ORIGIN

Flicker had grown tired of the streets of Orion, so she’d followed a tunnel into a different room. Now she was in a place full of… broken bits of things on the ground that she kept stepping on. It felt different from the rubble and stones in Orion. She tried to use her spark Magic to make a bit of light in the room, but it failed. Sighing, she bent down to try and see what it was she kept stepping on…

Bones! She was stepping on bones! Bones everywhere. “Eeuugghh…” she drawled the word out. “What is this place?” She continued forward, trying at first to avoid stepping on the dead, but after a while, she found it impossible and gave up. What a place to pick, she thought to herself, feeling like she’d rather be anywhere else right now. She could smell the mingled scent of others in the air, but no one seemed to be here now. Little did she know, there was another creature nearby…

There were, in fact, two creatures. One was a rail-thin hyena perched high on a ledge, looking over a pit of bones illuminated by a ring of bioluminescent mushrooms. The other was a black bird with a single red eye in its forehead. Both listened to the clatter of bones in the distance.

The bird looked up at the hyena by its side, not minding her ragged coat stained with fungus and old gore. And the hyena remained comfortably silent in the bird's presence.

At length, thought passed between them, along their magical link: the bird's emotions and images translated into something resembling thought, by Giggle's mind.

What is out there, mother-sister?

Giggle did not know. An internal mental shrug told the bird as much, and fear flickered through her.

I do not know, sister-bird.

Will I check?

Giggle glanced at the bird, hesitating. She could see through its eye, know what it knew. But should they risk it?

You may be hurt. Be careful, she thought at last.

The bird took off in a rustling of feathers, flapping into the silent black of Canis. For a time there was silence, and then the bird landed near to the intruder, on a pile of bones, listening. Listening to it stepping on ribs, and tripping on skulls.

When it became clear to Omen--and, by extention--Giggle--that this was something merely lost in the dark, and not something many-eyed and sinister slipping through it like drowning oil, they reached out to it.

Giggle told Omen what to say.

Omen-... did her best.

"HELLO! HELLO! THIS LIGHT! WAY! LIGHT! WAY THIS!" The bird's haunting, peacock-like calls interspersed with its raucous, broken, imitated words pierced Canis.

"LIGHT! COME! COME!"

With that, the Hallowed Caller turned, calling as it went, leading the way back to the glowing ring of fungus and the bone pile within--and the hyena waiting above.

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ROLL THE BONES

Flicker jumped in alarm when something dark swooped down in front of her, making raucous calls and seemingly trying to speak but not doing too well. She got it through her head that the bird wanted her to follow it, and though she was extremely, cautious, she decided to do so. If things looked hairy, she’d get out of there quick! She was possibly overestimating her ability to get out of bad situations, but that was sort of her whole personality. She tended to think she could do whatever she wanted. Her friendship with Envy had calmed that part of her down a bit, but it would probably never be gone completely.

She followed the bird past a spot with a circle of glowing mushrooms and up to a… some kind of Gembound sitting overlooking the area. “Hey,” she said, still her favorite word. “Who are you? What are you doing here all by yourself in the dark?” Of course, she could have asked herself that, but… Whatever.

Giggle peered down, pushing up from where she'd been lying, to inspect the creature closer. Omen, too, hopped around near Flicker, peering with its single eye, but it stayed at a safe range--the coyote, it thought, looked distinctly hungry.

"The dark is no place to wander alone. There are eyes, and eyes, and eyes," the hyena chittered. She slowly turned, ambling down to come closer to Flicker, and to the bones. She seemed to be in a quiet mood, thoughtful and talkative, and spoke at length as she approached. "I will be Giggle, and I was a reader of bones, and I am a bonecaster. I see the future that lies in the underneath, in the flip-side of the black place and back here again, under the carpet of dead things gone dry."

She stopped several feet away from Flicker, looking over the skinny creature, a faint twinge of disapproval running through her at just how thin it was. She didn't realize how thin she had become, nor how caked in malodorous fungus and dried blood, but that was neither here nor there.

Omen hopped between her front paws, and she leaned down to nuzzle it briefly before speaking again to Flicker.

"And who are you, wandering alone in the black bones, with the no-light? Do you bring light, too, as the white one did?"

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ROLL THE BONES

Flicker actually backed up a bit as the hyena started talking, and kept backing up as they continued. Even when Giggle stopped moving forward, Flicker kept moving backwards. They smelled horrible too, Flicker realized, as the hyena’s scent hit them. It felt like the coyote was being smacked in the face by the smell of fungus and rot. Bile rose in the back of her throat, but she swallowed a few times to keep it down. Her eyes were wide, trying to watch both the bird and the crazy hyena at the same time. “Stay away from me,” she said, trying to sound menacing but not really getting there. Her voice came out too high-pitched.

