ORIGIN

"Of course!" the hybrid immediately yapped, sanguine eyes gleaming as she hobbled along. "Because we're friends and that's what friends do. You're getting good at friendship."

She meant it, too. Sure, the cow had came off as a little mean, but she was absolutely positive that she had done something wrong and that was why he exploded. She'd have to make it up to him now and to do that she'd make sure they were super good best friends.

And clearly whatever the river was would make them even better friends. The crowdog nodded at her own plan contentedly, before she paused and looked around. Pricking her ears up told her that there was the sound of rushing water nearby.

She headed towards it, looking down at the crystal river. She sat down, looking behind her to wait for Caravaggio to join her. "I think this is it!"

It was an answer he dreaded, and he just had to have faith that whatever was at the river, it wasn't going to try and kill them. Caravaggio didn't have much experience with things trying to kill him, so he just kind of had to hold out that nothing would, because he feared he would be useless. Well, it was best not to dwell on those kinds of things, anyways. "Thank you." Caravaggio smiled at her compliment and quickened, his hooves clacking against the rock quicker, harder, as he picked up his pace. Before long, the sounds of the river had rose up through the dusty quiet. He recognized this sound, although it seemed to have more of a purpose here. The current dragged the water faster through its path, washing up against the rocks and rapids, bubbling as it did. He remembered watered in Eridanus and how it sat stagnant in the ponds, or the tiny babbling brooks incapable of more than a playful gurgle. The water there tasted bad.

He watched her approach and sit; dutifully, the cow followed. He couldn't recline to his haunches like her, but he approached the edge of the river and bent his forelegs, dipping his head down towards the surface of the rushing water. "Is this water clean? Is it tasty? Have you drank it before?" The cow asked suddenly, tilting his head to her. "I was born in Eridanus. The water there is muddy." Caravaggio frowned now, shaking his head. The tough lil nubbins on his head caught the light - they were slowly growing as he did, gaining weight, strengthening his thick neck. "I hate dirty water." He finally added, losing his gaze in the rushing water before them.

White watched Caravaggio lie on his chest. Blinking, she sank down and did the same, paws hanging just over the edge, though not quite touching the water. "I've never heard of Eridanus before," she said as her head bent over to stick a pink tongue out to lap at the water. "It's, uh... cold? It tastes clean."

Her tongue stuck out to lick her muzzle. Her skin, previously sanguine around her eyes and nose, had returned to a soft faded pink again. She tilted her head a little, ears flicking. "I've never been here before, either. But there's lots of places I haven't been to," she said. "What's Eridanus like? Is it nice?"

She didn't have any plans to leave soon. Her dad had told her it's sometimes dangerous and she should stay nearby and not go out too far. She rather abruptly blinked as the white hybrid lifted her head to look around, positive that Black was around somewhere.

But he didn't turn up. Not when she was crying, not when she ran back to her chrysalis. Maybe he wasn't around at all - not that she cared or anything. She wasn't scared at the concept of not being watched in the fear that something dangerous was here and she might get her and her new friend hurt.

Nope. Not scared at all.

She pulled a stupid doggish grin to show Caravaggio that, in fact, she was not scared. Though the cow probably didn't care either - maybe his dad was watching somewhere nearby, anyway.

If he had to assume, then it would be that she was just as young as him, if not younger. Caravaggio was predictably rather sheltered - it was his nature, after all. He was ultimately lacking curiosity and the drive for adventure. He liked the safety of the familiar, he didn't want to risk danger setting hoof in some place that he didn't know, especially with lord knows what kinds of Gembounds haunted this place. He'd seen bones and he inherently knew what those were, he knew where they came from. Inside. The only way to get bones out from inside was violent and painful, either that or the creature would have to have died. Either way didn't bode well for the cow, so he was slow and observant and vigilant. He empathized with her lack of knowledge of outside places, even the crystalline river before them was new. So maybe they could discover those things together, as friends. Except for the dangerous places.

He found satisfaction in her answer regarding the water, and as he listened, he leaned forward and tentatively rolled his tongue out to touch its surface as well. This water tasted a lot nicer than the water in Eridanus, which was muddy and dirty and had an earthy taste to it. The Polaris water was much more brisk, it was colder and had an almost metallic flavor which he found far more enjoyable. He lapped up a few mouthfuls, sating his sudden thirst while she asked him what Eridanus was like. The cow couldn't help himself from scoffing, giving a regal shake of his head - which wasn't as regal as he thought it was, because all his fat neck did was shake and jiggle - before setting his eyes on her, staring past that big smile with a look of betterness.

"Eridanus is bad. It's very muddy and very wet, and there's sick things that roam it. There's big trees with nasty roots that come up and trip you when you walk, and your feet get stuck in the ground." Caravaggio wrinkled his nose as he spoke of it. "You shouldn't go there. You would get your white fur all dirty." He looked her up and down as though double checking for smears or discrepancies in the flawlessness of her porcelain coat. There was yellow and grey dust around her paws and other places you'd expect it to be, but nothing too terribly disturbing. He wondered if part of friendship was cleaning each other.

The cow turned his eyes back to the river, slowly trailing up the winding bed as it carved through the cave ground. Eventually, it would branch away from what looked like a shattered wall further up. Distantly, it looked still and dormant. "What's that up there?" He asked, pointing his nose towards the shattered golem dam.

The hybrid tilted her head quizzically. She wasn't sure what was so bad about Eridanus, or what a tree was, but she supposed she'd give Eridanus a miss should she ever leave Polaris - especially since Caravaggio was making it out to be something like the fourth layer of hell.

