ORIGIN

"She is the keeper of lore," Giggle answered, as if this explained everything. "I wanted to speak with her, long ago, but she was tired and then the eyes came and then there was no time, and my mind is gone. It doesn't make sense anymore."

She paused and eyed forward, listening to the talk of hunting. She was hungry, she realized; she just forgot, much of the time, to hunt, and to eat.

"Catch the rats, or help me grow lights," Giggle instructed, showing a flash of her old motherly authority. She then turned, trotting quickly to a point between the wall-carvings and the majority of the boulders. She selected a point and focused, chittering softly, shedding more bioluminescent spores and urging the mushrooms to grow.

Hopefully, this time, they would.

She paused as--slowly--the glowing bodies sprouted up, their soft glow now bringing a rush of quiet relief and joy to her.

One more place pushed back from darkness. One more faint light in the shadows.

She eyed Kera, joy shining in her dark gaze, and waited.

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ROLL THE BONES

Kera would not have guessed that the Lorekeeper was a keeper of lore. She eyed with some quiet sympathy. She had not actually considered, for some reason, that Giggle was aware that her mind was fragmented and broken.

Shaking her fur again, and glanced off into the direction of the rat-scent. With Giggle growing lights, Kera would hunt. "I'll catch rats," she announced, and then padded off into the darkness.

She was starving, but it heightened her senses. The odor of rat was near-overpowering, and despite her general hatred for rats and they way they scurried and hid and burrowed, her mouth was watering at the anticipation of catching and eating one.

Pushing her nose to the ground, Kera began to follow the freshest scent, easing her way along the cave floor for a moment before she saw the faint silhouette of a skinny rat in the not-so-far distance. It had paused, staring at something unseen on its hind legs.

Licking her muzzle, Kera leapt forward into a sprint towards it. She barreled into a small pile of bones, tripping over but not falling completely. The sound startled the rat, who broke into a sprint as well away from her.

Kera, luckily, was faster. She caught up to the small, skinny rat fairly quickly and threw herself on top of it, biting and snarling and scratching until it fell still. Panting, she picked it up and carried the catch back to Giggle to drop it at her paws.

Giggle was nosing her new friendly glowing lights when Kera returned, and she turned to peer quizzically at the white wolf.

"The first is yours," she declared simply--and then she turned, trotting off into the darkness to try her own luck. She'd try to return the favor; to catch a rat, and then--one way or another--they could share.

The hyena sniffed about, quickly picking up scents, and then--as she often did--just jammed her entire snapping jaw into one of the fresh-smelling crevices, snatching at anything warm trapped within.

A thrill ran through her as she felt the warmth of a struggling rodent within her trap-shut jaw, and she jerked free of the boulders, shaking it rapidly to and fro. There was a crack as its spine broke from the vigorious thrashing, and then she trotted back toward Kera--toward the glowing light, and the safety it so gloriously represented.

Nothing is safe from the eyes, her own thoughts snarled, and she stumbled a step in surprise. But she was right. The darkness could--and would--come again. These lights--they were only a lark.

She paused before Kera, standing distant and still for a moment with these thoughts roiling through her tormented mind--and then she dropped the rat, staring at her with a sort of distant anguish.

"Share," she near-whispered, miserably.

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ROLL THE BONES

Kera did not argue against eating the first rat. She settled herself down next to the mushroom-lights while Giggle lumbered off to hunt, biting and tearing into the already-bloody and mangled rat.

Her hunger was quickly satisfied after a good, solid minute of chewing and eating at the rat. She stretched out once she had torn the bones clean of flesh, leaving only blood and scraps of fur behind.

With her burly limbs sprawled out, Kera began to lazily lick the scarlet blood off her paws until Giggle got back, who... didn't look okay. She eyed the rat, then Giggle before scrambling up onto her haunches, moving to take the first bite.

She was already full, however, and soon nudged the rat closer to Giggle. "It's a good rat," she said, not wanting to ask the obvious question of 'are you okay?' in fear of annoying the hyena further.

She wondered, briefly, if Giggle was mourning the rat for whatever reason, but she did not bring it up. She only licked her muzzle while she watched the hyena and the dead rat.

Giggle waited, patient, her upset state bleeding away rapidly once the odor of meat hit her nostrils. After the pup had taken her fill, she quickly snatched up the rest of the proffered rat, gulping it down, crunching thin bones with their sharp cracks and swallowing those down, too.

