ORIGIN - May the story lead you there

She was humming to herself as she moved to the waterfall, her hoofsteps so light as to not even make any sound on the stone. The tune she was humming was so light and airy and catchy to her that her steps swayed and she danced as she walked, her head bobbing to the beat as she went, and every once in a while when the tune begged for it, she did a quick jib with her hooves to like the quick strum of notes, and she giggled happily. She got into it and did a quick turn-around and kicked one leg out, letting the humming turn into something vocal and wordless, trying to enmesh this feeling in her throat and her chest, her dancing an eye-full of liquid grace and smooth motion.

She had originally been trying to find Hawthorne, wherever he was, but right now she just felt like dancing. There wasn't anything wrong with doing both at the same time, right?

@Hawthorne

Hawthorne sat in a position vaguely similar to a fluffy, cream-colored loaf of bread, half-dozing, chin on the comforting cold stone of the Pisces floor. The flower Cayenne had grown sparkled and shimmered in the breeze, casting a shadow over his head, glinting off of his benitoite eye. Valentine was off who knew where, Baroque wasn't in his den, and Iris wasn't on the edges of the lagoon - in short, the buck was bored. Incredibly bored.

A sigh twisting the golden flower's leaves, he flopped to one side, absently tapping at the smooth pebbles that littered the ground near the shore. Slowly, carefully, he pushed them in place, sat up to angle his head this way and that, until finally, Orion's constellations spread across the ground, raised and shining, smooth stars. They just weren't quite... right. Golden eye narrowing, Hawthorne raised a pink hoof to tap at the center pebble, gemstone sparking as he tried to envision it sparkling like the stars his father had told him of.

Slowly, tendrils of golden light snaked down his cheek, tangled in the fur of his hock, spread over the stone and shared his vision with it - and slowly, the central star came to life, flickering weakly, creating the illusion that the rest were glowing too. The buck grinned, unused fangs bone-white. "Success! Man, when Wist sees this she's g-gonna flip!"

Speak of the devil and they would appear, it seemed - a voice broke out through the air, and Hawthorne startled up, wincing as one of the rocks scattered out of place, gently edging them back together and raising his long, fluffy tail to flag down his sister. "Wist! C'mere! I tried ta make the con - con... constellations?" Well, close enough, anyway.

Her song abruptly stopped when Thorne called out to her, partially hidden behind some large slick rocks, and she smiled and walked over to him, the tune kept in the back of her mind like a jewel she placed in a treasure chest.

And when she rounded the corner delicately, she peered at Thorne with a happy grin, then down at the ground, and her grin turned into a gasp of delight. "Oh, Thorne! How lovely!" She looked at the closely, the glow coming from her sweet cream fur dancing off of the stones, and she whirled and nuzzled her brother's forehead with a kiss. "You brought the stars down from the sky! If only the wolf was around to see this, would he be happy, do you think? Oh, oh, we should give them to the river so that these stars can be loved, don't you think?"

@Hawthorne

Beaming at the praise, chest puffed up with tiny baby pride, it took Hawthorne a minute to actually respond to his sister's words, blinking abruptly and blushing, a hesitant purr curling from his throat. "Ya really like 'em? Oh! If you like these, I gotta show you this neat flower my friend made! I made it glow and then she said she made it so it'll live forever. Isn't that awesome?" Childish gaze wide and sparkling with the memory of meeting the strange healer, he dropped back into the conversation after a long beat - although his sister was probably well-used to his strange, wandering thoughts by now.

"I think the wolf would be happy... but what if none of these are his star?" The idea made him frown, gaze dropping back to the stones, brow furrowing as he examined them. "When da' told that story... I almost. I kinda maybe thought he was talking about him and mom?" The blush grew, spanned from forehead to chest, and the buck ducked his head, half-hiding from his closest companion. "I dunno. 's probly not."

But he liked to think of his mom as a star, because it made her somehow ethereal, lost somewhere not-here, instead of kept at a distance by his father. He didn't know why, but deep down, he didn't want to.

He perked up at the river idea, at least, tail relaxing into a curl, golden gaze peeking up at his sister. "That'd be nice! Maybe their wolves will find them, then." Silently, he thought of Iris, hoping the mermaid would find at least the shining pebble. She seemed to like things like that, and a star would be the perfect find, wouldn't it? "One a' my friends lives in the water," he confided, grinning secretively, voice low and soft, the way any siblings with secrets do. "She's a mermaid."

@Wisteria

"Oh?" She said softly, smiling. It made sense her brother would make friends with a flower maker, and she wished she was there for that. She already started to imagine this kind old gem that came with a basket of flowers on their back, peddling their wares and offering a budding rose to her brother, and Thorne making them all glow permanently in exchange for one of them. Of course, this would lead to an important point later on in the story, so she said, "You should take care of the flower, Thorne. I bet it'll become important later on. Maybe one day it will speak secrets to you."

"And, I suppose none of them really are, since you've created them - the wolf hasn't had the opportunity to meet any of them yet. But that's okay, the wolf already has his own love." And when Thorne spoke softly and blushed and hid, she smiled dreamily and nudged him with her little nose. "Silly, Dad isn't a wolf. Dad and Mom have their own story, I'm sure of it, and it's many times more important than the one of the star and the wolf because our parents are ours, and we love them."

And when Thorne confessed he knew a mermaid, she gasped and nudged him harder. "You've met a mermaid and didn't tell me? Don't you know what they can trade and give you? Ah! Thorne, really!" She tsked him in a soft, good natured way. "You have to be careful with mermaids though, and you should've had me along. They can trick you and drown you if you're not careful."

"Did you ask if she had anything magical under the waters?" She said softly, her blue eye a-glinting with quiet excitement.

@Hawthorne