ORIGIN

It was hard to tell where she was going. Everything looked and smelled the same in the darkness, and except for the smell of the occasional rat (which Kera refused to go near, damned things), all she could tell was around was dust and rocks. She moved with her face half-pressed against the wall, carefully turning and weaving through every crook and alcove in the tunnels.

At least, she assumed she was in a tunnel. She definitely wasn't in Polaris anymore, and she thought she had long-passed Orion, though she didn't know what else the caves had to offer. To her, there had only ever been Orion and Polaris.

The reason she knew she wasn't in Orion or Polaris anymore was because there new smells. Something old, like a rat but not. Like a rock, but... not. Kera soon found what these new things were as she promptly stumbled into a pile of them, clattering loudly through this new room with rocks-but-not-rocks.

She fell on her injured leg with an equally loud yelp of pain. Where was the wall? She did not know. Where was anything? She couldn't smell water, or rats-- just dirt and rocks and rocks-but-not-rocks.

Breathing heavily, she shut her eyes, focusing quietly. Her gem glittered in the darkness for a moment, beneath the thick, shaggy fur covering her body. From the ground beneath her came dark blue mushrooms, spotted, glowing a faint eerie green. They sprouted in a ring around her.

They supplied some light, but not enough for her to see everything. She could, at the very least, see her own paws. She licked her jowls and shifted along, curling into herself quietly for a moment. It was safe, here-- this was her place, decidedly, with the mushrooms.

Out of the corner of her eye, illuminated with eerie-greenness, she could see a pile of disturbed bones that she had clattered into. A skull, in particular, stared with hollow, empty sockets straight at her. It was judging her. Disappointed that she had fallen into it.

Kera decided to ignore it. She shut her eyes.

Giggle jerked at the sound of clattering bones, again startled back into wakefulness. She'd been sitting, lingering half in her dark daze, half out, afraid to sleep-... always afraid to sleep.

If I sleep, the dark will take me. If I sleep, the eyes will come.

The rail-thin hyena stared, bristling with fear, into the darkness. She felt the flutter of her familiar at her side, the questioning curiosity within it, and her mind--as ever--translated it into simple speech.

What is out there, Mother-Sister?

Giggle hesitated, then spoke softly, her bond bringing her answer back to the bird in a form it could understand: emotions and images.

"I do not yet know, Sister-Daughter." She turned, nuzzling blindly in the darkness--but fully aware of where her familiar was. They were linked, now and always, and it was a tether she clung to with desperation. Her noze nudged black feathers and she felt the thin, hard beak briefly preen her muzzle--and then, slowly, she crept forward.

It was with immense surprise that she saw light appear before her--and even more surprise--awe, even--when she realized what it was. She took, at first, no notice of the white thing laying within--it was too small to be her son, too small to be Kerberos, and her fragmented mind decided this and then discarded the stranger, for now. Instead, she stared at the distant lights, and she knew what they meant.

Awed, quiet, she tried to touch her mind to their spores, to these foreign invaders to her ring of fungus and mushrooms--and she tried to greet them as an old ally. To reach her power for them, knowing what it meant, if they responded to her.

They did.

THEY DID.

The hyena let out a loud--even deafening--shrieking bellow, a noise without any name to describe it, of joy. She bounded forward, galloping crookedly and wildly around the mushrooms and the wolf within, screeching her ecstasy.

LIGHT! LIGHT! I CAN MAKE LIGHT!

A voice, in the darkness of her mind: We are all things.

Omen lifted off, its haunting shrieks echoing her own, fear and excitement thrilling through it. What is it? What is it, Mother-Sister!?

The hyena's words came verbal, sang out into the darkness in a broken scream of joy.

"THERE IS LIGHT!"

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She heard some scuffling and a distant voice, but she was quick to ignore it. Truthfully, it was beginning to get a little comfortable here. She was safe with her mushrooms, even if the bones and skulls lurked beyond it. It would be okay.

And it was okay. When she felt more caps sprout around her, touching her fur as they grew, she made no notice of it. She only assumed it was risidual from her own spell, if that were even a thing. She simply lay, content, falling asleep.

Until something screamed.

She shot up at once, sitting on her haunches with wide eyes, looking around. There was something, in the darkness, running and bounding and screaming. There was another something, another screaming something. What was going on?

There was brief panic that shot through the pup. A thousand situations that could be unfolding in front of her eyes, only dimly illuminated by an increasing number of glowing mushrooms that nestled comfortably by her paws. Someone could be dying, or getting attacked, or that goose could have come back.

