it and see things spinning in there."

@Hog

Hog took only a mere moment to consider Rei's words before coming to the conclusion. "We can both stand in it together, just like this!"

It didn't occur to her that Rei may not under what 'this' is, especially when she indicated to nothing. But, in her head, it made perfect sense. They'd stand and look at it together, just as they were now. Especially if her legs were sturdy enough to stand in these shallows.

"And you'll be extra higher up, so you can see everything in there!" She only partially clarifies, seemingly accidentally. With a renewed vigour and high spirits on becoming the bestest and cleverest small-things, she picks up to a full trot through the tunnel.

"Maybe it has shineys in it!" Hog voices her thoughts aloud, "or it's a nest! For a good nap!"

@Rei

"Well, it's low to the ground," he clarified. "So I think you would have a better look at it than I would."

It was dark down there, too. He could only hope that Hog would be able to see anything in there at all. When she mentioned it might be a nest (for a good nap), he blinked. That made a lot of sense. "Maybe it is a nest," Rei said slowly. "for fish. They live in the water."

He then further clarified, "Fish are tasty, but they're hard to catch. Maybe you could take one out of the nest and we could eat it."

'Maybe you could steal someone from their home so we can cannibalize them' was not a crime Rei was familiar with, incidentally.

@Hog

Hog pauses mid-stride, realising the error as Rei explains it. Then simply keeps on trotting along. "Is it hard to see underwater?" She asks, this may be a key part of their grand plan at least. None of the water around here was particularly big enough to put her eye to, which made this increasingly more difficult to gauge.

"Okay! What does the fish look like?" She asks brightly, just a single fish in all the water seemed a bit strange, but it wasn't her place to question Rei's knowledge. It wasn't as if she knew any better.

"Then I know what to grab, if I can see through all the water." She continued, as if that wasn't already plainly obvious.

@Rei

Rei nodded. "It gets dark underwater," he said. "And it's hard to keep your eyes open. You have to hold your breath when you put your face in water, too."

Now, fish. Rei considered for a moment, tredging up days-old memories of his fleeting sights of fish. "They're... wriggly," he decided. "They don't have feet. They have... they look shiny? They sort of... glitter like shiny things, but they're all wet and soft. When they come out of the water they wiggle and they're slimy, and their skin is... ridged. Like it's covered in really thin little rocks."

He considered for a beat, and then continued, "But they're really tasty. You just have to eat around the harder bits under their skin."

Hog wouldn't die to choking on a fishbone today.

@Hog

Hog considered this carefully, and by carefully, she simply held the words in her head a little longer than usual. It wasn't as if she had a solution for either of these problems such as; seeing in the dark and breathing underwater. Yet, she still felt as if it deserved some thought.

"What if I try really, really, hard to see underwater? Or, think really, really, hard about being able to see underwater?" She asks, her eyes peeping upwards, despite it still holding no hope of actually seeing Rei up there.

"Then I can grab the wriggly.. feetless thing! Fish-thing! Because that will work, won't it? I've got big eyes, maybe they're for seeing these things. Just like your feet are for holding and mine are for clip-clopping!" Which was, by her accounts, perfectly sound reasoning. A science, even.

What could possibly go wrong?

@Rei

"Really hard?" Rei echoed thoughtfully. He was pretty sure that he had also tried quite hard to see underwater, but he supposed there was a possibility that he simply... didn't try hard enough.

He bent again, getting a good look at Hog's eyeball. She was a fair ways bigger than he was, which meant her eyes were bigger too-- maybe bigger simply meant... better-seeing. "That could work," the bird said. "But you have to be fast. And strong."

"When they come out of the water, they get really wriggly and they can smack you a lot and it hurts," he went on. "So you have to crunch them quick so they stop moving."

@Hog

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