ORIGIN

Giggle was half-tucked beneath a ledge of woven bones, pulling a couple out bit by bit. The femur here wasn't very good--she'd leave it; there was something sad about it, in its colorless bleach and its cracked holes. It was hardly more than dust, and it wanted to stay here.

Stay here and die.

This one, though--this scapula, belonging to she knew not what; it had a yellow hue to it, still, with the faintest stain of blood and life still clinging to the upper end. She gripped it in her powerful jaws and strained backward, tugging with her muscular body, pulling on it until it broke free. She set this one gently aside. It would--

"Hello? Hello! I'm looking for Giggle..."

The sudden cry--distant, but sharp--startled her, making her snap her head up and right into the bones-damned ledge. With a cackling growl, she winced down, pawing at her poor bashed skull.

The voice was still calling, something about questions, and advice, and with a soft series of spat swears, the hyena lifted the yellowed bone and turned to trot down and meet it.

There was a pile of bodies and bones down the hill; some were fully decayed, others with bits of leathery, flaked flesh still falling away. She stared at it, and then up; there was a vibrating sound coming from it, a strange echoing of purring mumbles, and the hyena--bone still clenched in her teeth--could see a figure up at the very tip.

She spat the bone out, and peered up again, her eyes black pools in her reddish coat.

"I'm Giggle," she began sourly--irritated that she'd bashed her head, but trying to be civil. The possibility that it was a Merrymen spy was also not lost on her but for now, she just held the thought to one side.

"What do you need?"

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Roll the bones.

Giggle eyed the cat for a moment, and then let a soft sigh out through her nose. The thing seemed oddly furless--no, it had fur, it was just the strangest of textures, curled tight and soft against the feline's body.

"Kerberos," she surmised, her voice a deep but quiet rumble. With a grunt, she turned, pawing the scapula and lowering her head to pick it up. First, though, she spoke again.

"No, you didn't interrupt anything--nothing I can't go back to, anyway. My first duty is to the bones, and to read them for anyone who comes. This way, Dovefeather. My bone pile's just down the hill. And tell me, as we go--who is this All-Mother?"

The hyena glanced back with faint curiosity, but really her mind wasn't on the strange phrase. Rather, she was wondering how far the stranger had come, whether she was a threat, a spy, or what have you. Even these were idle thoughts; behind that she was still thinking of the war, of her bones, of the fungus garden that she cultivated.

The cat--though Giggle certainly wasn't being rude to her--was hardly the primary thought on her mind. And so as she made her way down the hill, picking her path past the scattered bones and slippery spots of mud, her demeanor was--perhaps a little rudely--indifferent.

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Roll the bones.

Giggle listened with the detached, vague amusement of someone listening to a madwoman speak. Yet at the same time, she couldn't help but compare what she heard to the fungus that she herself consulted on a daily basis--the stuff that saw through all, knew all, knew what was to come, and spoke of it to her.

And the mention of a mushroom had her glancing back in surprise, whuffing softly through her nose.

Problem was, she couldn't both carry the bone and speak, so she had to wait.

They went down, Giggle leading the way past the bone piles and to her own larger, dark pit filled with them. It was only a shallow basin perhaps a foot deep, but the earth below the bones was darker than the surrounding rock, and it was littered and ringed with slick brown mushrooms.

Giggle spat the scapula out so that it laid alongside the pile, and turned to peer at the cat again.

"How did this all-mother become known to you? And what made you come here, seeking advice? Seeking me--before you met the dog at the door," she added.

Either the cat was mad, or they were holding different pieces of the same puzzle--and if the latter were the case, Giggle wouldn't mind seeing the completed picture.

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Roll the bones.

Giggle listened closely, and instead of moving directly for the bones, she instead quietly sat beside the cat, listening to her every word.

At length, she responded, carefully thinking over her phrasing as she did, and over the concepts she was trying to relay. After all, if the cat had come to her for wisdom--and if she might never see the little feline again, after this--she had to be cautious to give her the exact truth, and not mislead her through clumsily-chosen words.

And so, with a deep breath, she began.

"I see through the fungus, as well. While I have never met anyone who has all the answers, I believe that there are truths, truths we cannot see. But these truths exist, nonetheless, and they bleed through into our world from the world of spirits and ghosts and dreams. We can find those truths in many ways--through listening to those that bridge life and death," she added by way of example, gently prodding a mushroom with her forepaw. She looked back to Dovefeather, continuing. "...or through other ways, such as dreams and visions. I have seen others who can simply tap into magic, and learn the truth. But those--like me--who see through a door, we may never leave that door. We may stand beside it all our lives, the way I stay by my bones, and never leave, never learn what lays beyond. I've only left this cave once in my life, and I'm willing to bet that your friends don't travel very far. Perhaps, if you are a group meant to gather wisdom, then you are the one meant to find knowledge where it's hidden--where your seers would not find it."

The hyena peered at the cat, so tiny by comparison, so earnest and talkative--and still vibrating softly as if filled with rattling pebbles. Giggle hoped that she was making sense. She wasn't sure how to phrase it, but she believed that the world of "other" lay just beyond this one, where mystic knowledge swirled just beyond their senses. She believed that there were many ways to reach it. She hadn't heard of "eyes," nor of an All-Mother, nor of a group of Seers who saw in different ways--to be sure, she was interested in meeting them, in hearing what they had to say.

But the universal truth remained, regardless of her ignorance of the rest of what Dovefeather said, and so she had shared it: that knowledge could be found in many ways, but that the wisest were often those who simply travelled, and heard what others had to say.

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Roll the bones.

With a heaving yawn, the wild dog woke up. The first thing he noticed was that he was alone, there was no Giggle and there was no Kerberos. The second thing he noticed was that he began to panic. He hated being alone, especially now when he felt virutally useless and defenseless.

Stumbling, the injured dog rose to his paws. His back legs shook and his tail was limp. Who would he look for first? He knew Kerberos would be by Tunnel K-- he seemed to like that area. Giggle would hopefully be by the bones. The bones were closer, so he started there. Limping out the cave the dog quickly stuck his face in a pool of water before he limped over towards where the ceiling nearly touched the floor.

And sure enough, she was. With a stranger, a tiny little... thing. Bones slowly sat down and watched the two in silence, huge ears pricked up. Although he was begining to near his fourth cycle, he still had the features of a pup. Maybe not a bad thing, but with the new scars sprawled along his body his head looked like it should be on a completely different gembound.