Then she licked her jaws, dark eyes glittering in the dim light.

Kera, she thought, looked tired.

"Sleep now," Giggle said in her hoarse, blunt manner. "I will show you the rest of what I know, once you are here again."

Without awaiting agreement or argument, she flopped down quite close to Kera, curling up; and Omen fluttered down, too, taking up position in her coat. She looked around, quietly wary, before laying her head on her paws to doze.

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ROLL THE BONES

The puppy's eyes were fluttering, half-open and half-shut, while Giggle ate. She didn't quite hear the hyena at first, but they snapped fully open when she was told to sleep.

Sleep? How could she sleep? What if the eyes and the blackness and the creature came back, or what if someone came by and turned off all the mushroom lights? She watched Giggle take up napping position with a faint frown.

She'd have to sleep lightly, especially if Giggle wanted to sleep, too. She slinked over, quiet, and curled up next to the hyena and hallowed caller. It took some time, staring off into the almost-darkness and the faint, distant blue-green lights before Kera finally shut her eyes.

It took even longer for her to drift off into sleep, but she did. Lightly, but she did, and long enough to dream of paddling into open, clear water.

Giggle slept for quite some time, shifting into snoring, deep sleep. She often put off sleep for far too long--afraid to sleep, afraid to dream, afraid to be taken again by the void--and then passed out for several exhausted hours before sharply awakening, ever-exhausted, to start her vigil all over again.

It was only Omen--and her assurances that she would watch over Giggle, at times--that sometimes allowed her some measure of deeper sleep. She hadn't realized how much a simple comrade would ease her fears, but Kera's presence allowed her to snatch those few hours of true rest, a little bolder now with the lights glowing softly around them and the bird sitting watch on her back.

When she awoke, she did not, at first, wake Kera. She lay quiet in the dark, letting Omen take her turn at rest; she looked off at the mushrooms with a sort of wonder.

Wonderful things, you are, she thought; and she imagined that there was a response.
We are all things.

After a time, she found her attention taken by the carvings on the wall--now dimly-lit by the bioluminescence. Slowly, cautious not to wake Kera, she pushed up; and quietly she crept forward, until her nose nearly touched them. There she sat, gazing up, looking from one marking to the other and back; and to the old smears of dried blood that her son had added to them.

She looked up, too, at the picture, the painting--something anyone else might find horrific--of the vast, three-headed dog; and she sighed softly, staring up.

When Kera woke, she would still be sitting there, looking at these echoes of the past.

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ROLL THE BONES

When Kera awoke, she initally did not move. She lay for a time on the floor of Canis, staring blearily out into the distant mushroom-lights that she and Giggle had spread across the room. It was only when she looked across where Giggle once lay that she brought herself urgently to her paws and looked around.

She wasn't far. Only a short distance away, but the relief didn't quite hit Kera yet. She watched for a few beats as Giggle stared up at the ceiling, then slowly approached and sat next to her.

She did not speak. She did not want to frighten the hyena while she was very obviously reminiscing and taking a moment for herself, but she did hope that the gentle scuffling of her picking herself up and the tapping of nails on the cave floor would be enough for Giggle to become aware of her presence without startling her.

At length, she wondered what the carvings and the paintings meant-- what or who they depicted, and who made them. What they were like, and if they remained in darkness or if they were bathed in light. Perhaps they made the light, or perhaps they protected it.

Kera did not know.

Nor did she want to ask Giggle, in fear of getting half a riddle for an answer.

Giggle watched, much of the same questions going through her own mind. Who had made these? Were they creatures of dark, or things that fought the dark, or that died to the dark?

Curious, cautious, she stepped forward, lifting herself up.

She was able to see into the future, at times--why not the past? Could she extend her magic back, and look the other way? To see the fortunes of those who had come before..? Perhaps it could teach her much. Perhaps she should just find Lorekeeper--but she wanted to know, wanted to see.

She leaned up, at length, on her hind legs--planting her forepaws on the carved stone lowest to the ground, and away from the blood paint that Bones had left here. She pushed her mind, her magic, toward the stone, and let her mind drift into that empty place where it went when she saw what was to come. When she saw the visions.

This time, however, she tried to look into the past, her mind a blank and empty, peaceful canvas. Waiting. The magic came faint, but it was there--the question was, what would it show?

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ROLL THE BONES