ORIGIN

Her head cantered to one side upon the mention Monoceros and a creature that lurked in its depth though she knew not what he was saying. With a small hum, Delphine sorted through her thoughts, wondering how best she could go about explaining her situation. "Well, I know not what it is you speak of but of the dragons I know, there was the one in Polaris. He is cruel and black as the night. There is no sense within him, he seemed only to desire chaos." She mused, imparting her impression of the terrible beast unto Dark. "The one who attacked me, as you saw, is a white dragon. Some time after my attack, he sought me out to apologize for what'd happened. It is because of him that we are friends. It is only that at times, he is taken with a sickness of the mind that makes him wanting for blood and when that happens, he can't control himself. It is a shame but he is doing much better now." The young mare simpered when she thought on Baratheon though the owl would never see the joy that lit her features.

Her lips curled into a small frown when the owl admitted the failings of his magic to which she merely bowed her head and gently nudged the avian creature. "I am sure that in time, it will get better. My own magic is a cruel one. I've broken my legs twice because of it." It was a miracle that that was all that'd occurred but alas, they were failures nonetheless. "Were you able to see me though? Or only the dragon?" She inquired curiously.

Dark listened closely and quietly, still flopped against Delphine, commenting only "Same dragon," at the mention of Raheerah in Polaris. After all, he'd sort of assigned himself to watch it for Maji Walezi, often sitting for hours on end at the edge of a tunnel and Raheerah's cave to ensure he wasn't about to come crashing out and devour them all.

As Delphine finished, however, and asked her question, he gave a soft hoot. In lieu of an answer at first he simply hopped up, struggling to carefully climb up the horse's side, using his wings for propulsion rather than gripping with his sharp talons.

He tried to make his way up the thick crest of her neck and to her head, where he explored around a moment before finding her gemstone horns. Here he paused, as if they were what he'd been looking for; he clambered over and lightly gripped one in his talon, using his foot to feel along its length, testing its shape and sharpness, its texture.

Only then did he speak, and explain. "I saw you. I saw these. What are they? How did you break your legs? How did you learn to do magic better? You are black."

His quiet, gentle comments and questions came one after the other without pause, and in a rather nonsensical order, but then Dark fell silent, quietly perching on the horse's head.

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She watched with equal parts fascination and curiosity when the owl shifted and began to ascend unto her back. It was not an unfamiliar gesture on the part of avian creatures and if anything, the young mare found that she had to bite back the sudden joy at Dark's intentions. Though she did not think to share her sentiments, Delphine reveled in the thought that the Gembounds trusted her enough to alight upon her. The motion came with it a level of adoration and intimacy that she oft times hoped to establish with many residents of their small world. That the owl trusted her enough to do so lent her an unimaginable amount of satisfaction.

Wordlessly, she waited as the owl experimentally gripped her still growing horns allowing her only a moment to wonder briefly what they looked like now. "Those are my gem! They're shaped like horns and I think they're still growing, are they strange to you? Where are yours?" Slowly but surely she was growing accustomed to the owl's mannerisms, though quirky and hard to follow. "I tried to control the earth and because I did not concentrate enough, it backfired and instead broke my leg. I learned most of my magic by myself when I was incapacitated for a short period of time, what of you? And yes, I am black."

Again she had not said it but when Dark did not descend from his perch atop her head, the young mare could not help but to smile contentedly. She preferred him there.

Dark had seen a glimpse of Delphine in his rather horrific vision, and so as she asked him about his gem, he found that when he looked into his mind and memory he could see the best way to answer.

He clambered to one side of her head, tilting down so that his head was quite upside-down, peering unseeing directly into her large eye.

"Here!" he hooted softly. "I think! In my eyes." He wasn't sure, but he thought that the cool smooth hardness beneath his lids was a stone--and it was; an emerald, deeply green and glimmering, took up the space of his sinus cavity--at least where his eyes should have been, connected by a narrow band of gem that ran where skull bone should have resided.

But he wasn't interested in talking about himself, it seemed; he held a deep curiosity that had him blinking those unseeing eyes at Delphine, clicking his beak in curiosity.

"You can control the earth? Why were you doing that? Did you control your leg instead?"

He showed no signs of discomfort or intent to leave, instead settling down on one horn and staring upside-down into the horse's eye, as if this were the most natural way in the world to make conversation.

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If she had not her already building connection with the owl, Delphine would have thought him eerie especially when he decidedly appeared in her line of vision. Upside-down. Her eyes narrowed, scrutinizing the blind eyes and realizing then exactly why they were thus. She gasped with realization and bobbed her head slightly, "Oh! They're lovely and green, like mine." In that alone she felt an immediate bias for the aviator's gem, bordering on smug when she smiled and hummed her approval. "I'm going to stand now, if you don't mind." Slowly she rose on four legs, careful to limit movement on her head before stretching and taking her first steps forth.

The young mare was a restless creature and the whole notion of staying still for too long was difficult to uphold. "Yes, I think I can. I wanted to practice, I mean we have our powers for a reason and you never know when things like that will come in handy. If I'd been able to call upon my magic when I was attacked, perhaps I would not have been so severely wounded." She chuckled warmly. "Of course not! That's just what happened like how you can't control the images you see. Is Cetus very big?" The question came without warning but considering that she was walking its misted depths now, it seemed appropriate to ask.

