ORIGIN

Wolfhound had, for nearly an hour, tried to sit on Orion's throne. This was mostly Furud's doing; he wanted to SIT on the CHAIR, even though the other heads had (with dwindling patience) tried repeatedly to explain that their body was not designed for it. They were quadrupedal. They had a very long tail on their butt, which they were pretty sure was the part that went on the chair bit. And even if they could sit upright, they had wings.

Furud didn't care, and he'd been promised the day to choose their activities, so eventually the other heads had given up and held conversations amongst themselves while they let him grunt and squirm and fail to sit in the chair.

When they left the throne, it wasn't because Furud had admitted failure. It was because he'd lost interest, his attention drawn by a new challenge: climbing the Tower. This went as well as one might expect; he kept falling off halfway up. The other heads whispered amongst themselves quizzically: they shared control of the body but surely... Furud knew... that they could fly?

He probably just wanted the challenge, they'd reasoned, and now that had brought them here. Furud was currently trying to scale the cliffs, the other heads doing the minimum to help out, still impatiently indulging him as one would while babysitting a particularly rambunctious child.

Wolfhound was not, on the whole, hard to miss. They'd been all over Orion today, and for those who couldn't see their starlit body (either because of the dim lighting, or something else) would surely hear the scrabbling claws on rock, the loud grunts, and the sounds of multiple voices as the others spoke of other things.

"Almost... THERE."

"It feels almost... like there's latent magic. Sirius?"
"I don't feel it. Or... no more than any place else. Not like Polaris, I should think."

"FUCK." (Cue the sound of crumbling rock as Wolfhound's heavy body broke away part of a ledge. They nearly fell, until the leathery thud of wings caught them and returned them to the rock slab just below.)

"...Anyway, I'm not sure it's like that. It's almost like. Hmm. Memories?"
"...Furud, are you all right?"
"I don't feel it. Are you certain you aren't imagining what you want to feel? I do not think-"

"FINE. Ugh. Why is this so HARD. -Do you think there's food up there?"

...and so forth.

A voice! A stranger! All four heads turned, one blinking in surprise, another sharply observant, one hungry, one friendly. (Furud's was the hungry one; no points for guessing that one right.)

At once, the hydra turned, clambering back down the wall (now mutually controlled by all of them); it was the kindly Adhara who called out, so as not to seem ominous to the stranger. "Us? We are healthy. We are one, but with many heads. I'm Adhara; we mean no harm." She glanced at the eye-rubbing, and misinterpreted. Was this stranger injured, somehow? "Are your eyes all right?"

Furud, staring with twinned greed and suspicion now, interrupted. "Do you have food?!" he demanded, loudly. A third head, Mirzim, winced and glanced at him, her voice kept quiet but stern. "Furud, not now... That's not appropriate."

The last head, the quietest, now spoke. His voice was deeper and clearer than the rest, well-spoken and almost authoritative. "We are, together, called Wolfhound--to make it easier to remember, if you wish. Were we disturbing?" he asked. Wolfhound as a whole was approaching closer, now, and came to a halt a few paces off, each head inspecting Aurelle with its own varied perspective.

Whether it was appropriate, or maybe a little insulting, three of the hydra's four heads subtly changed demeanor upon learning that Aurelle's eyes did not, in fact, function. It was relatively subtle, and more body language than anything; rather than looming, direct, all but Furud instead became more careful, more delicate in their movements. Sirius, despite his aloof tone, looked the most surprised and now even worried, glancing down and shuffling his feet back a tiny bit just in case Aurelle tripped over their claws, or something.

All four, though, echoed a "Hello," led by Sirius; Adhara's voice was warm.

"Oh, no, you needn't-"
"Don't listen to him. We can-"
"Ahh, Furud is just-"

All three tried, voices overlapping, to gently forego the offer of food. Furud interrupted them all, loud. "MEAT. And FISH. Bones, sometimes. Or anything!" The distinct sound of him licking his jaws hopefully was followed by soft sighs from a couple of the other heads.

"Thank you, though. I'm glad we didn't bother you," Adhara offered.
"We are a little crowd, yes. Mirzim. The hungry one is Furud."
"KING BONE-GNAW."
"He is not a king."
"Sirius. A pleasure, though I imagine ours more than yours, at this point. May I ask if you live here?" This head sounded curious; he was studying Aurelle, wondering what sort of creature she might be.

The heads debated, for a moment, in hushed tones. At first, it was all three trying to convince both Furud and Aurelle that food could wait. It turned into bargaining a moment later; the three extracted a promise that Furud would be quiet once they ate, and let the rest actually have a conversation with their new friend, for once. The bargain struck, their souls sold to hunting damnation, they set off.

"We won't be long, hopefully," Adhara offered kindly.

A shadow shifted over their form as they moved off, cloaking them a little, not that Aurelle could see it. A few long minutes passed: a search via nose and eyes, a brief chase and a kill. Furud did most of the eating, but when Wolfhound returned, it was with a prime deer haunch in Adhara's teeth. Mirzim cleared her throat.

"Aurelle? -Did you want a bit? We have some meat, here. Thank you, incidentally." Her words were friendly enough, but not so warm as Adhara's and far more precise, almost primly proper.

"...Assuming you eat meat? I don't think I've ever seen someone with your... shape," Sirius said, settling on the last word after a pause. What the hell did someone call a vague species conglomeration of body configurations? He'd been called a hydra, and he knew vaguely what sort of shape encompassed, for example, 'deer,' but Wolfhound had definitely never met an elf before.

Some of the hydra's heads began to eat. Mirzim eyed Aurelle, though, now curious. "If you don't hunt, and you cannot see--may I ask how you find your food?" Her voice held a tentative note. She wasn't sure if it was a rude question, but she was trying to picture how someone might find things like vegetables or mushrooms if unable to see them. Did she feel her way along the ground, or-

"I bet she hears 'em," Furud interrupted (around a mouthful of meat), eyeing Aurelle's ears.

Sirius blinked and craned his head to peer at his idiot body-sibling. "I don't believe that's how vegetables work, Furud." His tone was quite dry.

As to the elf's question: "We've been called a hydra, but we're not sure, either. Not really."

"Mm," Mirzim agreed cheerfully, swallowing a bite. "I think it's mostly guesswork, anyway. What makes a bird a bird? There's a lot of creatures that fly that aren't birds. And a lot of birds that don't fly. -Though I've never seen one without feathers," she mused, and Sirius snorted at this off-topic meander.

"Are you... good, for finding food?" Adhara asked, hesitantly, after studying Aurelle for a moment. "If you'd like to set up a stash, or something, maybe we can help-? If you need that, of course," she hastened to add. Again: was she being rude? It seemed an odd thing, maybe, for the hydra to be concerned with, being rude. But something about Aurelle seemed to prompt it. She was so serene and polite on her end that to insult her seemed especially cruel.