ORIGIN - you wouldn't have to go away

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The chrysalis was nearly invisible, covered by mosses as it was. Slivers of amethyst peeked out from between the velvety greens that had been lured by the innate warmth of the contents. It had lain undisturbed for an unknown length of time, but begin to shift slightly as the creature within began to awaken. Restlessly the unborn began to move, shifting and stirring in the balmy liquid. As the contents began to move, the more flimsy lichens began to fall, allowing more and more of it to be seen.

Slowly the leggy creature came to consciousness, and began to shift more intently. She could feel something out there that drew her insistently. She craved to be free of her safe haven, even if the outside world was more dangerous. She had to find out. Slender limbs unfurled and pressed insistently at the walls, cloven hoofs scrabbling at the edges seeking for any sort of weak spot that would grant her access to the universe.

By luck more than any sort of skill she manages to catch the edge of one hoof in a pockmark and shoves just hard enough to create a crack. It was the bubbling that alerted her first, as the air began to seep in and the inner liquid out. Encouraged, she pushed harder, cracking the stone even further and eventually making enough room that she could shove her head out. What greeted her eyes had her spellbound. The greenery and the warmth drew her even further, but she couldn't quite manage to escape fully despite scraping her shoulder against the rough edges of the crack with effort.

She was wandering around her lush home again, feeling confident in learning new things every day. Meeting other creatures, especially all the felines she had met were...pleasant experiences, she thought, but her daily task in trying everything she saw was what made her wake up in the morning, each night too excited to sleep until she drifted off from mild exhaustion. There was just so much to explore and understand! She knew how to make herself warm and energized, she knew how to make herself fall asleep easily, how to relieve muscle aches. She knew how to make oneself suddenly and violently sick, what to ingest to purge the stomach almost immediately, then to calm it down. None of these remedies were perfect, however, and she needed to experiment to make these more potent - some of them she had to swallow an awful lot of the raw stuff, and it did not taste good in the least.

But she was learning! And for just the first few days and weeks of being alive, that was amazing progress.

She was, in fact, just thinking about which of these concoctions to try and perfect today, when she head a harsh cracking sound nearby, and a rush of liquid. Was...someone waking up?

She tried to follow the sounds of shattering stone and crystal, and she found it quickly - this new, emerging gem was much different than anything she'd seen thus far, and already much bigger than her, all legs and awkward charm. What really captivated her was the look of unadulterated amazement on the new child's face as they looked around. It made her smile.

"Hello," She said softly, her harsh cobweb-like voice grating on her own ears. "Welcome."

@Amalthea

Slowly her eyes adjusted to the brightness of a world that was actually lit, however dimly. Everything was green and it was wonderful. Amalthea could feel the spirit of life all around her, and while she did not fully understand the concept of life and death, nor even really plants versus cognizant life, she loved it. Some tiny creature skittered across the floor and she watched it abscond with a tiny flower clutched in its paws and giggled.

Amalthea could hardly considered free of her gemstone chrysalis. Only her head peeked out on the side from a crack that ran the length of the gem. Her shoulders remained imprisoned, unable to twist and turn as nimbly as her head. As she was assessing the world around her - too captivated to focus of freeing herself more - movement caught her amethyst gaze. A creature much smaller than herself and very dark in color was moving in her direction. Excited, Amal wiggled, though all that could be seen of this was a herky jerky bobbing of her head.

As the strange creature got closer, it spoke and the calf smiled in response and tried to stretch her muzzle toward her new companion. "He-helloh."

With her body trapped as it was there was little more that she could do. Uncertain of this world and how its rules would differ than her dreams, she didn't quite understand how to break herself free. For a moment she seemed to stop and think, searching for anything that she could do. One word bubbled up through her consciousness and passed through her lips, sounding perfectly right to her over sized ears. "Hewlp?"

@Cayenne

(( Oh, precious child ;A; ))

The she-child tilted her head, contemplating. Help? Help with what? The big creature's head alone was just as big as the entirety of herself. Did they need help getting out? To her that seemed silly, remembering how small her shell was compared to the one this giant was emerging from.

