ORIGIN - In the Quiet of the Railway Station,

Why Do We Always Seek Absolution

It's in the eyes; I can see you'll always be danger.

Lei had discovered Fish.

It didn't take all that much wandering to discover Fish-- the ponds were littered around Pisces, small dirty collections of water, fed by the cascades, but beneath their surfaces you could see the glimmer of scales and the flicks of tails. Things were alive down there.

This was novel to Lei, who was only a day old; that something could survive down there was fascinating. That the little somethings that did survive down there looked like toys, with their inviting wriggly movements and their curious scales that caught the light in such inviting ways. It made Lei's paws itch to watch them; she stared, transfixed, at the side of a particularly shallow pond, tracing the movements of all the fish like a mesmerized snake.

Oh but she wanted to catch one.

She had enough common sense to know that jumping into the water was unwise-- this was her element, though she didn't really know the significance of that or what that meant. All she knew was that water attracted her, but she also had this deeply internal knowledge that water could be dangerous, that you shouldn't just jump into it no matter how in inviting it was on the surface.

So Lei didn't jump in-- just lingered at the edge, occasionally darting forward to smack the surface of the water with one big kitten-paw. It scattered the fish, creating even more interesting ripples, a fascinating visual dance on the surface of the water and just beneath it. It made her mouth water.

Fiiiiiiish.

@hawthorne
((if you get two notifications, ignore the first one; I had previously made a thread in Polaris, before i remembered it was about meeting pisces children, so i made a thread close to home instead!))

RPGD

Hawthorne trotted along the stone floor of Pisces, blue gem faintly glowing, as if longing for something to make shiny - which was no surprise, given that he was looking for something to give his father. He seemed to like shiny rocks a lot, so the buck had set off to find some, hoping the gift would get rid of the sad, distant look the cat kept getting, even in the middle of conversations. Wisteria was out doing who knew what, but whatever it was it wasn't with him, so Hawthorne steadied himself and kept going, bravery wilting the further he got from the den.

What he hadn't counted on was running into strangers.

The tiny, fluffy hybrid froze in place, a leg raised to move, at the sight of a fluffy stranger at the edge of one of the pools. Slowly, he put it down, hoofstep echoing off the stone, and slowly crept closer, edging around to the other side of the pond and staying low to the ground, hair along his back raised in a mix of fear and undying curiosity. As per usual, his voice failed him, but the frustration wasn't anything new - he just wiggled his tail and bleated instead of talking to the cub, tiny fangs glinting in the light. He didn't know what they were doing, but maybe they could show him the way to shiny rocks?

Were it not for the bleating, Lei might not've noticed Hawthorne at all; as fascinating and distracting as a hybrid such as himself would ordinarily be, the fish-game she was conducting with this pool was delightfully distracting. Unperturbed by her own element, Lei had no compunction against darting into the shallows, and did so whenever the fish got too exciting. Of course, this made the fish scatter, but the splashes she made were almost more enjoyable, and her game of try-to-smack-the-fish was slowly mutating into a mix of chase-the-fish-through-the-shallows and make-the-biggest-splashes-you-can.

Lei heard the bleating when she was charging back out of the shallows, having scared off the fish so much that she needed to give the game time to reset itself-- or rather, for the fish to forget the threat of lion in their short memories and come back. Being a kitten of a particularly curious kind, Lei twisted her ear toward the bleats and then toddled her way over to the other kitten hybrid, both curious and concerned. She only crouched like that when she was scared-- like when something made a really loud noise right behind her and she couldn't pounce it-- and she couldn't tell if the bleat-noises were scared or curious.

"Hi!" she greeted, stopping a short distance away, water still dripping from her thick cub coat, which was slicked down all along the underside. "Are you okay?" She offered the stranger what she hoped was a comforting smile, which was very toothy but very enthusiastic. "Do you wanna go play smack the fish?"

@hawthorne
((Sorry if anyone gets tagged twice-- i realized i'd been using the tagging system wrong, so i went through all my threads and redid the tag so it would notify people if it hadn't the first time.))

Image by Banshee/xx-Starry@DA; Table by me; Pattern from Dinpattern.com

Well, the other cub seemed friendly enough. Floppy cream-colored ears twitched forward, and Hawthorne slowly relaxed, standing up to his full height - which was still shorter than the stranger, but he'd grown used to being tinier than just about everything. The buck tried to respond to her words, really, but they couldn't make the trek from brain to snout, stopping halfway, curling up and dying of exhaustion. Frustration made him bleat again, huffing - thankfully he could, at least, respond to the smile with one of his own, though it was shaky at best.

At the suggestion of play, the hybrid's head tilted to one side, brow furrowing in thought. He didn't want to hurt the fish, but... she didn't look like she had been, before. Maybe it wouldn't hurt them? Another long pause, and he nodded, a stronger smile gracing his maw, hooves tip-tapping on stone in excitement, skittering closer, a soft purr starting up in his chest. Tail wagging, he came to a halt a foot before the lion cub, tilting his head, urging the stranger to lead the way with a wordless mewl.

Lei was currently too young to know it, but she had a tendency to be good at people. Some people were born with an intuitive understand of math and the world and physics, and others were born with an intuitive understanding of facial expressions and body language and the tone of voice and mewl. Both were honed with practice, of course, but Lei was getting a lot of exposure to other sapients already in her young life, and her tendency towards the former was running strong.

So when Hawthorne did not react in words, Lei was momentarily confused-- she paused, leaning back slightly, giving him a speculative look-- but she recovered as quickly and gracefully it was possible for something so young to do so. She saw the momentary frustration on his face, the huff and the bleat, and then he moved forward, indicating with body instead of with language.

Interesting.

But she could dig it; the world took all kinds.

She smiled widely, and did a happy little kitten-wiggle, because Hawthorne's answer of 'yes let's play you go first' was very legible and very exciting. She was still just a kitten. "You play like this." she told him, kitten-ambling over to the edge of the water where she had been and waiting for him to keep up. Once they were both there, she crouched theatrically, watching the quick movements of shiny scale in the water, butt wiggling in that unconscious way that meant pre-pounce in most things feline. When something shiny flicked around in the shallower water, she bounced up onto her feet and darted forward, splashing and smacking the water where the fish had just been. It was, of course, faster and more agile then her in its home element, and darted away well before her paw could reach it-- but that wasn't really the point of the game. Really, the point of the game was to make loud noises and big splashes, and the fish were just an excuse, a lazy indulgence of feline hunting instincts.

She grinned widely, trotting back to shore. "They take a few minutes to come back to the edge but they always come back, and then we try to smack them again. It's fun!"

@Hawthorne

Image by Banshee/xx-Starry@DA; Table by me; Pattern from Dinpattern.com