ORIGIN - Searching for Answers

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Asimona padded through Canis, the crunching of the bones beneath her claws. She hated this room, but she had traveled far to get to this place. She couldn't just leave without exploring even a little bit. But the foul scents of this place was disturbing and dark the the presence of bones put her on edge. Fear laced her eyes thought and she felt a strange tingling on her spine.

All of a sudden, a scream split the air. Her heart leaped in her chest and she whipped around, trying to find the source. It was a scream full of pain and fear and she smelled the tinge of blood on the air. Her heart was racing fast in her chest. She needed to find the source of that scream, but it seemed to come from everywhere. It stabbed into her ears and seemed like spikes in her brain. It was painful to hear, both physically and emotionally. She needed to help.

But the scream just kept going. She couldn't find them. She raced through the room of bones, her blood racing and every step as terrified as the last. The scream get going, getting louder and louder until she was screaming too, collapsing on the ground, her front paws clamped over her head, claws clawing at her head, trying to block it out, trying to escape, half buried in the bones.

She couldn't stand this. She just wanted to die and escape. Her head was clouding with darkness as she tried to block out everything. But the scream kept going, piercing her brain relentlessly.

"Find the one who'll guide you."
To the limits of your choice.

tags: @Giggle
notes: scream is a hallucination

Rounded ears perked up, then flattened back. Something was coming--something large. Something fast.

Tail tucked, the hyena turned, skittering with bared fangs to a point behind her ledge. A chittering growl escaped her--but the big, pale thing that careened into sight, stumbling through the bones, it did not seem aggressive. On the contrary, it looked frightened--and this scared Giggle almost more. What could possibly have something the size of a small dragon fleeing?!

She watched, for a time, half-hidden, but nothing came out, nothing was pursuing. It simply cowered, burying its head beneath its forepaws.

Giggle's familiar--the one-red-eyed black bird Omen--circled overhead, their bond feeding her fear and nervousness into the bird. The bird's fearful, questioning emotions passed through Giggle's mind, and as always, her thoughts to some extent automatically 'translated' them.

What is it, mother-sister? What is happening?

She felt her own hesitation, confusion. Fear.

I... do not know, sister-daughter. Wait, do not land yet.

Quietly, carefully, Giggle padded forward. They weren't far from her precious bone pile, and its overhanging ledge--and she was wary about this thing being so damn close. When she was within speaking range, she called out--cautiously. Her voice was raspy and hoarse with disuse, and deeply masculine.

"Who are you?" she demanded, fear keeping her words clipped and brisk.

________________

ROLL THE BONES

@Asimona

Somehow, beyond the screaming, Asimona made out a voice. Her eyes snapped open and she turned, faced with a strange looking creature with ragged, spotted fur. Her eyes widened and she scrambled back, surprised by their appearance. But as she sat there, staring at the new arrival, the scream got louder and she moaned, clamping her paws over her head again.

"Where is the screaming coming from," she cried out, hoping the dog would hear her over the noise. "What pain could that creature be in to make that kind of noise?"

She suddenly remembered how Envy had not seen the dragon and how Kera could not see the mist. Perhaps only she could hear the screams. If that was the case, then she was even more curious, and more terrified, about where they were coming from.

And then a desperate cry from the screaming, as if on the wind, blended into the continuous voice, cried out, "HELP ME!" Asimona jerked up and looking around, trying to find the source of the voice. "I'm here! I'm here! Where are you? I want to help!"

She turned back to the dog, her eyes wild with fear. "Please, help me. I don't know what to do!"

"Find the one who'll guide you."
To the limits of your choice.

tags: @Giggle
notes: scream is a hallucination

The hyena huffed quietly, staring.

She's hearing voices that aren't there. The thought was sent to Omen, but the bird's mind couldn't comprehend such a complex concept. Instead, she understood simpler things, underlying subtext to the thoughts--the emotions behind it. Wariness, primarily. It might be safe--the dragon wasn't hostile--but that didn't mean she might not become so.

Slowly, stiff-legged, Giggle took a few steps forward. Her hackles stood on end, the fungus and gore matting her coat hanging dry and unclean.

"No screaming. No screaming, not that I hear, I hear all, most things, maybe from the void? Do you hear past the eyes?" Giggle asked roughly, dark eyes narrowing.

Can she? Can she hear past the eyes? Hear into the dark?

"Do you always hear? I see. I see what is to come. I do not hear. Not often." Above, the circling black bird gave a single haunting cry.

________________

ROLL THE BONES

@Asimona

Her eyes were squeezed shut, trying to block out the screaming. Everything was focused on that, stopping the screaming, getting it away. But she didn't know how. She thought she would be able to dispel what she did not want, that she would be able to turn them into water or ice. But she did not know how to get rid of a sound. She did not know why nobody saw or heard the same things.

She tried to control her breathing, but the fear was overwhelming. And yet the dog's voice still broke into her thoughts. The awful stench flowing off her pelt were still invading her nose and she decided to focus on that. The voice of the dog brought her back to reality and the odor grounded her in the strange room. But the Eyes is what got her to turn her attention completely. The Eyes? She had heard that before.

She looked up, the screaming only a distant sound now. She looked at the dog curiously. "The Eyes? Her voice was merely a hoarse whisper. "...do you know Kera?"

Slowly, shaking, she peeled her claws away from her head, the screaming getting quiet and quieter until it was gone. Was the creature gone? Dead? Or were they never there? Asimona could not worry about that. She needed to stop worrying.

"I-I usually see. Creatures that are there but no one else sees. A large red dragon and billowing fog is what I see most. This is the first time it's only been something to hear. I've never heard this scream before." She groaned as her head started spinning and she rubbed at her eyes. "You say that you see as if you can see more then what is in front of you? Who...who are you?"

"Find the one who'll guide you."
To the limits of your choice.

tags: @Giggle
notes: here

Giggle paced uneasily, words spilling forth of their own accord, no real mental filter applied to them.

"Giggle, Giggle, I am Giggle and my name is Giggle. That is my name. Once I spoke to the Bone King and then the darkness came. The white wolf. You speak of her. The Light-bringer. I saw it, she said it, long before she brought the lights it was seen, in the bones, the bones--they show what there is to see. Past, into future." Giggle considered, looking away, then back to the white dragon. "They were dead once, so perhaps things repeat."

She shook out her coat, and stared, for a beat.

"Name, a name, and what is its name? What is your name? Do not bite me, or I will kill you," she added, half her hackles rolling like a wave on a frightened sea.

________________

ROLL THE BONES

@Asimona

She blinked at the dog, shocked and a little overwhelmed by the sudden wave of words coming from her mouth. She seemed...a little off. Asimona felt suddenly very uncomfortable in her presence, but something kept her frozen. Now that she was focusing back and the screams were dead, she was able to detect how strange this dog was. Covered in blood and fungus, standing strange and with a hoarse, babbling voice. What had happened to this creature?

But age showed on her face. She was old, much older then her, perhaps as old as the caves. She didn't know. She had never met anyone as old as her. