ORIGIN

Giggle remained silent as Kera approached, her dark eyes squeezed shut.

She was trying to tamp down the fear that had threatened to--and sometimes did--overwhelm her, ever since the lights had gone back out.

She had foreseen this. It might be, she knew, the end--she'd seen several ends. None were particularly good.

She turned as Kera approached, blindly, burrowing her head into the white wolf's fur--and just remained there, the warm touch of another living thing something of a comfort. The bird preened her--and then Kera, too, giving soft, slightly distressed chortles and not noticing Kera's faint distrust.

Giggle did not speak. She just tried to empty her mind of the flood of dire thoughts that threatened, once again, to consume it.

________________

ROLL THE BONES

Reseda didn't care for their names. To her, they were the dark one and the light one. Whatever names they told her meant nothing. That was not who they were. They were the dark and the light. But she did not think of this as the dark one cast the bones. The bones of the dead and fallen, she presumed. They were pretty things. She slowly and silently slid up next to the dark one and watched his cast and listened to his voice. She didn't care much for what he said about the light one, but she did care about how he came to the knowledge. She wanted that too. She wanted to read the bones and to know the future. She wanted everything revealed to her.

She stared intently at the bones but, like the light one, she didn't see what the dark one had seen. She didn't know, she didn't see and this frustrated her. But perhaps it was nothing and the dark one was making it up. Besides, what was that they were saying about the darkness? Maybe she couldn't see perfectly, but it was enough so that she could live well.

"What use have we for light?" she asked the light one, turning her head to stare intensely at her. "This place is fine, we don't need light."

When I speak.

For a moment, Kera did nothing. She didn't quite know what was wrong with Giggle, nor did she entirely know how to help. She eyed the caller distrustfully as it came closer before she turned her head and began to lick the top of Giggle's head carefully.

She flicked an ear in Reseda's direction briefly, in faint acknowledgement that she had indeed heard the dragon, but she spent a long moment laying in silence next to Giggle, cleaning the top of her head. Incidentally, the hyena did not taste particularly pleasant.

She turned her head towards Reseda after a long minute. "We're blind without light," she said quietly. "Blind and helpless. We need the light to see and we need the light to survive. I think we might die without it." She was trying to translate what Giggle said-- or what she thought Giggle had said --to the best of her ability.

She huffed faintly. "I'll turn the lights back on and everything will be okay." Turning her gaze back towards Giggle, Kera went back to quietly cleaning the top of the hyena's head.

Giggle flicked an ear at the licking, listlessly listening to the komodo's words. At length she lifted her head, quiet, to answer its question--only after Kera had answered it first; and only after she had continued motionless for some time.

"I have seen it," she said, voice hoarse and deep. "The darkness came once before. Within," and here she paused, briefly, thinking. She knew that perhaps her words were generally fragmented. But she had to make the young ones understand the danger. She spoke carefully, choosing her words. "was a creature, savage, with many eyes. It was the darkness. It was cruel. It drags you away into the black place. The not-here. The place where you cannot eat, or drink, or breathe, but you cannot die, and you float alone in silence. There is nothing to see. You are blind and deaf. There is nothing to touch. You suffer eternally. It is hell; and it comes in the darkness."

She fell silent, thinking.

What if it's a new... Cycle, somehow? All these new young Gembound--what if the darkness comes, and brings the souls of the fallen back into the rocks, and takes others away?

This, however, Giggle did not know how to voice, and so she simply chitter-whined again, burying her head down between her paws.

________________

ROLL THE BONES

What was with them? They talked as if the darkness was bad. As if they couldn't see at all. Reseda didn't understand why the light one insisted they would turn on the lights. What were the lights anyways? She wanted to know, but she also didn't much care. She was fine as she was.

She continued to stare intensly at the light as she spoke. "You say we will die yet here we are, alive. I have hatched. You are not dead. The darkness will not kill us."

The dark one's words didn't really interest her either. This place they spoke about was of no concern of hers. She was not there and she did not understand so she did not think of it as anything. She did not believe the dark one. She did not care for this darkness that they spoke of.

She turned her head towards the dark one and her unblinking eyes fixed on them. "Time has turned your thoughts to shattered glass.
There is no 'not-here' besides the shell in which I just broke from. The darkness brought me life. If hell is real, it is not the darkness that brings it."

Then what did she care about? Nothing, as far as she could tell. And that didn't bother her. She didn't need to care. All she needed to do was survive.

When I speak.

The wolf's eyes flicked towards Reseda with some surprise. What was wrong with it? It took some time to comprehend what Giggle was saying, but she could at least understand that she had gone through something terrible-- something that Kera might never understand, perhaps.

