ORIGIN - opalescent !

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Within the deep lagoon of Pisces, something grew larger and larger with each passing day. A chrysalis formed of shimmering black opal had been developing from a nook in the steeper edge of the pool, near the waterfall. Arrh had been keeping a close eye on it, but today, the orca was away. Today... something would emerge. The stone was adventitious at first, looking extremely out of place among the bland grey stone of the cave with its peculiar opalescent glow from the leftover magicka. As it grew and formed a neonate within, however, it somehow seemed to be right at home, like it belonged.

Within, a creature of the deep blue sea was forming. An amalgam. Coiled all about itself was the creature, a cross between a dragon and an orca. Slowly, it opened its eyes, blinking for a moment as it shifted. Beneath its already massive weight and the sudden movement, the chrysalis shuddered. A gentle song of waves echoed all about her, and it filled her with longing. "Awwwwwwwwwwwwah," she murmured quietly, pastel pink tongue slithering out as she yawned and stretched. As she moved her limbs--four of them... odd--the stone shifted and creaked again. It all began to click for the neonate and she swished her tail thoughtfully and pushed against the surface of the stone. Water began to flood into the opalescent chrysalis, pushing out the albumen within into the open waters.

As she felt cool water surround her, it only encouraged her. Again, she pushed with her oar-like feet. The chrysalis shattered at that point, falling apart at its own seams and freeing the creature. With a shallow PLUNK!, the shell was filled with water and she was thrown into the dark depths of the lagoon. Turning new eyes up to the surface, there was light. With a growing sense of urgency, her lungs tightened. Air. Breath. Breach. So she pushed as hard as she could, managing to figure out the whole swimming thing. It was not hard at all. Like a hot knife through butter, she easily cut through the water and found herself gazing above the surface. Crisp air filled her lungs as she breached for the first time.

Eyes reflecting pink in the light, she stared around, squinting. It was so bright compared to the darkness of where she had emerged. Nearby, there was something different. A place where there wasn't water. Could she go where there was not water? Only one way to find out.

Paddling in a way akin to a dog, she made her way to the shallower waters of Pisces where she'd be able to easily lie down, her tail swished side to side as a rudder. Once her feet touched ground, she plopped down, keeping her head above the surface so that her blowhole could easily grasp air and she could wet her face if needed. Was there someone else? "'Ello?" she called out, child curiosity peaking at its highest already.

@Lei (Tagging Lei, but this is an AW)

Something really really interesting was happening with the water.

Lei had previously been happily prancing along, investigating the beautiful nature of flowers and the way they reacted to Lei-zilla stomping through them, when the noise attracted her; she stopped short, suddenly alert, everything in her young body pointing to the water, which was moving a lot more than it ordinarily did.

It was ordinarily subject to the movements of fish-- Lei had learned this through observation, just as she'd learned that charging into the water after those fish yielded wet and cold results and that yielded baths and baths were annoying. So, Lei did not charge directly into the water this time-- particularly as whatever fish was making this disturbance was very very large. She krept to the edge, fascinated, unable to see clearly what was happening below the waves, where an interesting new gembound was releasing itself from its shell.

She did see when Iris swam to shallower water, however, where she could rest as if on land, only the top edge of her visible. Lei's perspective was limited, and she was still young, but she was apt enough to do the math that if what of the stranger she could see was as large as it was, then the rest of the stranger would probably be Very Very Large. And two verys was a lot.

This made Lei grin, inexplicably, the promise of an interesting new stranger who was very very big far more interesting then playing Lei-zilla in a field of innocent flowers.

"HI!" she returned Iris's greeting with the bright excitement that young Lei could conjure at a moment's notice. "Are you a fish? A really really big fish? Only I've never seen a fish that looks like you before, but you live in the water, and fishes live in water." she said brightly, with absolutely no concept as to whether or not it was offensive to call someone a fish.

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

The already large neonate lay in the shallower waters, the top of her head and fins the only bits of her that rested above the surface. 'Iris,' she thought to herself and wondered. That's who she was. Iris. She liked it. Iris. Iris. Boy, she was already tired. Lifting her head slightly from the waters, she cracked her jaws open in a wide jaw and licked her lips. When her gaze flicked down once more, she noticed that there was something standing before her. It said 'Hi'. That was another way to say hello, wasn't it?

