ORIGIN

The Bonecaster of Canis had a great many responsibilities. One was advising her leader, the Bone King, a lammergeier who gathered and led one of the largest gathered Gembound groups in Canis: the Bonebound. Another was to tell the fortunes of all who came to her, which meant gathering and tending a large collection of bones for her soothsaying. Yet another responsibility, one she'd taken on of her own accord, was the gathering, cataloguing and cultivation of a variety of types of fungus--as well as experiments on their effects.

Last of all was the tendency she had to pick up young, stray Gembound and mother them, offering them food, and warmth, and safety in numbers, and giving them a place to stay at her den. More often than not it also meant looking after them when they were injured, teaching them what she could, and generally being a rather ugly maternal figure with a face that only her children could love.

That face was littered with scars, scars that had once been brutal lacerations over her face. The hyena's coat was matted with dried blood, gore and fungal growth, so that at any given time she could call upon most of the types of mushrooms that she used in combat or for healing.

Right now, though, her mind wasn't on her babies, or the bones, or the fungus. Instead she was padding around the far edges of Canis, dark eyes fixed on the rock below.

But is it rock? What could leave prints in stone? What is so big? Or was this stone liquid, once? Maybe it wasn't stone at all?

She was a gatherer of knowledge above all else, a seeker who wished to learn and to know everything. And these prints, she'd found, were a mystery to her. They weren't from paws, nor hooves, and she found herself placing her own forepaw into their hollow shells time and time again to test their size. Some were smaller, some bigger.

It was this fascination that had her circling, muttering to herself now and again, her eyes on the rocky floor.

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Roll the bones.

Giggle heard the crash nearby, and the suddenness of it brought her thoughts crashing to a halt just as hard. Jerked from her thoughts, she lifted her head, peering around.

The hell was that?

A soft cry reached the hyena's ears, and faint concern touched her. Was it Bones? He'd been injured, had trouble walking--but it didn't sound like Bones. It sounded smaller, weaker.

She was already trotting forward, tense and alert. It couldn't be Kerberos; he was far too large--and too loud--to have cried out like that. The blind bat or the tiny fox that had once visited her came to mind--but now she had little time left to wonder, for a pile of bones just down the hill from the path was already visible, a cloud of dust rising from them.

The spotted hyena trotted closer, sniffing over the bones--ahh, there.

There was a lion cub--ugh... She detested lions. Something about their stink and their sly and flirty demeanors pissed her off. The were never straightforward, never honest. They were manipulative things. With a sigh, she reached down, trying to grip the cub by the neck and gently pull it back out of the pile and upright before releasing it--even if it scratched her up, a little.

Then she sat back, staring at it.

"Are you all right?" she asked in her deep and raspy voice.

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Roll the bones.

The little thing could speak, then. Giggle grunted.

She had no idea how the lion had managed to get not only over but down into a pile of bones, so deeply that she'd been entangled. Running, maybe? Not looking where she was going? Cubs of all species could be silly. This one was likely no exception.

"How'd you manage to fall into a pile of bones? Never mind. You hungry?" She shoved aside the faint distaste she held, the desire to mock the cub, and instead offered food. There were rats enough near her den, if the thing was hungry. If not, she wasn't sure what to do with it.

Nothing, maybe. It'd be nice to just ignore it and move on.

Damn lions.

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Roll the bones.

Giggle stared blankly for a long moment.

Did she just fucking say "m'lady?"

She stared some more, and finally broke into uproarious laughter for a moment--not at the cub so much as at the situation. Her cackling echoed, eerie, through the cave, ringing from the stone walls and bouncing off the piles of bones that littered the area.

At long last she fell quiet, looking at the lion with dark amusement in her eyes.

"'M'lady?' There's no need to be so formal, lion. I'm Giggle. Come on, then--there's rats this way. What's your name? You got one, yet?"

She turned, padding off toward her den. The path would ramble down through the bones, past her vast bone pit where she told her fortunes, and off to the west wall, where the rats lived. There were large boulders there, places with some greenery, where the rats lived in holes in the rock and stared out with glinting eyes and twitching whiskers.

The hyena was good-natured, for the most part; she glanced back to be sure the lion cub was following, and that it wasn't upset by her cackling or by her amusement at the cub's choice of word. She decided to explain, as they went--just in case.

"You're in a cave filled with bones and scavengers, predators and beasts. Nobody uses flowery language, here. There's the Bone King, but that's about it. Maybe you'd get along with that damn white cat up on her bone tower. She fancies herself a little princess." Realizing that this, too, could be insulting, Giggle sighed to herself.

"Ahh well, everyone is... different. We all need to eat and shit, right? C'mon. Let's get you that food."

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Roll the bones.

"Well, you're a lion. Other than that? You're you." She sounded matter-of-fact, leading the way down to the western walls and the rat holes dotting the rock nearby.

"Right. I don't suppose you've hunted before?"

When Giggle trotted up into the boulders, the sound of scurrying was audible. The rats and cave rats who lived here had found shelter in the water-worn holes beneath the rock, and ventured out in the dimmer cave-light of evening to sneak strips of meat from the bones.

It was a bit of a mystery as to how the hyena could possibly hunt; she couldn't fit into their holes, and she smelled strongly enough that they'd notice her coming a hundred yards away. In fact, she didn't even try to mask the sound of her approach, still speaking at a normal volume.

A moment later, though, she was digging and sniffing beneath one of the boulders, reaching in with a paw and snatching with powerful jaws laid low to the ground, biting at the underneath of the boulder. When a skittering came from the other side, she lunged, leaping around the boulder and bolting low to the ground to try and snatch up the fleeing rodent.

She missed--landing face-first on the stone with a flinching grunt--but the rat bolted directly toward the lion cub, oblivious to Anux in its terror of the reeking hyena.

Would the lion cub try to catch it? Would she be quick enough to?

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Roll the bones.