She was going to ask what was so important about not getting dirty but for some reason or another, she decided against it. Cleanliness wasn't too important to her, not enough to linger on the subject anyway. She leaned over to lap up more of the cold river water before her ears pricked up as the cow asked something.

She looked at Caravaggio, then turned her head towards the dam. Her eyes narrowed a little, and she lifted herself back up, as if that would help her see it better. Needless to say, it didn't. "I don't know," she said.

She looked between the dam and the cow, quiet for a moment. Suddenly, afflated with curiosity, she grinned. "Let's go check it out!" she announced and began hobbling towards the shattered remains of the wall.

The cow mirrored his canine friend, rising back up in an effort to examine the faraway dam even further. But like her, standing didn't have any real bearing on how well he could see. From here, it was hard to make out any detail other than the fact that it was a big mound of rock that looked like it had been blasted apart. But she agreed to go with him, satiate his curiosity a little, do some of that exploring she had talked about. He took a few quick gallops to catch up to her side and turned his head, examining those wings sprouting out of her back, and the skinny bird legs paired with the lithe canine front limbs. He trotted a little quicker, looked to the dam again, then back at her. "Do you wanna race?" He asked suddenly, whipping his tail behind.

He only waited a couple seconds before an afflated smile spread on his lips and he charged forward, hoping she would follow suit.

Her new friend was large. He was also young, he had noted; his words clumsy, but he seemed to mean no harm, judging by the way he had retracted them. He had stayed back, watching, half lost in his own thoughts--as always. She had to learn on her own, to live her own life, and he would only interfere if she were in danger.

Now, however, he judged her to be in danger. He flicked his mind over the yes-and-no's of it; the pros and cons. If he let her continue forward, the pair would run into golems. Maybe they would handle it well, and escape; maybe they would not. The fact of the matter, though, was that golems were not an enemy that Black could destroy. He would not be able to save his young charge if she were caught by one. Perhaps the calf could? He seemed powerful enough to perhaps smash one apart, but then, Black hadn't fought many of them directly. He wasn't sure what it took.

He was reluctant to intervene, but he knew he had to. He wasn't too far off, anyway, and he was upriver from them, so all he had to do was step into their path--though the calf was powering along pretty quickly.

Black stepped out of the shadows, and they seemed still to cling to his velvet-black coat, whisping behind him and only slowly fading--as if the darkness itself had detached from behind the rock. It was his way of staying hidden, and for a moment, he had to focus to dispel it away. Then he spoke, his voice calm, but carrying.

"If you plan to go there," he warned simply--aiming his words toward White, and not exactly telling her not to go--"then avoid the creatures made of stone. They will harm and kill you, and they are stronger than me." He kept his words as simpel as he could, for the young ones, and he stayed out of the calf's charging way, remaining off to one side.

There; the warning had been delivered. It was up to them if they wanted to heed it. He would not forbid White the experience of growth, but nor would he let her walk blindly to her death.

________________

At the suggestion of a race, White stopped and blinked before her eyes went wide. A game! That friends did! Together! Her head frantically nodded up and down. "Sounds fun! I'm gonna win!" the little hybrid squawked.

She was preparing to bolt off without any warning - to get a headstart on the race - when Black came out from the shadows. She barked, bounding forth to greet her father by nuzzling his legs with her entire face. She was momentarily confused by his words.

White still wasn't too familiar with the concept of death - even though she had already eaten some rats, she saw them as just... not moving, so they can be eaten. She was fairly sure that was all it was, in fact, being still so she could be eaten. She could not be eaten if she was always moving, right?

Regardless, she nodded and wandered back towards Caravaggio. "We should be careful so we don't get hurt," she said, talon lifting to scratch her shoulder. "Do you still wanna race?"

A few leaping bounds, and Caravaggio already had the lead - only he'd been looking back at White to make sure she was following, so when he turned his gaze forward again, he saw a dark mass manifest from up ahead. A cloud of blackness swirling and shifting in the air, devoid of all light as though it feared even touching the space that housed what he could only fathom to be an evil monster. Caravaggio bleated out his surprise and skidded to a halt, stumbling over his hooves in an attempt to turn and flee the other way while White zipped past him to greet the creature of darkness. "W-Wait!" He blurted, lingering a few meters behind. There he cowered and watched the massive black dog take form from the darkness, shadows falling from him like silk, and White - there she was, rubbing her face in his legs.

The cow's legs trembled as he followed behind his new friend, keeping a safe distance from the other dog. He spoke a warning of rock creatures, and he seemed fairly passive - not the nightmare beast that Caravaggio had imagined emerging from the dark cloud. Still, he didn't say anything until White had returned to him. His eyes had widened with fear, nearly bulging out of his head - he watched the black dog, and then he looked back at her, uncertain of what to say. His heart had even skipped a few beats, and he could've sworn he saw his life flash before his eyes. ...Well, maybe he was being a little melodramatic. "Wha-Who was that?!" His voice had heightened with panic and fear kept him rooted to the ground, for now.

She had noticed, as she ran back, that her cow-friend had looked surprisingly unsettled. She tilted her head as she slowed to a stop, blinking a few times. "That was my dad. He said it might be dangerous," she said,lowering herself onto her haunches.

She wasn't quite sure why Caravaggio seemed so afraid of her father - to her, being followed around by a large black dog was normal, after all. "Hey, uh.. we don't have to go," she said softly, half wide-eyed. It would have been pretty pointless to go on with something that was not only dangerous, but her friend was scared of.

In case he agreed, White took it upon herself to think of somewhere else they could go. They probably wouldn't ever see the dam, but they saw the river. As she thought, she decided the Spire would probably be a safe bet.

She nodded, more to herself. "We should watch the Spire! It's my favourite place."