ORIGIN

Leo was a far cry from Jim's usual haunt, Monoceros. The humidity here was a novel feeling: the moisture in the air felt like it was almost a living creature that touched him with its warm sticky fingers. It was certainly an experience, but... not an unpleasant one? At least, for now. Jim was a firm believer that one needed to get out and go try some new things once in a while, and as far as new things went, the beach was possibly one of the best places to be.

The sand, too, was a novel sensation on his feet. Jim pressed his long, sticky toes into it, feeling the grains trickle between each toe. This, however, might have been less unpleasant when he still had dry, non-sticky paw pads. As it was, he knew he'd have to obsessively wash out each individual grain once he was done here.

Just as Jim was getting into the zone—that was to say, zoning out staring at the rock stacks rising from the water in the distance (hey, he couldn't help but appreciate rocks as someone attuned to rock magic himself)—there was a sharp pinch on one of his toes. "OW!" he yipped, wrenching out his paw from deep in the (warm, warm) sand. The offender?

A wriggling iridescent Lesser Snake (technically a lizard, if you wanted to get pedantic about it, and there was no one more pedantic than Jim), its mouth attached to one of his long, gecko-like toes. Apparently, it must have resembled a delicious worm... or something.

Jim frowned down at the lizard attached firmly to his toe. It was shaking its mouth around, trying to swallow the 'worm' it'd caught as if it could possibly fit the entirety of... Jim... down its throat. "Silly thing," he sniffed. It looked rather plump compared to the ones that could be found in Monoceros. Probably because of the abundance of food here, Jim thought. Life must come easy to the Lesser Gembound living here, which was probably why this lizard was foolish enough to grab onto what was obviously a predator.

However, it was not too late to turn woe to weal. Jim leaned down and tried to snatch the little lizard up in his mouth. Talk about how the turntables. But his midday snack was not to be. As soon as his shadow loomed over the lizard, its survival instincts finally kicked in and it let go, scampering away across the sand. Jim considered giving chase, but... ah, it was nice and sunny and he was feeling rather lazy. Whatever.

Although he still wanted to let his feet sink into the warm sand, Jim would be more cautious about where he stuck his toes this time. There was no such thing as superfluous caution when he'd already been bitten once. He pawed at the sand, sifting through it carefully to see if there were any other hidden creatures waiting in ambush.

Grains spilled through his toes, but nothing of interest came up besides a few broken shells and a interestingly-shaped stick. Satisfied with the safety of his chosen spot, Jim settled down and found a comfortable position to curl up in. The orb-light shone down warmly, and he closed his eyes to bask in its heat.

After a while the heat began to become uncomfortable, prickling at his skin. Reluctantly, Jim got up and began to seek other places to wander. The water sparkled invitingly, and Jim was a bit thirsty, so he headed toward it. Small waves lapped at his legs as he waded in, the temperature just barely lukewarm. It was refreshing when he drank it, and also very normal. Nothing out of the ordinary at all.

Hmm. Where to next? Well, Jim could use a snack right about now after missing that lizard earlier, but there were also these rocky pools along the beach he wanted to check out. They don't have these back in Monoceros. He could catch something closer to the jungle later—he didn't really have a taste for fish; they were too slimy—but why not do this first, since it was closer?

He padded over to the first of a series of pools and peered inside. There was a bunch of shellfish—luckbites, he believed, though it was also kind of silly to call a bunch of creatures that looked so different the same thing—but not much else, apart from a stray bubble on the surface that refused to pop. Moving onto the next one: more luckbites, and a cute crab-shaped creature. It already had several random pieces of stuff affixed to its shell: some pieces of kelp, fragments of some creature's shell, and an actual small pebble. Jim lifted a paw, intending to lift it up and examine it further, then paused. He had brushed against something in the waves, he was sure.

He looked down. Sure enough, there was something bobbing in the water. A shard of gemstone, it looked like, and when Jim carefully wrapped gecko-like fingers around it and brought it close to his face he saw that it glinted with violet iridescence in the midday sun. That looked familiar—where had he seen it before?

Ah! He remembered now! Some of those... beasts that wandered the cave had features, and gemstones, that bore a striking resemblance to this shard here. Jim's snout wrinkled and his expression looked even more exasperated and disappointed than usual. He didn't know who insisted on raising their spawn like this, giant and powerful yet with no regard for the order of the caves or respect for neighbors. They just rampaged all over, didn't they? It was why he mostly kept to Monoceros. Who wanted to deal with these people when you could... not?

