ORIGIN

He searched for some time longer around the tunnel mouth, but found nothing. Perhaps his luck had truly run out, now.

Moving on, slithering into the dark with hauls of his short, clawed legs, the alligator made his way slowly toward the distant voices. Someone was just--leaving, he saw; moving away from the faint glow that what he could only assume were the birds was putting out. It was a strange light--a dark light, somehow--and for now, until he had enough stones, he chose to avoid it.

He was determined to get at least one more.

With a near-silent hiss of irritation he turned back, feeling his way to the cave wall and back into the very edge of his nearly-extinguished firelight.

He then headed around its edge, sticking to the darkness just beyond; he'd search not at the cave mouth or the Throne, but on the other side of the light, toward the center of the room.

And if I have no luck there, well, I suppose I will have to check the other tunnels.

The alligator hauled himself onward, around the edges of the light, in the darkness--where his dark hide blended quite in.

He moved slowly, his hide rasping softly on the sandy rock. Here, he began again to nose around, nudging pebbles and stones just where they gleamed barely at the edge of his firelight.

For a time, he found nothing; and then he spotted one that was-... relatively red, or well-... Red enough.

Yes; red enough. It would do.

The alligator scooped this one up, too, content. Then, on second thought, he spat all his stones out, carefully, one-by-one. He was cautious not to let them roll away, nosing them down between his clawed hands. Slowly, he counted them.

Thirteen.

There were thirteen red stones. Yes--that was a good number. That would do. The one glossy red-streaked one glinted in the firelight, and Dragon was proud of his find: among the others, the jagged and the dull, the unwieldy and the ochre-shaded, this one was simply perfect. He admired it for a moment longer before slowly scooping each and every rock back into his maw, and then he turned, dragging himself toward the distant voices he had heard.

It is time to deliver, he thought to himself, and to meet these birds. It is time for wings.