ORIGIN

The little lizard first stared at the bright one, who had started making noises. She didn't know how she understood, but she did. They were calling her gross. She didn't know what it meant, but she guess that it was describing her. But the way they scrunched up their face, it might not have been good. But then her eyes traveled to the other one, the dark one and the winged one. If anything was gross, it was that one.

Could she speak? Was she a bone? Was she a rock? She didn't think so. None of those things seemed to describe her. So she searched for a word that would, if only to quell the annoying questions these things were poking at her with. "I am Reseda," she replied, her voice slow and smooth.

Her eyes moved to the dark one's friend, the one eyed creature. This one was funny. It was different then the other two. Why was it different? She didn't really know. She wanted to know. But there were the other two still staring at her. She looked back at the light one, her eyes unblinking. "Tell me what you are."

When I speak.

Was it a rock? Kera did not know.

She only watched, for a moment, as the gross-newborn-thing spoke. "I'm Kera," she announced. "I'm gonna turn the lights back on."

She decided not to mention that she, in fact, had no idea how to turn the lights back on. She was going to do it either way, and she would save everyone from the darkness and needlessly hostile geese that attacked random people.

And rats.

Kera hated rats.

"What are you? You don't have fur or not-fur. You look like a rock," she offered, absently lifting a paw to lick dust off the pad. She hoped, soon, she and Giggle could leave this thing and continue off towards... where ever Giggle was going.

She wanted to read bones. It would help with her hero-doings, she was sure-- she just didn't know how, much like how she was going to deal with the lights. The important thing here was that she was sure.

It could speak.

Well, that was certainly... something. Giggle eyed Reseda over, trying to figure out just who or what she was. She wasn't sure, but the fact that something had come to life now, here, in the darkness and near her bones, well--it had to mean something, right? She wasn't sure what, just yet, but-... something.

She huffed and stood, pacing around it, to and fro, hesitating to come close, and let out a short, piercing cackle of nervousness before speaking.

"You are new. You are not a bone. Not like the white snake, she was a bone but not-a-bone but she was in the bones. Hello. Welcome." Abruptly she stepped forward, leaning down to try and touch the creature's back with her nose, as if in a greeting of some kind.

"I am Giggle. I read the bones and they speak to me and I see what lays ahead. You fall from stone and rock and gem before me and you fall into the bones; perhaps I can see yours." She sounded relatively calm, at least as calm as Giggle got, these days; she turned, pacing with her long, thin legs over to her bone pile, and focused, trying to fill the pit, to surround it, with those glowing mushrooms that were proving to be such a help.

The hallowed caller hopped alongside, watching.

As Giggle focused on her magic, she talked, too.

"Come and watch or come and see and come and listen, we will look. I will look. I will ask the bones what they say of the white-thing, the thing that is not bones, but fur like me and Light and Bright--"

She peered over her work. It would do; they would do. The light was dim--very dim; but she could work on that later. So long as they had taken hold in the pit, well--for now, that was all she needed.

Omen hopped around her feet as she leaped into her pile, wading with head held high as if swimming through the sharp, hard points. At length she nosed through them, sniffing around for some time before choosing a long, sharp-toothed, slender skull with a pale green gem skewed to one side of its forehead, near the left inner eye. This she lifted in her jaws, and then turned, bounding up out of the pit and past Kera, racing up to her ledge in a patter of paws in the near-dark. She set it at her feet, and spoke.

"We will see what the bones say, yes! Yes! Are you ready? I will show you how to do it. Come!" she called to Kera--forgetting, for the moment, the new komodo left behind.

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ROLL THE BONES

Watching Giggle begin to pace, Kera felt some sort of pity in her gut for the creature. She assumed the hyena was afraid of the dark. The turning-off of the lights must have done a great deal to her, but that was okay. Giggle was among the people Kera would save when she turned the lights back on.

She pushed herself up as Giggle moved off again, observing quietly for a moment. She was trying to spread more mushrooms around-- good. There was faint relief in knowing that the pup wasn't the only one around who could make and spread fungi-- make and spread lights, but she seemed to be struggling with it.

She stepped forward, moving to aid the hyena. Only, she couldn't. Kera did not know why-- perhaps she was having some anxiety. The pit of bones looked like something precious; something Kera shouldn't move in after. She herself, by now, had also forgotten entirely of the small lizard-dragon, watching Giggle as she hauled up a skull.

