ORIGIN

How uncomfortable.

Moments ago, Drae had been released into Polaris. More like unceremoniously dumped. Her chrysalis had opened, and she'd come tumbling out, upside down. She was small but quite flexible at birth. The damage was minimal. It was just annoying. The puff ball trilled: a high pitched bird song indicating, in this situation, distress. For a long moment, she stumbled in a small arch of three or four feet before her eyes snapped open. They were massive and yellow in color. Again, she trilled, this time louder. The space she occupied was empty. Her only company was her ruptured cocoon and the small fungi that grew over her head.

Ungainly paws trumped upon the ground and she began to spin in a circle head tipped back, looking at all the mushrooms above. Her left paw clacked out a song as she danced. It took many moments of jubilee for her to realize that she sound was coming from her. Falling back onto her haunches, she lifted her paw, startled to see one of her squishy pads replaced with a hard green stone. It looked a bit diseased, if she was being honest. A few times, she rapped her foot against the floor. It seemed to have little effect on the stone. Eyeing it again, she began to methodically clean her foot, raspy tongue making sure she got between her toes. Draegoon eventually moved onto her other foot, then the other, and the other. Her face was contorted into a wide-eyed expression of utter concentration as she bathed, hind leg lifted higher than one might think was possible.

When she was sufficiently clean, she simply sat in the quietly humming room, keenly aware of the electric feeling causing her fur to stand on end.

He worked a course across the edge of the crystal river, clawing some ways, sliding others - like a snake, but with the hindrance of legs. The wings upon his back were spread wide through most of his travel, until Netil learned to withdraw them; now they clung tightly across his back. Gradually, Netil slunk his way across the terrain. He paused to investigate glowing objects from time to time, his white eyes falling level to the taller growths; some he attempted to eat, leaving large chunks missing, or spit up unceremoniously a few feet away from the source. They were not edible things, these fungi. He could not fill his belly on these bizarre, useless objects.

So, like the days before his revival, Netil returned to hunting. This was something he had little skill in before - and now was hardly different. He was impatient, still. Voracious, unyielding. With some luck he found himself confronted with a figure - a creature, new and fresh to the caves - hurriedly cleaning themselves. Netil did not see this as a gembound, despite the indicators. This creature was larger than the skittering, scrambling things that lived in the nooks and crannies. Larger meant more meat, and less hunger.

He shifted his way closer, attempting silence as he moved, but the scratching of his claws and the dragging of his low-slung body was evidence enough; before long, this child would spot him. What happened next would determine if Netil feasted, or went without.