ORIGIN

There was something waiting underneath the Monarch, the Mother, the giant mushroom that ruled over all of Eridanus. Half-buried underneath the loamy soil and shadowing ferns, it waited and pulsed with quiet, growing life.

Inside was a small black furred form, with tiny, twitching fingers and a long bushy tail that curled around it all, the tail almost as big as the rest of it combined. Inside, the child dreamed, and waited to awaken. It was safe, so there was no hurry, but still, somehow, the life knew there was something outside these comfortable walls. It could hear the hush and quiet chatter of the jungle outside....and it wanted to be there.

Sooner rather than later, the walls crept in, telling the child that is was time to wake up. The life struggled, eager to leave its warm, safe haven, and see the world. It shoulder pressed against the crystal wall, its small hands banged against its prison(for that's what it felt like now that it was suffocating the child - as heretical as it felt to think so), and so did its feet kick and scrape. Its eyes flared open, and with one last shove, its walls shattered open, and it was blinded, shielding its eyes from the light that was comparatively so much harsher than its prison.

The child slowly climbed out of its shell, its fur ragged and unkempt and slightly damp, its big brown eyes that were much too big for its head taking in all that surrounded it. What was this? What is above me? What am I smelling? What's going on? They thought.

From an outsider's perspective, this child was a sight to behold - its baby canines peeked out over its lips, its eyes were overly wide and disproportionate, its fur was all over the place, and it had the look of a half-drowned cat. It held none of the easy charm and adorable mannerisms that other normal cubs and puppies and kittens had. This was a child hesitant and questioning, skittish and wild.

(( Think: https://farm1.staticflickr.com/106/368344301_8f26682f6c_z.jpg?zz=1 ))

@Dovefeather

The child's attention swung around and locked straight onto the thing, the creature that came towards them and started asking a question. Wha-what were they saying? Name? Dovefeather? All Mother? Daughter? Sister? What were any of these things?

The child thought over these things, grabbed ahold of their long ragged tail, staring unblinkingly at the speaking thing, processing everything. This....this creature...was named Dovefeather. What were they? A...the words were coming to her like bubbles rising from the deep, slowly, popping as soon as they reached open air. They-she, she was a cat. A cat named Dovefeather. The child very much thought themselves a she as well. Were they? It seemed right.

The girl-child thought and thought, and she could see Dovefeather's unease. Why was she upset? She was just trying to understand. But nothing really told her what the All Mother was. Was the All Mother her actual mother? Was she this cat's sister? Did that make her a cat too?

".....mo-mother..." She murmured, coming towards the cat. "...sister...?" Her voice sounded harsh and raspy, and she coughed a few times.

@Dovefeather

The she-child paused in her stumbling movement towards the cat to look up and up, at the silver ceiling up above. Was this presence, this silver, her mother, that watched her, as the cat-sister said?

She paused. Processed. So the silver sky had made her, and watched her. That was...huh.
She wondered vaguely what a seer was. Was she a seer? It sounded nice.A seer....saw things.
As her eyes lowered down from the silver sky, they focused back again on the cat-sister. Their mother was blinded and sick, concepts that took a while for her to understand, and the child frowned at this, her tail lashing back and forth nervously. Why was the sister making this pleased, percussive sound, that quiet rumbling, if their mother was sick?

Something in her sparked - she felt this surge, this passion, for the first time - and she needed to help this sickness. She opened her mouth, little fangs glistening in the dim light underneath the All Mother, and said, "...how......h...help...?"

Her wide eyes took in the cat sister, and her tail curled around her again, and she gripped it tight. She wanted to help.

The dampness was starting to get to her, and she finally took a note of how different the air felt versus the comforting warmth of her prison. A shiver went through her, and she murmured, "....cold..." still staring straight at the sister.

@Dovefeather

Her eyes squinted as the cat sister leaned in and started licking her, and she just had this openly blank look on her face as this happened. What? What? What is this rough sensation? What's going on? But it felt nice, this different wetness, this warm tongue on her wild fur. But what was her sister saying? Blackness? Doubt? Was this part of the mother's sickness? Did affect her too?

"Do...." She spoke hesitantly in her childish raspy voice in between the cat licking her to a modest cleanliness. "...you....ju-judge? Am....am I....weird?"

At least she wasn't shivering. She watched the cat expectantly, letting one strange word sink in. ".....faith..."

She looked down then, and looked at her sisters paws and her own paws. Her sisters were nice and small and petite, and her own were....wrong. Elongated, veiny, ugly, one of them made of this weird bright stone. She was....different. Sick. She made this upset sound in the back of her throat, and hiccupped, suddenly feeling very down.

@Dovefeather

She looked up at the sister-cat, that sick feeling in the pit of her stomach growing as her sister continued to speak, and her eyes looked at anything else. She was weird. She was different. A sick cat. It took her a second to realize her breath was loud to her tiny ears, coming harshly out of her own nose as the cat continued talking. The tongue that made her warm was too rough on her thin fur, and she pushed away from the cat sister, eyes locking onto the paw- the hand- that did so.

She didn't have weird paws, she had hands, with long, long fingers. She realized this now, a little fact that bloomed in her mind as thousands of others were, unnoticed, the longer she was awake. The sister stepped back a ways, and kept talking, saying that her strangeness might turn to be a strength, one that she should be grateful for. But all she could pay attention to was the echoing, booming, invasively loud thought in her mind that she was so obviously different. She wanted to know what she looked like, if there were other things that were obvious wrong.

"What....do...do I look like?" She asked, her wispy voice quiet and dim, her eyes unfocused upon the ground. She felt like running away, absconding from the area, from her sister, from this.

@Dovefeather