"Darkness didn't bring you life," she said shortly. "Light brings life. Darkness brings death and blindness and destruction. You can't see in darkness. You can only see where there's light." She thought this much was obvious, but perhaps she was misunderstanding something.

Kera did not know.

She turned her head back to Giggle, hesitantly, and continued to clean the top of her head, licking between her ears as she fell into silence once more.

Giggle listened to the lizard's words, her apathy rapidly mounting into indignant rage.

WHO is this arrogant thing, only just-hatched yet thinks it knows all?! HOW DARE IT presume!

She stood rapidly on stiff, thin legs, snarling and chittering, dark muzzle wrinkling back in an ugly fashion to display her long teeth.

"You are just hatched--just hatched!--and you think you know all? No, no, no, you don't LISTEN, you don't LISTEN, I did not say it would KILL you I said it WILL NOT LET YOU DIE!" Gait stiff she lunged forward, hackles on end, and continued with a snarl.

"There is a NOT-HERE and I have BEEN there--you DARE! DARE! Call me a liar! HERE! AMONG THE BONES!"

The Hallowed Caller began to shriek as it circled, Giggle's high stress and rage filtering through to its mind, and filling it, too, with churning emotions. This fed back to the hyena, in turn, who in a fit of rage, decided that she wanted this lizard gone.

"Get out! GET OUT!" she cried, half high-pitched, mad chittering, and half roaring, guttural snarl.

She rushed forward, her coat shedding fungal spores, trying to reach and shed them onto the komodo dragon hatchling. Her magic was surging with her rage, her blind intent to harm the lizard greatly and get it to leave. Her. Alone.

HURT HER! CHASE HER! KILL HER! EAT HER! TEAR HER APART!

The hyena didn't notice that she was mostly hitting herself; she rushed the lizard, jaws clacking, oblivious to the fungus taking root in her own flesh.

________________

ROLL THE BONES

Reseda leaped back at the spores flying off of the dark one's hide, hissing loudly. The dark's one freak out surprised her and she was confused as to what had caused it to go so crazy. She glanced at the light one, but they were no longer her concern. Perhaps she should not have spoken so boldly. But that didn't matter now. The dark one was out of control which meant this situation was out of control.

"Crazy old fool," she spat, narrowly avoiding a shower of spores. "Whatever you have seen I have seen none. All I have known is darkness and it doesn't seem so bad."

She turned to the light one and snarled, her voice low and threatening. "You're a fool.
You're both fools. I have no need for the company of fools."

With one last look at the two, she turned and stalked away, very aware of the two just behind her. She didn't need them and she didn't need their bones or their lights. She was fine on her own and in the darkness they all feared. But perhpas, since she did not fear the darkness, there was something that she could do with those that did. Yes, she could amuse herself well with that. Perhaps not with these two fanatics. But with others, maybe. She would not forget this.

*exit Reseda, unless someone stops her


When I speak.

Kera did nothing for a moment, only watching Giggle as she hauled herself up and started shouting. She forgot the komodo dragon was even there despite it speaking, only pushing up once she saw mushrooms growing onto Giggle.

She stepped forward, carefully, passing a half-glare to Reseda as she left, and then moved to very gently press her face into Giggle's flank, comfortingly. "It's gone," she said gently, as if the hyena hadn't seen. "It'll be alright."

She shifted away as the hyena jumped a bit, keeping a distance, but edged forward closer to the front-half of Giggle. She sat herself back down. "It doesn't understand. It will one day," continued the pup quietly. "It'll be sorry for it. Forget about it for now."

Giggle stood stiffly, hurling insults at the retreating lizard, all sorts of foul oaths and swears of revenge and so forth. She then stood silent, trembling, snarling--until she felt Kera touch her.

She leapt--up and sideways; and then she stood panting, staring at the white wolf.

"It's wrong," she insisted wildly to Kera, tone desperate, voice cracking. "It's wrong. There is a dark and there is a void. And it will consume us. It can't. It can't."

What she'd now seen in the bones, the words of the lizard, the fungus that she could now feel tearing into her own flesh--it hurt, all of it hurt, it was making her shake and lose her breath and...

The hyena let out a choking, cackling moan and stepped away from Kera, focusing, her head hanging low. She tried to shed the fungus that was still crawling its way through her skin, before it could get too deep, before it could do too much damage. Slowly, she felt the grip loosen, felt the dander and the fruiting bodies extricating themselves, gradually; felt them falling away into the bones.

She didn't know what else to do--about any of it.

________________

ROLL THE BONES