She edged closer, studying the shimmering purple rock that the giant was seemingly stuck in. It had a rather impressive crack that was starting to shatter like broken glass, so she shrugged mentally and started to pry little parts off, one by one. Maybe she would keep some of the pretty purple chips, see what they did - maybe if it was turned into a powder if could have some effect....

She saw the giant help her, testing the crack's limits, making the spider's web in the stone grow. As chunk by chunk came off, some big as her wide eyes, some as big as her torso, she could see the giant's shoulder, and peek inside the rest as fluid seeped out. To her the pieces she pulled away seemed huge, but progress to help the giant was slow.

She took a particularly lovely piece and stared at it for a little while, admiring the way it shone in the green-hued light of the jungle, turning this way and that. "Pretty," She whispered, before continuing to help, setting that one aside.

@Amalthea

To be perfectly honest, Amalthea wasn't entirely sure what sort of response her word would elicit either. The word just felt right, like it belonged in that situation. Eventually the little black one scooted closer, peering at the slightly jagged edges of her chrysalis as if studying it. Patiently Amal kept still, tilting her entire head so that she could watch the progress below. At last the lemur began to pick at the edges of the crack, pulling bits of it apart with her nimble fingers.

Overwhelmed yet again by excitement, the calf wiggled in the cocoon and quite by accident, began to force the crack ever wider. Enlightenment dawned upon her and she began to help in earnest, pushing this way and that until in a rush she managed the free her shoulders. Her momentum, though small, carried her a few stumbled steps away as she struggled to control her unwieldly legs. The first few steps were shaky and she barely managed to stay upright.

Very carefully, lifting each foot in an overly exaggerated fashion as she learned her own balance, she managed to turn herself around to where the lemur sat. The movement brought a stinging pain on her shoulderblades to her attention. At first it was just a little tingling, but as the open air reacted with the irritated skin it began to burn and itch. Awkwardly she lowered her head and tried to shake but that didn't help so she very carefully reached a hind hoof forward to try and scratch at it. Her balance, however, was not quite up to the task and after nearly upending herself she placed it hastily back down.

"It ouch." She mused almost to herself. The glitter of the tiny black creature's hoard captured her eye but not her interest, as that remained firmly on the living creature. Mistakenly assuming that the quiet word - rather loud to ears built for prey creatures - was a name, or something, she repeated it. "You pretty?"

@Cayenne

She stepped back a ways as the big, very long-legged, giant cautiously made her way out of her prison, seeing the newborn giant wince as her skin was cut on the sharp edges still having yet to be pulled away, and the she-child made a 'tsss' sound of empathy - that had to have hurt. She felt a small bit of guilt at it as well, since she should've made a wider gap for the giant to come through.

She stepped back even more when the giant tried to shake off the cuts, and even scratch them awkwardly, almost losing her balance, and the she-child didn't know whether to laugh or soothe the giant, mixing both with a hesitant petting of the big thing's shoulder with her very very tiny hands. She felt so small compared to this giant. This was what her sister Dovefeather had tried to tell her, that there would be those so very different from her. It made her feel....okay.

"You...pretty?" The giant said, and immediately this okay feeling evaporated like the morning mist, and the she-child grimaced, her little fangs showing. "No." She said definitively, an outboast against the notion. "I'm...."

Wow. Did she not have a name up until this point? She looked at the ground, frowning at herself, thinking, thinking. What was her name?
A thought rose to the surface of her mind, hazy at first, like coming up from a dark pond, from deep inside her. Slowly, slowly, and the she-child just sat, staring at nothing, waiting for it to come. It grew clearer, and popped suddenly, making her blink and smile in some form of dazed amazement.

"I'm Cayenne." She said, looking at the giant's stunning, bright purple eyes. She whispered, "Cayenne."
"You have a name too," She said hurriedly, patting the giant. "It might take a while, though."