"Do you know who it is?" she asked, eyeing it over as the hyena came back. "I mean-- did you know them, or are they a stranger?"

She followed further, stepping unevenly along after the hyena. Her leg hurt-- but it was considerably better than it had been in a few days. Not that her leg mattered right now. She was interested to see how Giggle would see the future, how she would teach her to do it. "I'm ready," she said.

Giggle sat by the skull in a manner perhaps too dignified to suit a fungus-riddled half-starved mad hyena. Still, she was listening attentively to Kera.

The bones were her sacred duty, as was her reading of them. Those who came to her were always offered a glimpse into what they had to say--and Giggle genuinely believed in the truth of them.

"Strangers all," Giggle answered, looking down into the bone pit. "Some large some small, but strangers, all. Some broken," she added as an afterthought, breaking her own likely unconscious rhyming.

She then lifted a dark paw, placing it on the narrow predator skull.

"You wish to know and so I teach, I tell and you listen--find a bone that must be thrown, find one that matches she who asks, or he! Or it! And carry it here. And then throw it, throw it--"

With a sudden, violent movement the hyena cast the skull down and away into the bone pile and then turned to watch intently as it flew down into the rest, sending some scattering or rolling away before settling back where it belonged.

"...and you watch where it goes, and the patterns it makes, and you listen with your eyes and see with your mind and it shows you futures."

Omen swept down, dimly-lit alongside the bones themselves by the bioluminescence of the mushrooms, before hopping through them. Giggle watched--through her own eyes and through Omen's single one--before turning to look intently at Kera, expression sly.

"Before I tell you what I see, you tell me! You tell me! What do you see? Are you better than the lion, the little one who left, who pretended to know when he-knew-nothing? Or do you see? Do you see?"

She let out another short cackle, this one less nervous, more pensive, and waited to see if the young white wolf before her held some measure of second sight.

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ROLL THE BONES

Kera sat herself by Giggle, having completely forgotten about Reseda by now. She listened for a moment, then stared off towards the bone pile, then to the skull. "That's sad," she said, not noticing Giggle's near-perfect rhyming. "Whoever they were previously, just gone? No one remembers who they are?"

She silenced herself to listen when Giggle told her to, watching carefully. She twisted her head to watch the skull-- the poor, forgotten gembound's skull --as it sailed through the air and plummeted back into the pile of other poor, forgotten gembounds. She wondered, briefly, if the rest of him, her or it were in there.

It was a little sad to consider.

The pup looked back to Giggle. "What do I see?" she asked a little blankly before pushing herself up, peering over the pile where the skull had landed. She saw nothing of importance, in truth-- only bones and mushrooms and glowing --but she supposed that, in itself, was something.

"I see skulls and ribs and femurs. I see light pushing back darkness. I see death and I see gems," she offered, though she was not actually sure if this was even a satisfactory answer for the hyena.

Giggle listened, and in a vague and fragmented sort of way wondered if Kera were Seeing as she Saw. If the pushing back with light, and the death, were metaphorical or quite literal.

She thought about this, eyeing Kera, then looked back down.

She saw many bones that had been thrown aside by the skull--and yet they had arranged around it, all connected, still touching. And she saw how perfect was the shape that they had made--like a snowflake, a crystal--and she saw the mushroom's light flickering over them, and how they seemed to turn their shiniest sides to the glow.

Her mind, slipping into a dreamlike state, saw images and pictures and her thoughts--ever fragmented at the best of times--seemed to leave this plane entirely. Her voice came deeper, slower, more thoughtful and distant.

"I see how the bones have fallen. Their shapes and their light and their structure. They are a circle and spikes and they are perfect. You have begun, and what you begin, little one, you will finish. You bind things that fit one another, and you will shape them to perfection."

She fell silent a beat, still looking the runes over, before continuing. "You will bind--yes; you will be among others. Perfection. Completion. I see it many times in these bones, over and over. A link of things that are good. A finishing of the wheel." She did not know what a wheel was--not exactly; but that sounded right. Her drone continued. "Light. Light. The bright light; pure. A bright change, yes--that is what your fate suggests. Illumination, little wolf. Perhaps you will bring the light."