Dark sat back upright as Delphine warned him that she was about to move.

When she stood and spoke, he listened, settling on her horn and listening to the sounds of her voice and her hooves in the mud-rooted grass. Then she was asking him a question, and he gave a soft hoot as he thought, the sound dulled by the thick mists.

"Cetus? ...Is that what this place is called? I don't know," he admitted. "I can't see where I'm flying, and it's hard to hear much, here. Lots of bugs all the time and water in the air. I'd get lost. I just picked a tree close to the entrance so I can find it--I've seen it, once, with magic, so it isn't hard to fly to it and back. I still fly right into the trunk sometimes," he added, somewhat sadly.

He looked blindly around, noting once again--as he'd done many times in the past--that sound seemed to go far into the distance, muted by the fog and not by any cave wall. As far as he knew, "Cetus" might be infinite, stretching away for hundreds of miles in every direction. He simply didn't know.

"Maybe it goes forever," he chirped softly. "Maybe it's dangerous. I don't know. Why are you here?" he asked, abruptly curious, peering down at his fine new steed.

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She enjoyed hearing the owl's gentle hoots from above, they were grounding in a way of reassuring her that he was there. She could not imagine what it would be like wandering Cetus alone, particularly now that she knew the joys of newfound company. "It is! If that's the case though why did you choose this place to call your home? Eridanus is lovely too, although you can't see it, it has a wonderful smell and it's certainly not as wet as here." Though that was most definitely a result of her bias against rain and water, she did not think avian creatures preferring of the aquatic depths. Not like Meredith; if he could, he would marry himself to Pisces and any water source really. She could never understand how he went about his excavations. "There, there my friend. You'll get the hang of it, I know you will."

Dark's answer was hardly comforting, if anything serving only to fan the flames of her wariness as she halted in her steps and furrowed her brows. "That's not very reassuring... Perhaps we should return to the entrance..." Without awaiting his consent, the young mare turned abruptly and made her way toward where she thought the entrance would be but it was impossible to say in this fog whether or not she'd made the right decision. "I've been to most of the rooms in these parts, this was the only one I had yet to visit. It's probably my least favorite too... What about you? How do you go about traveling the tunnels?"

Dark chirped, rather un-owl-like, and then hooted gently. He clicked his beak a bit, and then--only after this series of seemingly random noises--he spoke.

"I like it here. It's not cold, like the ice-places, and it's not hot. It has lots of big trees. Eridanus has some but it's very noisy. Lots of birds. Bugs. They buzz here but it's quieter. I can't see so I have to hear where I'm going, so I needed someplace quiet. And I wanted a tree and Pisces has no trees," he explained, his voice a little mournful at this last.

In truth, he was pleased that she'd asked. He was rather proud of his selecting Cetus as his nesting site; he'd spent a great deal of time in weighing his decisions and choosing.

He didn't seem to mind, either, that Delphine was carrying them (presumably) back toward the entrance; after all, he probably couldn't have found his own way back.

"I travel a lot. A lot of the tunnels are icy. But I'm a scout so I have to listen a lot and pay attention to things. I don't like the cold but I had to watch Polaris for the monster. Why do you travel? Do you have a home?" he asked, his voice still soft and musical, sounding rather muted in the fog.

It was difficult understanding why the owl made as much noise as he did, particularly during their intervals of silence but with more time, Delphine thought that perhaps she would come to understand her newfound friend better. She hummed, as it seemed was a habit of hers, when he spoke of Cetus and the rooms all around. Though she was inclined to disagree, she also did not see the world through his blind eyes. "That does make sense..." Eridanus was fairly loud even in her time of solitude. If she were to imagine the place with amplified senses, Delphine thought that she could empathize to some extent.

Her ears perked when she caught the traces of sadness in his voice, "You must like Pisces then." She suggested with a slight tilt of her head, enough that the owl would feel the gesture but not so where he would be deposited to the floor altogether.

Suddenly she veered right, deciding that her current path was incorrect and bringing her only further from her intended destination. The fact that she was wandering blindly was something she did not admit to the owl for fear that he would abandon her for her senselessness. "A scout?" Delphine wondered out loud. "Do you belong to a group then? And I don't have a home but I'd like to think that it would be Eridanus or Orion, I suppose part of the reason is because I enjoy traveling. I love meeting others and discovering new things which is why I'm here although I admit, the only good I've come upon is you thus far."

Dark almost interrupted her, corrected her, but she was on another topic quickly enough and he realized that one answer could respond to both questions.

He let out another soft beak-click, then tackled it all at once.

"I don't like Pisces. It's too loud. The water is roaring all the time, and there's no trees. But Maji Walezi lives there, and that's my family and that's who I scout for. So I'm sad I can't live near Bevy, but I can't. So I picked here. I'd live here, if I could. I wish I could see all the time. I'd like it here, I think," he added, his voice taking on a distinctly mournful tone.

He'd not felt the urge for vision, early in his life, but lately it was striking him more and more. He could get visual glimpses into the past using his magic, and for that he was thankful, but it still wasn't like seeing as he flew.

Dark paused in this thought process as he realized that Delphine would probably have seen much more than him--and might like to talk about it. With a soft hoot, he asked, "What do they all look like? The places you've travelled, I mean? Do you have a favorite?"

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