ORIGIN

Scuffing the earth beneath his hoof, Caravaggio's eyes shifted nervously left and right. It had been dark for a while. The cow rarely left Polaris because he had grown so accustomed to the buzzing energy in his bones, and because it had always felt like home to him, but with the darkness the places he felt comfortable were becoming limited. He needed light to see. To groom himself, to admire himself in the river, to see where he was going; his ears could hear, but not well enough to tell him where he was going. His nose could smell, but he hardly had as keen a sense of smell as others he had met. He was blind here. The Spire was the only constant source of light left, and it remained a popular place to convene as far as he knew.

He didn't like hanging around here all the time. But Caravaggio, stubbornly, had no other option.

The only other place he frequented had become Eridanus purely when he wanted a change in his diet. The mosses in the core sated him well enough, but they eventually grew boring. Eridanus was a dirty place but at least it gave him something else to eat when he tired of pulling the mosses and lichens off the rocks. Since the lights went out, though, Caravaggio had no hope of navigating to Eridanus without the possibility of spraining an ankle or tripping or stepping in mud, and even finding something to eat in Polaris now with the limited light was getting difficult. His stomach - multiple stomachs? - growled lamely. Ugh. He hated darkness.

Caravaggio walked circles around the Spire, hoping in the back of his mind that he would catch a glimpse of the mosses tucked in its crevices, or at its feet, bathed in the familiar blue glow. But so far nothing. Had he grazed all that he could? Desperation pulled further at his mind. He'd been alone for so long. Now he was going hungry too. Since when had the beautiful prince become so depraved?

White was tired, but more importantly, she was bored. She couldn't wander without inevitably falling into the river or bumping into the walls, and she couldn't fly without crashing against literally everything in her way. Her days since the darkness were spent, mostly, by licking walls until she found something edible and lazing around the base of the spire.

Today, she tried to sleep. It was harder than it seemed - even when she lay on the best spot for the best naps, there were a number of things that just irked her and kept her awake. The rats scuttling across the ground, the low humming in the distance, the river running and the fish splashing through the water. On top of it all, she could see exactly none of it.

She couldn't see herself, her own two paws - or even her talons, for that matter. She could only just feel her oversized wings sitting neatly on her gut. She couldn't see the rock to her left or the cluster of mushrooms that was nearby, and it annoyed her.

The sound of hooves clicking against the floor caused her ears to flick and her head to lift. She stared out into the dark for a few lingering moments before she pulled herself up to all fours, her sharp talons scraping hard against the ground. Her limbs were loose, as though they were made of cotton as she clambered out from her sleeping spot.

"Who's there?" she called out blindly into the dark, ears pricked as she began following the sound of hooves clopping against the floor.