Lowering her head once again, the hybrid took in the sight of some other critter. A cub? That's what it was. All she knew was that it was very fluffy. She stared at herself and noted that she definitely had scales. Iris was a scaly critter, not fluffy. The critter had a girly voice just like her, which was good. She was a girl? Yeah, a girl. A fish? What was a fish? Was she a fish? No, that couldn't be. Maybe this thing knew!

She rested her head on oar-like paws and spoke back, a whale song of a voice spilling from her lips. "What's a fish?"

@Lei

Iris's voice was like the rest of her: very big, bright, beautiful, and a little overwhelming at first. Like whalesong, it washed over Lei, not so much speaking to her ears as to all of her, going beneath skin and into bone. Lei found this was enjoyable, and privately decided to see if she could manage the same sort of booming voice at some point later on-- it would probably take some practice. Most things took practice. But surely, with enough practice, Lei could do anything.

Fascinated by her new maybe-a-giant-fish-friend, Lei smiled a little cub smile, all teeth and bright eyes, happy to be being spoken to, regarded by this hybrid who, as a neonate, already dwarfed her.

But a question had been put to her, and this was something Lei had to puzzle though. She glanced further down the water, where tiny ripples indicated the presence of a few brave fish who hadn't yet fled the presence of big gembounds, at least one of which they probably could perceive. Then she looked back at Iris, quizzically, and tried to wrap her knowledge of "Fish" into words, so that she could pose it to Iris as a question and see if Iris was, in fact, a fish.

For a few seconds, words escaped her. "Um. They're things, like over there." she said, pointing to the surface of the water several meters away, where the light occasionally caught a glint of scale or ripple as the fish that went there went along their waterlogged lives. "They live in water, um. And they are alive. And they have big eyes and fins and scales and everything." she thought more, "And they're fun to chase. They flop around a lot. I don't think they're okay out of water, though. They flop even more out of water. It's kind of sad so I always put them back if I get them out of water."

In Lei's extremely limited experience, this had only happened twice, to fish that had been lurking in shallow enough water that a clumsy cub could get lucky and leap onto them, but it had been significantly jarring that she had put them back, even though some instinct in her leonine mind told her that was wrong and she ought to eat them. That impulse was something to worry over another day, though, because Lei's child mind could think of no other adjectives to attach to fish. She looked back at Iris, brow furrowed in thought.

"You live in water only you're not all the way in water so maybe you're only a little bit fish?" She'd met some hybrids, so the fascinating concept existed already in her mind, and it stood to reason that if you could be made up of two different things, than one of those things could be fish, right?

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

As she spoke, she seemed to have surprised the cub at first, and Iris recoiled a little in hope that she didn't scare the potential friend. When she smiled from ear to ear, Iris herself smiled lightly and she wriggled forwards a little to be closer. When she asked a question, that's when the sweet cub smile faded and Lei took on a very focused and thoughtful face. For a moment, Iris wondered if she'd said something wrong, but then she realized that her new friend was just thinking.

While Lei thought, the hybrid slowly swished her tail about and scuttled closer to the land, more of her form visible above the surface. She was testing to see what this 'land' thing felt like.

Things. They were things? Like over there? Opalescent eyes followed the line of the cub's pointing gesture and she noticed the faint shimmer of scales beneath the water. Oh, those? She'd heard them lots in her chrysalis, but she didn't know what they were. Of course, she didn't know anything up until her emergence five minutes ago.

Big eyes and fins. She blinked once and then looked at her back. She had both of those things. Scales? Definitely. Was she a fish? But she didn't say anything about teeth, as she licked her lips and found her four saber-like canines. Iris listened, but she was intently watching the fish in curiousity. "I don't think I'm a fish? Lemme see." She suddenly stood up and turned around, slinking into the water. Iris had to see these things up close and personal.