It took a long time for Kera to realise the noises were that of joy, that the something-in-the-dark was happy. They shouted for the light-- had they never seen it before? "Who are you?" She asked, putting on a brave-face despite the slight tremble in her voice. "Have you never made light before?"

Were they young? Kera didn't think she'd have seen light either if that cat hadn't shown it to her. She would have stumbled through the darkness, unaware of what light was and that the caves used to be full of it. She wished she could see more of it.

"I'm Kera," she offered to the something-in-the-darkness. "I make light. I'm going to turn the lights back on some day."

Giggle skidded to a halt within the ring of mushrooms, her dark eyes wide with the thrill of it all. She eyed the wolf, and after standing stock-still for a moment, she rapidly and jerkily paced toward the pup.

"Light?" she gibbered. "That's right, light, right, but it comes and it goes, it comes and it's TAKEN, and you're stuck in the black but if you can make your own, OH, if you can make your OWN!" She sprang away just before reaching Kera, and threw herself down, rolling for joy in the glowing fungus.

Rolling, and trying to keep the spores, to infuse them into her already matted, fungus-caked coat, to add them to her arsenal. It took root, she thought--barely; it would need tending, but it was there.

She then pushed up, panting, waiting to see if they would take--whilst pacing closer to the white pup. She inspected her: the creature was small, and white.

White, like light.

"Giggle! That was my name, now. That is my name, before. And you are--Kera. I don't make LIGHT, don't be silly, we can't make LIGHT," she barked--and then brief memories, broken, fell through her mind. Of glowing things, and of fire. "We can make other things make light," she conceded, after a moment, staring trembling at the wolf. She rarely moved, these days, and the racing about already had her nearly exhausted.

But light!

There was light-... Oh, the possibilities!

But what was this gift-giver to get in return? Giggle thrust her head forward, sniffing, eyeing Kera in thought--almost suspiciously.

"I read the bones, and bones, and moans," she declared, turning and pacing away toward her bone pile, shaking her coat. "They speak, and the fungus speaks, and I listen. I listen! And I hear. I see. More than light, in the darkness--I see futures.

Giggle turned, and eyed Kera slyly over her shoulder. Above, the Hallowed Caller's haunting cries echoed as it circled.

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Not far from where...whatever was transpiring, a large peridot sat, a little ways up the wall, softly glowing with ethereal light. There was a small shadow inside of the little lizard that was curled in her shell, not yet awoken to this new world yet. But then there was a scream and sight popped into her eyes and a single crack appeared on the shell. She was confused. What was going on? What was that sound? Why was everything green?

But then she saw the crack and she figured that she might as well hit it. Unfortunately, she wasn't very strong and her weak claws barely scratched the inside of the gem. She frowned. Everything was way too colorful. Whatever this color was, she was quickly figuring out that she didn't like it. It was too...well, she didn't really know the word yet to describe her dislike for the color.

But how was she going to move? Surely this limbs were made for something other then curling. Surely the presence of the crack there meant that she could break out. But how was she going to do that when she was so small and weak? Maybe instead of scratching at it, she could use force?

Instead of extending claws this time, she punched the wall, but it also did nothing but give her a sore leg. She hissed lowly as she scrabbled more at the walls of her cage, although her efforts were in vain. The shell wasn't breaking and she couldn't get out.

"Speech"

Kera was faintly confused. Her tail swept across the cave floor, bumping into sprouting mushrooms, as she listened to the strange creature-in-the-darkness. It didn't seem to be young, but it didn't seem to have registered that it could make light.

Everyone could create light, surely?

The bounding creature-in-the-darkness suddenly got bigger. It took a moment for Kera to realise that it was standing and it had been rolling in the mushrooms, babbling and shouting at her. They could make other things light. "Isn't that the same thing?" the pup asked gently. "Isn't making things light the same thing as making light? It's the end result everytime."

Perhaps she had misunderstood something. Kera did not know, but the creature-in-the-darkness, or Giggle, she realised, was quickly moving on. "You read bones, and fungus?" she asked, then bristled with the realisation, eyes wide. "I want to read them, too. Can you teach me? Can you tell me my future, if you can see it? I want to see futures, too-- I'm going to turn the lights on, did you know? I'll be a hero."

Her sweeping tail had gone from just that to rapidly thumping against the cave floor excitedly-- and another realisation she had --that this thing, Giggle, could also grow mushrooms. Kera thought she was the only one-- everyone else could make lights, or make rocks, or upset the clouds in Polaris.

This was good. Kera pushed herself up, limping, but following. "How do you do it? Will you show me?" she panted, padding after the hyena. "Who else is here? Who's shouting?"

