ORIGIN

For once, she didn't mind the affection of a feline. She let the cat rub on her chin, instead, listening absently to her words.

Booker. That name... she was certain that it meant something. She'd heard it before, but where?

The cat's purring, and words, buzzed like insects in her mind, interrupting her thoughts and sending her sitting, sighing, with a huff.

"Hrm, well I don't think I know him, but I swear I've heard the name. Never mind. Maybe I'll remember, later. Are you planning to leave, now, little one; or would you like to stay for awhile? I could show you how I grow my gardens, perhaps, or take you back to the tunnel's mouth, where Kerberos stands guard. I had something to tell him, but I wonder if you will see what I see, there."

She looked down at the little cat, curious and a bit excited. Truth be told, she'd never had anyone to compare visions to, to double-check with, to test theories against. It could be enlightening--perhaps for both of them.

But then, maybe the cat didn't want to stay. Maybe she was in a rush to leave?

"If you want to go, now--then I would ask, could I meet your friends? Either here--or there? Wherever 'there' may be?"

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Roll the bones.

Giggle let out a short bark of cackling laughter.

"Why, not everything is fated, or predestined," she exclaimed, glancing down at Dovefeather with amusement. "There may be overall threads and patterns but bones, cat, everything is not set in stone. What would be the point of living, if it were?"

With another short laugh, the hyena stood, padding down toward her fungal garden. Down by her den, where the water pooled around the mud and ferns grew, here and there, she'd set up a small nursery of sorts. But for mushrooms.

There was mud, and bones, and bits of rotten wood from trees outside of Canis. There was offal, even, and rotting flesh--and on each of these substrates, another type of mushroom grew.

The hyena glanced at her cat comrade, explaining as she drew up close.

"These brown ones, here, they seem to grow best on dirt, or on shit. If you inhale their spores or eat them, you'll see things--colors, shapes--even hear things, that aren't there. Now these--these reddish-orange ones--they grow on bones, and while they smell like a meaty meal, they taste absolutely terrible. These, over here--the short, dark red ones--those grow on flesh. I'm learning to grow them on real flesh," she added, a little more grimly.

"I've been attacked, here, before--it's necessary to have defenses prepared. Watch."

The hyena turned, trotting over to one of the dead rats she had stashed under the stone behind the fungus, and carried it back over, laying it beside the flesh-eating fungus. Then she sat, eyeing it--forgetting even the purring cat with its odd, almost crystalline teeth--and focused. She felt her mind twine with the whispering life that lurked within the red carpet of growth, felt herself connect, a strange buzzing vibrating in her mind, at her stone. Connecting them. She urged the fungus to grow, and to spread.

Instead, though, the red fungus seemed to simply consume its own meat quicker, the flesh on the bone it'd been growing on dissipating, until half the fungus rotted away from overgrowth without nutrients. The hyena sighed through her nose, glancing wryly at the cat.

"Well. That's not what it was supposed to do, but that's why I practice."

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Roll the bones.

Giggle tilted her head.

"I think that anything sentient is by default not a god, or an 'all-mother,'" she answered, though her tone was almost absent and not mocking. She was simply holding conversation, though it was clear that she seemed to, at least for the most part and for now, dismiss the concept of a guiding deity.

"For example, fungus holds many answers, and holds many secrets--but would it call me a god, for controlling it? What if I were to tell you I hadn't meant to do that at all, that I failed? That the best I can do is precisely that--guide it? Do you think your All-Mother might be something like that--fallible?"

The hyena looked at Dovefeather rather seriously.

"Be careful what you attribute godhood to, little cat. Something that holds secrets and gives guidance may not want to be considered eternal, immortal and omniscient. She may just be a helping hand. I say this because your words seem to be falling close to the point of no return," Giggle added, matter-of-factly.

"If you think of every hardship as a trial she has sent, every happening as something she has wrought, then you'll blind yourself to other possibilities. For example, that hunger is merely that--hunger."

Giggle snorted softly, leaning forward and tearing into a second rat, gulping and crunching half of it down. She offered the other half to Dovefeather, ever the hospitable host, but her thoughts as she did so--though her expression was only mildly polite--were both grim and wry.

It seems all cats truly are crazy, then.
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Roll the bones.

Giggle listened, quiet, as the cat spoke. She turned her head on its long and muscular neck to watch her as she paced, eyes closed, from place to place.

When finally the cat fell silent, she thought it all over.

She had to admit to herself that she was rather surprised that the cat was willing to, if not concede a point, to admit that her "All-Mother" was not infallible. Giggle had somehow pictured the little feline growing defensive, aggressive, zealously arguing that this All Mother knew all, saw all, was all, controlled all.

The hyena was both pleased to be wrong, and ready to try to learn more of Dovefeather's beliefs--if only out of politeness. Still, something the cat had said struck her as interesting, and she tilted her head again, peering at her.

"She needs us? Do you think your All-Mother is in danger of some kind? Trapped?"

She thought about it, and then added another question--or, rather, more of a request.

"Do you think you could take me to her? Or, rather, where you think that she is?"

The hyena wasn't sure how far Eridanus was, but it would certainly be worth the journey--to sate her curiosity, at the very least.

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Roll the bones.

The paranoia of the cat was refreshing. She was not only aware that her All-Mother might not be a god--but was aware that she might be outright using her and her companions. With a pleased snort, the hyena eyed Dovefeather with new perspective.

It was not lost on her that the cat seemed to be eyeing her up equally, as if searching for something, as if considering, and Giggle suddenly broke into a raucous cackle. She padded forward, giving the kitten a cursory lick over the head--brief, but good-natured--before making her way off toward the distant tunnel.

"You're more perceptive, and more cynical, than I could've hoped for. I'm glad your All-Mother doesn't have doting, mindless fools worshiping her," Giggle said drily. At the same time, she wondered if the kitten wasn't just telling her what she wanted to hear. Maybe they went through the caves, finding the lonely and the curious and bringing them back to see some god, only to be eaten by a larger predator.

Giggle found the idea amusing, and wondered vaguely if she could implement something like that with the Bonebound--except, well, they didn't really have any larger predators except for Kerberos, who truth be told, might be unbalanced by it.

Ahh, well.

"Let's go into the tunnel, and tell me what you sense, there--what you See. It's a mystery to me, and one that speaks volumes, but I am curious to know what another might make of it, if you have the time. Perhaps, after that, or some other time, you can take me to the All-Mother."

Giggle glanced back, her own amusement, or perhaps malice of some kind, glittering in her dark eyes.

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Roll the bones.