ORIGIN

A shattering scream cut the silence.

The thing that had once slept was awake. And it was trapped. And it wanted out.

The sound bubbled out from a smooth, gleaming egg that had embedded itself within a narrow crevice in the stagnant tunnel. It had been dead for so long, it seemed almost impossible for anything to be alive in this dusty, airless place, and yet if one listened close enough, through the screaming - was it really screaming? Or was the silence just so distorted? - they could hear scratching. Claws against rock like a thousand tiny insects skittering across the floorboards. Shrk. Shrk.

LET ME OUT.

The screaming continued. The fluid that filled their lungs was exhausted from their chest and they were drowning, and screeching, whatever hellish monster it was that lurked within the soft chrysalis wedged in just a sliver in the wall. Too far to be reached. Too close not to be heard. It beat, it pounded, it was dying for release. And piece by piece, that lovely chrysalis, so deceptive in its gentle gradient, began to fracture. Hairline cuts criss-crossed against its once flawless surface. The creature stretched. Screamed. Grew larger. Grew stronger. It yawned for space. It ached for freedom.

Somewhere in the process it must have injured itself. That pain radiated through its entirety and it was the only thing it knew, a stinging that laced its body, a resounding agony that shook its thoughts. The scratching intensified from within. Another crack stretched along the surface. The scratching came louder. The screaming was at its crux. Pain. Panic. Release.

Suddenly, it punched through a small sliver in near the top of the chrysalis. At the moment that single shard came free, the scratching stilled. A glob of slick red fluid belched from the hole and trickled down the side of the chrysalis. The thing moved within; it gasped for air, ejected the fluid from its casing, and more and more of it poured from the hole. It crawled in a long viscous line onto the ground, through the crevice, dripping out from the wall and onto the bare floor in the middle of the tunnel.

The creature in the chrysalis moved. A single eye caught the light from the shadows of the crevice, from the black, bubbling viscera of the puncture in the egg.

It searched. It's curiosity had only just begun.

The eye opened. It opened wide, a single baby blue glimmer in the darkness, searching through that tiny sliver for signs of life as the scream dwindled down into an irate chatter. It wasn't sure how long it had been alone for, or when it had even come into existence, or if loneliness even meant anything to it. All it knew was that it felt like it had to find someone, something. It needed.

When it did catch life, the creature fell silent. A massive body moved into the dimness that filled the tunnel; whatever low light had allowed it to make sense of its surroundings was blocked out by the silhouette, who warmly observed that it must have been it - doing what? What was it? - and to emerge, child, to get a better look at you. The creature twitched its whiskers, still bathed in the shadow of the crevice, then turned its eye away; darkness swallowed it whole, leaving nothing but the distant suggestion of a beating heart somewhere within that broken chrysalis.

Inside the hole, its claws scratched and cut against the stone, but there was only one way out - that hole that it had punctured. It wasn't sure if it wanted to leave. This place had been warm for so long. Let me out. Out of where? Certainly not here. There was some other place it needed to leave. Some other prison. A mind. A body. But not this place.

The babe poked its head out of the chrysalis again, blinking both eyes now at the stranger in the dark, but the blood-stained fluid packed in around its eyes and made it difficult to see. It chirped and pulled itself out of the hole.

Let me out.

Maybe this thing could.

Slow steps had the genet pulling itself from the crevice, wriggling its long, narrow body until finally it had reached the edge of the wall and there, the creature burst free; with nothing to support it, it collapsed on the ground before the lion's paws, its thin fur slick with crimson and something in it aching. The babe straightened and craned his head back, examining the stranger. No longer sheltered within the crevice where its chrysalis lay, the babe felt that dull breeze blowing in from everywhere, smelled everything it carried. This was some kind of strange new world. It didn't know if it wanted to be out anymore.