ORIGIN

She wandered away from her mother, quietly, cautiously, her blooming, childish emotions in a turmoil. She was....upset. She was upset that she was upset - She didn't want to be upset at all.

What was that the sister said? That her doubt would consume her? She sat down in the warm dirt, frowning at it, then felt it with both of her weird, wrong paws. She started digging and digging, moving the dirt that felt alive to her, till she got to a small root.

What was this?

She dug it out of the ground, ripped it up, and looked at it. She had the sudden urge to eat it, figure out what it did.

Surely there would be something she could find to cure her mother of whatever ailed her. She didn't know what anything around her could do....but she could find out.

She bit into it, and it was both hard to eat and sort of rubbery at the same time, since it was the end of the root and still young. It tasted incredibly bitter and tough, and she bit a chink and spit it right out, but as she did so, she felt warm all over, a flash of warmth coming and leaving her body as soon as it arrived. She took another bite, chewing slowly, allowing herself to ignore the bitterness, and her body became warmer and warmer, like a furnace. Eventually she realized that if she stopped chewing the piece of root and just kept it under the tongue, it sent a very pleasant heat through her, and she smiled.

This was a good start.

@Booker

He'd left Diot and Bee in the burrow, curled up and safe behind the protection of layers of unactivated spores, ready to be propagated, to fill the air with poison while he and his family escaped. Barnett was more of a planner than Booker, cautious and steady, unwilling to throw himself into the kinds of things his other half did - unless they kept up with the act, anyhow. Still, he was only taking a normal excursion, this one for restocking herbs and food for both he and his sons. The numbat had emptied his teacup and repurposed it into a sort of satchel, stuffing herbs and berries into it as he went, eye narrowed to catalogue and compare. Diot had shown him the basics - as in, eat versus don't because you'll die - but honestly, most of the green stuff looked the same to him. Mushrooms, he could tell you everything about - not so much plants. Still, one thing he knew, instinctively, was not to put anything in your mouth that you didn't know the properties of. Even Booker had followed that rule. Sometimes. If you didn't count the whitecap incidents. Either way, the sight of a fluffy, lanky, black-furred baby stuffing some sort of root in her mouth made Barnett hasten his steps, settling back on his haunches a few feet away with a grimace and a desperate wave of tiny paws. "I wouldn't do that if I were you, kiddo. Might be a dangerous plant," he advised, side-eyeing the root in question suspiciously. He didn't have the healing abilities Diot did, nor did he have the speed of Bee - if she was sick, they were both plumb out of luck, as Booker would put it. Still, one thing he and Booker had in common was their unending love and loyalty to the lost and confused kids of the caves, and so Barnett watched, carefully, hoping the babe hadn't poisoned herself at such a young age.

@Cayenne

Her wide eyes snapped to the creature that half-ran to her, shaking their little paws, telling her not to eat the root. She tilted her head and frowned, spitting out the piece of root under her tongue, feeling the pleasant warmth ebb away.

"It....ma-makes...me warm." She said slowly, in a young, raspy voice, like cobwebs. Though, to be fair, such a defense seemed flimsy. Surely this older creature knew better - maybe it would have a bad effect later, when it settled in her stomach. She just didn't know, and had too much fun trying to figure it out.

Then her focus shifted to the cup-thing they---he---held, and moved towards it, picking up one thing versus another. "What...are th-these? What.....do the-they do?" She recognized a few things she had seen on her very short travels for the few days she'd been awake, but she hadn't tried everything. The things inside looked yummy, to be quite honest. Herbs and berries. What were they for? She looked up at him, her big brown eyes unblinking, unendingly curious.

@Booker