As she slunk into the water, she felt immersed in her own world again and she could see brave schools of fish that she previously had ignored. Her gaze flickered from school to school and she looked at her own tail. These fish didn't have legs. She wasn't a fish? A pain gnawed at her stomach, and she realized, 'Hunger.' Without a second thought, hunting instict kicked in and she circled the aquatic creatures, herding them almost. She eyed the biggest one and lunged right for it. Feeling scales in her mouth she breached with a very large fish in her mouth. "Fish are food?" she asked Lei through a mouthful of scales.

@Lei

((FISH ARE FRIENDS NOT FOOD -cough couldn't resist. Anyway back to your regularly scheduled post!))

Lei didn't know or understand the methodology of science, but if she did she would heartily approve of it, and thus she did heartily approve of Iris' walking further out of the shallows-- she backed up slightly, to give the big hybrid more space on the shore if she decided to come that far. Lei looked over Iris in a thoughtful sort of way, reassessing her own hypothesis. "Maybe you're not a fish." Lei agreed, "I've never seen one with legs before, or one that walks around up here. I think they need water to move." which was clearly not true of Iris. She furrowed her brow, a thought occurring to her, and then her face brightened up in a smile again. "Plus also I think if you were a fish you'd know you were a fish. I knew I was a lion!" she didn't entirely know how she knew what she was, but it had been a knowledge kernel very strong in her mind when she'd hatched-- that, and Water Was Good Mostly. This had been confirmed shortly after her birth by Makyna, who was also a lion; Lei looked around, but no interesting-looking hybrids like Iris were visible to confirm whether or Iris was or was not a fish.

But Lei was mostly happy to accept that Iris probably wasn't a fish, now that Iris herself had voiced the thought as implausible-- who better to know what one was other than oneself?

Lei dashed to the edge of the water again when Iris disappeared beneath it, standing in it up to her ankles heedlessly, craning to see where Iris had disappeared to. There was a thrill mix of excitement and a sort of not-quite-jealousy-but-wish-she-could-do-the-same-thing, and disappear as easily beneath the waves. There was period that, to Lei, seemed to stretch forever while her Lei-had-just-decided-iris-was-a-friend was visible only as a blue shadow in the depths of water, and then Iris emerged again, fish in her mouth. Lei's eyes were wide and then she shrieked with delight, bouncing in the water and generating little happy splash-waves.

"You caught one! that was fast! and easy. They always run away when I try to catch them!!" she called to Iris, and-- if it were possible-- both exclamation marks were absolutely audible in her voice. "Except for when I do and then they flop and it's sad. I've never tried to eat one!" The thought had occurred to her, but she'd always felt a little queasy at the idea, unwilling to kill the thing flopping so pathetically at her feet. Nevertheless, she was curious, so she said. "So maybe! Does it taste good?"

@iris
((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

i apologize if this post ends up being super shitty, muse is out the window rn

As the hybrid emerged onto land, she nodded along with the cub. "I'm not a fish." Iris stared down at her own paws and sat on her haunches as she lifted them up and gazed at them. They were like fins, kind of. But they were definitely paws like Lei's. "Maybe I'm a lion, too!" Well, they both had paws... a tail... legs. Yes. That's what she was, wasn't it? A lion! A water lion!

With a big 'ol fish in her maw, she appeared above the surface again and swam over to the cub. Gently setting it down, she took a bite out of it and nodded as she chewed with razor sharp. "Itf's gud!" she exclaimed through a mouthful of flesh and scales. Then she nosed it gently towards her new friend. "Try?" There was definitely enough fish to feed the both of them. As she had carried it onto land, the fish was definitely a lot heavier than she thought it was.

@Lei

((No worries! I'm a pretty chill player; i dun care about long wait times or short posts or lose-muse posts; post how it makes you comfortable to post and i can work with it! :D Gods know there'll be time when i do all of the above.))

