ORIGIN

Pain.

She seethed. Her clawed toes dug into the soft soil of her chilled crypt, tucked between a crevice that split between Orion and Tunnel M. Shadows swarmed randomly about her den, rolling over her like a rock in a stream, rolling up the walls and across the ceiling where they would lose momentum and fall like misty rain. Her legs had been damaged by the ice, but she had healed from the Pulsar easily. She was turned with her leg stretched forward, licking and inspecting the wound where the ice had impaled her hind leg the worst. Shadows snaked through the open wound, slipping beneath her skin and dispersing through her flesh.

Like gentle fingers, two strings of shadows gripped the entrance of her den and peeked toward the ceiling of Orion with cat-like eyes. Was He there? Was He watching her now? Did He see what she had done? A grin spread across her face as she thought of it- the fight, the hyena, the despair the three-headed dog must have felt when the illusion vanished beneath him. The eyes flicked from the ceiling toward something else, but what she was looking for wasn't there. In fact, the space was cold. She paused and her head lifted. The muscles of her brow furrowed over her eyeless sockets and she grew angry. Why was it cold? Where had the little creature gone to? It knew Him.

She searched, sending shadows out. Quickly. Furiously. Desperately.

There. Across the Cave where the waterfall was - and as she was discovering his place, her leg clenched and jolted with double the pain. She retreated from his place, bringing the wisps back nearly instantaneously. Inspecting her leg carefully, she concluded nothing had changed. Was it his? The small one's pain? Did they share it?

She gathered herself in a veil of shadows and traveled from Orion, slipping along the walls and between the cracks and crevices of the tunnels before depositing herself into the den of the cat. She was just shadows here. She dared not form and take up his space. She dared not reveal herself to him yet. She, who had watched him for so long, the cat. It knew Him.

"We share pain," she croaked, her voice coming from all areas of the small den, though one eye peeked from shadows near the back of then den. While she didn't mean it in an odd or strange way, she truly just meant that both their legs were broken. "You haven't been home."

He hadn't even seen the shifting of shadows as they coiled around the rock, settling in to the deepest of crevices and darkening what was already in shade. He tried to pay as little attention to the darkness as he could, with the shadows constantly encroaching on his bond with Clover. It was critical that he valued the light, and he cherished it, even if he had purposely placed a distance between himself and the doe; selfishly, a guilt that nagged the back of his mind, but he was only preparing. His children were out in the wide space comprising the general floor of the waterfall room, playing with the others - the Songcat children had generously taken to his own, especially Baroque and his friends. Hawthorne and Wisteria were both eager to meet as many Gembounds as they could, and though he held reservations against them lingering around Clover, they seemed not to require a warning. Their uncertainty was inherent. He blamed himself for that too.

Half-lidded eyes had betrayed the slow onset of exhaustion and he was contemplating a nap - the morning held him busying himself around the ridges, building a sort of scaffolding such that he could align the constellations in the underside of a sloped overhang for the wayward, curious eyes to see. He'd consulted with Quintus about them, wanting to make sure he got them right since he had been unable to return to Orion to reference them, but he had a pretty good idea - a keen memory allowed him to remember many details that most would have lost in the haze of time.

It pulled at the fringes of his mind, sleep; his eyes had nearly closed when a voice suddenly surged from behind him, and he was forced into attention, almost pinning blame on the intrusive shadows of Clover's demon. On instinct, he turned to the source - he'd expected nothing, for it to be a passing thought through the bond. Instead, an eye, singular and gleaming in its subtle threat. He froze, staring; wanting to glimpse the room outside, to search for Clover, desperate to know if she was playing tricks, but he could only return the gaze of the shadow. "This is my home now." He finally answered, low and uncertain. What was this mass of darkness, festering in his den - and what did it mean, to share pain? Questions he wished to push forward, only to bite his tongue and wait.

He turned, but was quiet for a moment. She slowly let a second eye lazily open next to the first, forming a more familiar pair of eyes even though she now felt more comfortable watching all places... all angles. A tendril of shadows slipped beyond the den entrance, gripping the edge. An eye opened out of sight of the inside of the den, and from this tendril she spread another to the other side for a second eye. Watch. She didn't like being in this other place - she couldn't look up at Him.

Meanwhile, the pair within the den focused on the cat. Though she had not taken true physical form quite yet, she could still feel the pain of her injuries. Had she been standing there, she would have looked terribly confused. How was this his home? She processed this momentarily, glancing past him toward the den entrance. What was he doing here, then? Why had he left the stars? It was the cat that knew Him. She wanted to know more about the soft furred creature. A brief memory flickered like the soft flame of a candle in a striking gust: soft furred.

So he was never to return to Orion? The pair of eyes returned their focus to the cat. "What are you making?" she asked. Was it for Him, so far away?

The male cat was.. apprehensive. She bubbled on the surface of the wall for a moment, the thought of reaching a paw to the floor and stepping out fighting to overcome her caution. Yet still she remained nothing but a cast of shadow in the back of his den. As he answered her, she was quiet for some time, running the words through her mind as she looked over the work in progress. Stories? Understanding? Of.. Him? The cat knew Him, and she wanted to know more - why. The cat named Him once. She had heard. She hadn't forgotten.

After a long silence, her two eyes that looked upon him retreated into the darkness. Slowly, like liquid, she slipped from her place within the wall and stepped out into the den. She kept against the wall with a veil of shadow covering her skin to hide the scarring and naked, blistering tissue constantly eroded by radiation. While her eyeless sockets gazed endlessly beyond, another pair of eyes within the shadows had manifested just above her body. They glanced around, flicking to and from the cat as she adjusted her body. Her back legs rested strangely as she lowered her rear to the ground, taking great care to place them as comfortably as possible. Though shadows masked her body, close attention would note thicker strands moving through the wounds in her legs like streams of murky air.

"What stories?" she questioned, then quickly appended, "Of who?" Of Him? Good stories?

...Bad ones? This thought cracked a grin onto her face. Of course they'd be bad ones.

Terrible ones! A short, cackling laughter as she escaped into her own thoughts momentarily; and then eerie silence as her full attention fell heavily onto the only other... sane soul among them.

And with that curious image of the feline molded into her mind, she quietly dissipated into the surrounding shadows, leaving him for another time.