She turned her head, as she moved, to the gently-glowing chrysalis in the corner, scratching. "Is it up there? What is that?"

Giggle was rapidly walking--if somewhat unsteadily--toward her bone pile.

"Yes, yes, I can see! I can see--"

She paused, turning back and eyeing whatever the wolf was doing, and scrambled over.

"Nothing! It's nothing, it's nothing," she insisted, frantically, even as she moved to inspect Reseda's stone. Her mind balked at the fear of something new, and so her words rejected it even as she investigated. A cursory sniff told her that it was a creature, an alive one, and the little scratching rasps that touched her ears told her that it was alive.

A hatchling?

Giggle half-panicked, looking around sharply.

What if it draws them? What if it calls the eyes? The darkness?

The Hallowed Caller rustled down, landing on her back and ruffling its feathers back into place as it peered at the stone in the dim bioluminescent light from behind. Images and feelings told Giggle what she needed to know.

An egg, mother-sister! A child, a baby-thing, to eat or to nurture.

Giggle stared up, and then hopped up, pressing her forelegs to the cave wall to either side of the peridot chrysalis. She began to gnaw at it with her powerful hyena jaws, trying to crack it open further.

She had to see what was within. Would it be a child, a new son like Kerberos had been? Or would it be food, like delicious marrow within a bone, crack, crack?

On her back, Omen sat quietly and watched, and waited.

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The child within the chrysalis saw shadows moving outside of her cage. She stopped and watched them with interest. She wondered what they were and what they were doing. She could hear them, faintly, but muffled beyond the fluid and the crystal. She was really disliking her situation further and further. But when the biggest shadow of all clamped down on her cage, she froze. Everything was dark. She wondered if she was somewhere else. She didn't feel any different, so she must have been in the same place.

But then she saw the little crack that had appeared at the opening of her eyes grow wider. It reached out across the gem and she watched carefully as her entire gem was covered with cracks. And then they broke underneath the hyena's jaws. The lizard fell into darkness, but it wasn't a long fall. She plopped on the ground in front of the hyena just as a torrent of the fluid washed over her. She didn't mind, she was still wet anyways.

As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she began to make out the shapes of the two gembounds in front of her. She looked up at them, curiously. She had no idea what they were and why they were there. She didn't know yet that she could speak so she merely cocked her head and stared at them.

"Speech"

Ahh. The miracle of life.

Kera had never witnessed another thing emerging before. She could still remember her own hatching- the black, the cold, the bad smells -but she had no idea that it would look this horrific, not to mention that this thing didn't even have fur or feathers.

She bristled. "You look gross," she said, as if unaware she was currently in the company of a bad-smelling, deathly-thin hyena and her one-eyed raven friend. "Who are you?"

She could only watch Giggle as she did what Giggle does best, apparently, sitting back on her haunches impatiently. She wanted to know about the bones, and reading, and listening to fungus. She wanted to know the future. She wanted Giggle to prove it right to her that she was, in fact, the hero that everyone wanted, needed, and were wishing for.

Shaking her fur out a bit, Kera glanced around. She'd been greeted with light. They needed more light. Pushing her nose and her paws onto the ground in front of her, near the new-born scale-thing that was gross-looking, she began to focus. With her gem glittering faintly under a ragged mane of fur, more eerie green-blue-glowing mushrooms began to sprout up onto the floor of Canis.

It didn't do much, but light was light. Everyone needed to be able to see a little bit. Kera sat herself down again, getting comfortable, and waited for either of the other gembounds to speak.

Giggle peered closely, sniffing, wondering what this new thing was. Was it edible? Or could it speak? She cast her mind back, back through her fragmented memories.

Had Kerberos looked like this? ...No, he was large, and white. And had three heads. Azazel? No, he had orange and black feathers. His feet sort of looked like this one's, though--and like Omen's; long, clawed, scaled. She sat back on her own haunches, puzzled.

"What are you? Can you speak? Are you a bone?" she asked as an afterthought. It looked too dark to be a bone, and it was moving, but it was hard-looking and it had fallen from within Canis itself. Though, from the wall. Which meant-- "Are you a rock?" she guessed next, rapidly on the heels of her last question, huffing curiously.

Beside her, hopping down and around in her rustle of feathers, was Omen. The black, one-eyed bird peered through its red forehead-eye at Reseda; its thoughts came to Giggle uncertainly.

What is it, mother-sister? it asked.

I don't know, came Giggle's responding thought--a clueless questioning.

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ROLL THE BONES