Lei looked at Iris speculatively; it was her first reaction to say that no, of course Iris was not a lion-- she was too big and didn't have any fur. But she didn't give voice to that thought right away, because that was just a first reaction and she had only met one other lion, and she knew there was probably more to being a lion then not being as big as Iris and having lots of fur. Maybe being a lion was what you were on the inside. Shit, maybe she wasn't right about herself being a lion-- it was only a feeling she'd had when she's woken up, confirmed by Makyna. She grinned widely, again, and said. "THAT WOULD BE AWESOME! Then we'd be lion friends!" Lei wasn't about to tell someone what they could or couldn't be, and the question of what identity was and where it happened was a bit heavy for someone Lei's age and temperament to delve into. Friends were way more important.

When Iris returned to the surface with a big fish, Lei's eyes grew wide-- her experience thusfar was purely within the realms of the sort of fish you found in shallow water. Tiny little darting silver things, whose scales caught the light and reflected it, who probably wouldn't've made good eating if you could get your teeth around one. This fish was much larger than that, and that expanded Lei's narrow parameters for the world even more. "I didn't know they could get so big." she said, looking at it dubiously.

She wasn't sure she wanted to eat it-- but the rumbling in her stomach told her she did. and it didn't flop sadly, like other fish had when she'd managed to catch her own-- this one was already dead. Gingerly, she tried a small bit of it, taking a dainty little bite.

It made her mouth happy, and her stomach happy, once she'd swallowed it. She hadn't realized how hungry she was. Her latent sense of ethics was not happy, but the question of whether and how to be a vegetarian lion would have to wait another day. And fish were really, really, really good. "This /is/ really good." she confirmed, and remembered slightly belatedly to be polite. "thank you!"

"Are there more fish like this, under there?" she asked, an idea sparking in her brain as she looked at Iris again. Prior to meeting the large gembound, Lei's entire world had existed at the surface of Pisces and higher-- maybe extending a few inches into the water. Iris had come from underground, as had this big fish, and both of them were larger than her previous assessment of the water had allowed for. Was there more under there that she didn't know? Was it possible that Pisces-- whose secrets were already much larger than she could know, that she was already investigating-- had more than one world in it?

@Iris

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

Lion friends! Yay! Big fish! Yay! Everything! Yay! Iris smiled and clicked at everything, tail making wayward currents in the still turbulent waters of Pisces lagoon. Watching the cub take a dainty little bite of the fish, the hybrid beamed. Fish was good, then! Lei liked fish! That was good. Everything was good!

But when the question of big fish was brought up, the orca-dragon about fell over. She wanted to come in the water too? Maybe! "Yes!" There were lots of big fish down there, even though she'd only been truly alive for maybe ten minutes. She stood up and pranced over to the lagoon and plopped into the slight incline between the shallow and deeper parts of the body of water. This was so that her head was just above the surface but was close enough to be offered to her new BFF as a ride. "Do you want to see?" she bubbled, pastel eyes gazing upwards and hoping for yes to be the answer.

@Lei

Yay, everything! was more or less how Lei liked to operate, and so Iris was perfect company. Iris's happy smile was infectious, so Lei mirrored it, taking her dainty nibbles of fish.

It was important to be ladylike, after all.

The importance of being ladylike evaporated, though, when Iris offered Lei functionally a ride. Lei wiggled in place-- of course she wanted to see! Seeing everything and knowing everything were quickly becoming goals in life, and Lei had already discovered that the best way to learn and experience such things was to throw oneself headlong into the adventure, with very little thought to the consequences "Yes Yes!" she repeated, in that tone that would've included an 'ohmigod!' if she were bipedal and inclined to like fashion (which she probably would, if she were bipedal). She didn't hesitate to hop onto Iris's head-- but she was careful that her little kitten claws didn't stray into Iris's skin. That wouldn't be a good way to treat her new best friend.

The blue water, full of wonders she'd never seen and hadn't even known existed until a few seconds ago, reflected the strange light of Pisces back at her, already much closer than ever before. Lei had tried something close to swimming, which had really just been some enthusiastic splashing and little more. However, she had got some water up her nose, which had been what had dissuaded her from attempting the deeper water instinctively. "But i can't breathe under water!" she quickly added to Iris, "So we have to be careful."

@Iris

Coding: Cecil ♥ Image: Matt ♥ Pattern: Dinpattern.com

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