The hyena turned, peering at Kera, curious--silent, for now, to wait and see what she had to say... and also pondering at what this meant. It was a wholly positive message that the bones were offering--one that suggested that where this wolf walked, light and joy would walk with her. That she would unite those that she met, perhaps in a common goal--and change would flow in her footsteps.

Omen flew up, fluttering to sit beside Giggle, watching Kera, too, with full attention.

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ROLL THE BONES

Kera lowered herself back onto her haunches. She preffered this kind of Giggle to the Giggle she had seen before. This Giggle was calm and dreamy and interesting. The Giggle she had seen was mad and restless and loud. She listened carefully, watching the bones.

She wasn't sure if she saw what Giggle saw, but she liked what she said. She will bring perfection and light. With her tail wagging and kicking up dust off the floor of Canis, she turned her attention back to Giggle. "The bones agree with me, then?" she asked quietly, excitedly. "I'll turn the lights back on."

This was on. No more games. No more fights. No more betrayals-by-birds. Kera was going to bring the light back to the caves one way or another.

She did not care if she had to grow mushrooms in every darkened corner of the tunnels, or climb up the ledges to highest points. The bones had said she would be among others-- that meant she didn't have to do it alone. Kera wasn't sure what she was going to do, but her plan to save the caves were a lot clearer now.

Then again, perhaps it was all metaphorical-- illumination did not have to mean bringing literal light. She wanted it to, but perhaps it meant banding everyone else together to figure it out.

Kera did not know.

"What else do the bones say?" she asked after a time. "What do they say about you?"

The ragged hyena listened, and looked down. In an almost indifferent manner she stretched her senses to the fungi, absently urging them, willing them, to grow and spread and brighten that light of theirs. They did, albeit weakly, and she turned her attention to her words.

"I asked them, before, when I served the Bone King and this place was light. They told me then I would live for a long time. And then the darkness came--the first darkness--and the eyes. It took me. And I touched the world and they told me then that the black would come again, one day. That we would all drown in it, and die, but not-die; we would suffer and fear and float in nothing forever and now the dark is back. I will ask them again what they say of me; I do not know if this is a long life, now. Maybe I am already dead!" she added, with a shrill and frightened cackle.

She galloped at an unsteady, rocking lope to the pile, and snatched up a thick, heavy femur, carrying it back to the top. This she threw down, Kera half-forgotten, staring at the bones.

For a time she stood silent.

At length, she simply slowly lay down, head on paws, watching the bone pile sadly. She did not further speak.

Through the link, Omen questioned her, an emotion, a gesture of thought.

What is it, mother-sister? Why are you sad?

I see my own connections, sister-daughter; my own completions. And then I see myself separated and taken from the rest. The bones say I do not fit with others, any longer. And then they fall apart. Disruption and chaos and destruction.

Her thoughts were too complex for the little bird to comprehend; too sophisticated to translate into mere emotion. The Caller simply hopped to her, instead, and began to preen her behind one ear--which flicked--to provide what comfort it could. Giggle closed her eyes, and sighed.

No, this wasn't good at all.

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ROLL THE BONES

Watching the hyena, Kera was silent for a moment. "You can't be dead if you're here," she said. "This will be the last darkness. The last blackness. I'll fix the lights and everything will be okay, and if they come back, I'll fix them again and again and again until they can't be broken anymore. Until it'll be light forever."

She didn't entirely understand. How could she? She didn't know what Giggle meant by the blackness or the eyes or the floating. She knew it mattered, somehow, but she didn't understand it.

She watched as Giggle stared into the bone pile, and then lay down.

Time passed.

Kera did nothing for a long time.

Slowly, the wolf pup pushed herself onto her paws and slowly limped towards the hyena. Her mind was full of questions-- what had she seen, what had the bones said to her? Did she see the darkness, or the eyes, or the floating? Was it bad? Was it good? Perhaps she wasn't sad, only bittersweet? Kera did not know.

She slumped down heavily next to the hyena, silent, and nudged her forehead against Giggle's shoulder. It wasn't much. It was a meek gesture of comfort, but it was a gesture of comfort regardless.

Kera decided not to speak, only laying with Giggle as she, too, peered into the bone pile, but saw nothing. She only saw the light and the bones.