He turned the Oilstone shard over in his fingers thoughtfully. Whoever this belonged to was 1) rather large, judging by the size of the stone itself, and 2) either dead, or had died temporarily as they returned to their chrysalis and this was what was left of either possibility. Well, that was a shame for them, but Jim thought it was all rather avoidable. He'd never died either permanently or temporarily, and that was because he had a good head on his shoulders and some common sense about him.

Now that he thought about it, he vaguely remembered some nonsense drama about someone who called themselves a Mother or whatever. Creatures with clear gemstones and symmetrical features who also tended to get into fights and leave messes in their neighbor's spaces. Extremely smelly fungal messes. Hah! As if any self-respecting Mother would let her children leave the nest without learning basic manners. Hell, Jim could do better than that.

... He could do better than that, he bet. Ah, who cared about fighting over silly stuff like what color your stone was when you could all just get along with your neighbors? He'd show that Mother and those Masters how to raise a proper family. Or he wouldn't. He wouldn't show them, because frankly minding his own business was enough trouble as it was and he didn't need more people sticking their noses into his, but he would prove that it could be done anyway. The idea took root in his head now, and if there was one thing about Jim it was that he was as stubborn as the rocks he had a magical affinity with. He began to walk up and down the beach, searching for a clearstone shard, if one was here at all. Now that he thought about it, there was a battle here some cycles ago; that was probably the source of the oilstone chrysalis, too, which meant that his search would hopefully not be futile. Or it would, if the clearstone creatures were somehow better at avoiding death than the oilstone ones, but Jim really doubted it. Judging from what he'd heard about both sides thus far.

And what do you know? He was right. Buried in the sand was a clearstone chrysalis shard. Also large, also jagged, also fitting perfectly into his newfangled plan.

It occurred to Jim that though unlikely (as he had been practicing his magic every day like a daily stretch*), it was possible that the magic to make some new child out of the stones could fail. Jim never took any risks. He was not a gambler, he made backup plans, he lived a very normal and boring life with multiple alternative options he could take at any time should one thing not go his way. This was why he was a very patient and successful creature. Others would do well to learn from him.

Where was he? Oh, right, backup plans. He combed through the sand, searching for a second clearstone crystal next to the first. If they had indeed come from a chrysalis, it would make logical sense that shards would be found nearby each other, unless the waves had slowly washed them to different places over the cycles. Well, either they hadn't or the waves had put two of them in the same place by chance, because there was a second small piece glimmering through the sand not far from the first. Jim pawed at the sand and dug it out.

He hadn't thought of this back when he'd encountered the oilstone shard, though, and even if he had the way it'd been floating in the waves likely meant that it had already been washed away from the original chrysalis site anyway. However. Did I mention that Jim was stubborn persistent as a pile of rocks? Yeah.

He walked along the beach, apparently in no great hurry, peering into tidepools (there were some more sick-looking decorator crabs, which he often stopped to admire, and on one occasion a curly orange-ish crustacean with many segments that he could not recall the name for), but no gemstones. Unless you counted that one shiny green one a crab had glued onto its shell, but that wasn't what Jim was looking for anyway.

Despite his failure, the fox seemed unbothered. Happy, even. He'd seen a lot of cool new things on this vacation, and he was having, dare I say it, a good time. Who didn't enjoy a good old beach episode?

Jim was embarking on a sidequest of sorts when the second oilstone shard showed itself. The three other shards were set to the side, and he was molding wet sand into something resembling a.... castle? with his long, sticky fingers. When his next scoop of sand came with a little something extra: another piece of iridescent dark gemstone. Jim examined it carefully, and when he was satisfied it had the same appearance as oilstone should, he set it aside with the other and continued to build his castle.

It was important to keep up one's work-life balance, after all.

Finally satisfied with his sand castle, Jim stepped back and took a moment to admire his handiwork. Then, in a rare show of playfulness, he jumped up in the air and dove down at it, knocking it right back into the sand it came from. Now it kind of resembled the ruins in Orion.

He took another few swipes at it, jumping back and forth and acting as though it were some kind of prey or fight opponent, until it had totally crumbled away. Then he shook himself off—the sand grains were hard to get out of his pelt and toes entirely, so he resolved to rinse off in a river later. He picked up the crystal shards and padded away, satisfied with how his vacation had gone and feeling that he had about reached the end of his tolerance for this climate.