"I'll....find something for your owies." She said as an afterthought, feeling distracted. "Make them feel a little better."

@Amalthea

Almost immediately, Amal could feel those tiny nimble fingers patting at her shoulder, and though the contact was small, it was immensely comforting. A tentative smile spread across her lips again although new to the world though she was, it would have been hard for Amalthea to not notice the grimace that passed over her friend's face at the question. Or the outboast that followed Abashedly she tucks her large ears against her skull and lowers her head, shuffling closer.

After a short pause, her little black friend named herself, uttering the single word with amazement. Mimicking, largely because it was the first name that Amalthea had heard and right up there in the list of words that she actually knew, she repeated it with ears pushed forward in interest. "Cayenne."

The lemur continued on, but finding her own name was not necessarily high on Amalthea's list at the moment. Rather, the itch was back and she'd taken a break from raptly watching Cayenne to try and scratch her shoulder again with exactly the same poor luck. Rather pitifully, she looked back to her friend, latching onto the last word she'd heard. "Better?"

@Cayenne

She smiled up at the giant. "Yeah. Better. Does it itch?" She looked up, and twisted her lips. It was higher up than she could reach, since the giant was standing. "Let me help." She grabbed a fistful of slightly damp fur and climbed up a little ways up from the ground, then scratched delicately around the scratch, making sure not to aggravate it or open it further. Cayenne herself had gotten more than her share of scratches and cuts over the past few days, simply because she didn't keep in mind that her blasted stone finger was sharp. It was irritating.

She looked at the giant for facial cues as to where to scratch, and grinned, and when she deemed the itch scratched, she slid down her shoulder back onto the ground with a slight 'uff' as she landed.

"I'm going to be right back, okay?" She said with her raspy voice. "We need to cover up your owies so they heal nicely."

She moved off a ways, looking back at the giant with her wide eyes, making a mental note of where exactly she was situated so she could make her way back. The things she needed to get to help the scratches were kind of far away.

@Amalthea

At her pitiful question, her friend grins and then clambers up one of her stilt legs. Confused at the feeling of someone hanging on by her fur, both ears flap and all her weight shifts the side, making her have to move a hind leg up to keep balanced. But it was most definitely worth it as the black lemur began to scratch until at last the itch was satisfied, earning Amalthea's complete and utter trust and devotion.

But then her tiny friend started to leave, and Amal simply couldn't understand why she was trying to abandon her, so she followed. She was not as fast on this uncoordinated and long limbs, but she managed to follow the darting black lemur relentlessly until at last she caught up to her. She couldn't see what the lemur was doing, since she was facing her back, but she was delighted anyway to see her friend up close again and quite happily nudged her back gently. "Back?"

@Cayenne

She made her way quickly through Eridanus, noting landmarks along the way that she could follow to get back to the giant, preparing the mental list of things she had to collect and things she wanted to experiment with, and she was so preoccupied with her thoughts and with getting back to the child fast that she didn't hear the clumsy steps behind her.

So when the giant finally caught up to her and nudged behind her back with her nose, she let out a sharp sound of surprise, whipping around and looking up. "Hah!" She grinned, one hand to her chest, laughing nervously. "You scared me! I thought you were still back there."

"But- yeah, I'm back. This is good, it's good you're here," She said, looking around. "We're almost to the things I need."

Then Cayenne looked up at the giant, smiling. "We'll go together this time, okay? I shouldn't have left you alone." She grabbed some of the giants fur and climbed all the way up the shoulder and to the giant's back, settling herself like the most natural thing in the world. While she was there, she scritched behind the giant's ears, thinking that she would like it.

"There's a flower field just past that huge tree over there, and that's our first stop. It's really pretty there too." She said, wondering if the giant would like seeing them. It was a small clearing of small white flowers that were nice smelling and lovely, and made one really really sleepy when you ate a lot of them. In moderate amounts, the drowsy effect just took your mind off of pain, and this was as close as she could get to a numbing agent. The red leaves that were really good at it were really hard to get to.

And she really loved going there.

@Amalthea

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