ORIGIN

For the brief moment the orb petered out of existence, Mercurius raised a paw to claw desperately at the warmth. It only made it mere inches above the earth before his lantern remained. "Perhaps you could teach me how to do that, sometimes?" He wanted to be guided in the way of the light—he refused any temptations of darkness. Look where that had gotten Her. More attuned to emotion than he'd like to be, he noted the slight shock at the realization of his nyctophobia. Perhaps he would not offer his slight fear of cervidae, then. It was too irrelevant, anyways.

"I hope I won't bore you with it's length," Mercurius murmured hopefully, settling down in the sand alongside the magicka-born firefly.

"The vault of stars was once home to a great civilization—Gembound coexisted in perfect melancholia. They sheltered the Moon, sister of the garden's All-Mother. She would walk among them and bless them with their light. The stars were in her eyes," a Gembound unfamiliar. He had seen her briefly in passing, and never again, "yet she never allowed the folk to look upon them. They begged. Pleaded for her to view the beauty of the home they had built. To assay the vast domain. They guided her to the eminence, atop the towering acropolis. Yet still, she refused. Deflecting, refusing to tempt the Rookery Beyond."

"Antlers—" he hitched involuntarily. Mercurius gathered the frayed ends of his story, exhaling viciously. "Furious tines were jealous of the Moon's keeping. He carried all that was cold and miserable upon frigid branches. Were He not so glacial, one could describe his jealousy as fiery. He wanted the beloved Moon to himself, to keep her among the hoarfrost of his domain. To trap her within icy bars so that her starry eyes may belong to only him."

"It would not be so—her glorious kingdom ruined by spires of ice and people rend by angry blades, the Moon wept. The Antlers rose to the tower's peak, daring her to be the martyr to nothing. Eldritch darkness consumed as she opened her eyes. Silver eyes glinted hungrily, devouring the Moon in a fell swoop. Light quelled, they hunted down the Antlers. Yet, he would live to see another day, to dissipate into the woodwork. The esteemed murderer of beauty and light. The Rookery Beyond waited atop the roof of the starry vault, awaiting His return."

Mercurius frowned slightly and cast his gaze off to the side. "Sorry for the terrible ending; it has been a while since I last told a story on the spot."

"Perhaps in a little while, then," he demurred softly, "I'm tired." Some Gembound had been blessed with sort of an eternal youth physically. Others, like Mercurius, felt the wiles of time wearing at him: his back ached; his hips urged him not to move; he slept more. Perhaps it was the perpetual effort to keep nyctophobic thoughts at bay, to assauge his fears of something so natural. It was keeping him awake because he didn't want to close his eyes to invite darkness in. Some Gembound never slept, he had noticed.

His tale ended, he couldn't help the smile pulling at inky lips. Mercurius looked off to the side almost bashfully, "oh, I'm sure it's not not terrible." Trying not to discredit the compliment, he argued softly, "I usually have better stories to tell." Glancing offhandedly to the lantern in his periphery, the aged lion flopped down. He basked in the gentle warmth the worn stone steps provided. It drew him into a lull, broken by the thought of the origins of his tales. "Wandering gives me ideas—I turn them into concepts that bare some resemblance to the caves. Orion's stars have always reminded me of hungry eyes glinting in the dark. Watching and waiting."

"When I was kept there, I sometimes wished they'd pounce on me and devour me." An unintentional tidbit of information slipped, and he stared shamefully into his paws.

Time hadn't been kind to him, he supposed—the serval before him had seen the Caves in earlier days yet he had been fortunate enough to keep spry. Mercurius, however, was world-weary. Exhausted and yearning to settle down. With the ever-shifting tides of the cavernous crypt of Origin Caves, it was unlikely he could. They brewed monstrosities in the furthest, darkest corners. Riving the concord gembound were often disposed to keep. He never would unsheathe his claws; he would leave that to others who ran headfirst into battle. The best he could do was protect and hide. Guard those who cannot battle.

"I'm glad Orion is able to be called home for at least one fang," he murmured rather wistfully. He might've found the sparsile room beautiful in another time. Shifting uneasily, he dispelled that whimsy. "My wanderings will meet their end someday, too. Perhaps in the warm embrace of Fornax." Ah, yes. Stereotypical old people retirement in a warm place by the beach.