Static ripped along her fur automatically, as if it were a defense mechanism, or like the bright warning colors on poisonous frogs. “And keep the bird away, too.” Flicker couldn’t help it. She was just getting a bad vibe from all this and didn’t know what else to do. Coming here had definitely been a mistake, though…

Giggle's big round ears pricked at the stranger's retreat, and at their words, laced in fear. She tilted her head, not moving forward any further. Her masculine voice came out with a slight chuckle to it.

"It isn't me you need to fear, child," she said, tail flicking in amusement. At least, she thought it was a child. Maybe it was just--small? Never mind it now--back to the point... "It's the black, and the black, and the eyes in the black. They will eat you and drag you in and keep you forever. Pieces shatter and fall away. They don't come back," she added, sadly.

Then she eyed over the coyote, at the static rippling its fur. "But then, perhaps it must fear you? That smells like light. It tastes of glowing. Can you break the darkness?"

She took a single step forward, peering curiously, but did not approach any more closely. Omen, at her side, stared in silence.

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ROLL THE BONES

Flicker still had a bad taste in her mouth and smell in her nose from the strange Gembound, but at least they hadn’t gotten any closer to her. They were definitely crazy though. Something about “the black” and “eyes” and “pieces that shattered and didn’t come back”… “What…” she began, but wasn’t quite sure how to ask the question bubbling up to her mind. In the meantime, the hyena had noticed her sparks, and was asking her if “it” needed to fear… her? Someone fearing Flicker? She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She supposed it was better to be feared than to be afraid, but… I mean, she didn’t want to make anyone afraid of her on purpose unless she needed to. This was all a bit too much for the young coyote.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked, quite suddenly, in a sort of rude tone of voice like a child demanding something of a permissive parent. She tried to make the sparks come back to show… what? to show how brave she was? or how scary? Well, whatever the reason, it didn’t matter, because the sparks refused to come back this time. It annoyed her that her Magic didn’t always work when she wanted it to.

Giggle stared, for a beat, the coyote's question ringing through her mind. Shame hit her, and grief, and frustration--she didn't know how to answer. What was wrong? What was wrong? What was she doing wrong?!

She turned abruptly, a sharp cackle escaping her, ringing through that section of the caves. It wasn't hilarity, however, but stress, that elicited the noise from the hyena--she "laughed" when distressed, after the manner of her kind. She didn't answer Flicker right away, either, instead pacing around her bones, nudging them with her nose, sighing through her nostrils.

Absently, she cast her magic out to brighten the glowing mushrooms further--to grow them, to spread them. The spores fell, and swelled and grew, more lights spreading to glow over her many bones. As she did this, she spoke at last, her voice more subdued, her movements listless.

"I was there. In the dark. Pieces fell off."

The Hallowed Caller let loose a quiet, haunting cry, hopping up alongside Giggle to preen her fur wherever it could reach, as if to comfort her.

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Flicker’s question seemed to have upset Giggle, which she supposed she could understand. What if someone had come up to Flicker and asked her what was wrong with her? She’d be upset, too. Still, she didn’t approach the hyena, who was still totally nuts in Flicker’s eyes, not someone to go anywhere near. She had half a mind to leave, but she was too curious about this creature’s backstory — if there was one. Could… could Gembounds be born this crazy? Oh boy, she sure hoped not. (She was still young and didn’t understand things like the fact that prejudice was morally wrong. If it was something she didn’t understand, there was gonna be some prejudice on Flicker’s side).

“But it’s dark everywhere,” she said after Giggle’s small amount of words, ignoring the Magic that had caused the room to brighten a bit. “We’re in the dark right now!” She was hyper-focused on getting her answer. “And what pieces are you talking about? Pieces of what?” Later, when she was older, there was a chance she would look back on this conversation and cringe at her own forwardness. Then again, there was a chance she would look back on this conversation and remember only an insane hyena. Only time would tell.

Giggle let out a quietly irritated chittering, the hair on her back and neck bristling. She felt attacked by the smaller creature's words, and nudged a rib perhaps too hard so that it clattered into the other bones.

"Too many questions!" she barked, a bit too savagely. "The dark, the dark, the OTHER dark! Where nothing lives or lies or breathes or moves or is. She had been there for... weeks? Months? Floating in an endless, empty void. Only Omen had come to and fro, apparently able to go freely between... planes, worlds, her mind--she wasn't sure where the black had been. But exist it did--and it came with the eyes.

"I am bound by bone and bones I read, I see, and others come to me. They ask what I see and I tell them with glee," she added with another chitter. "Any who ask what lies in the bones, I will answer. But these questions! Too many! These I cannot."

She turned, eyeing Flicker with a dark gaze over her shoulder, falling silent.

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ROLL THE BONES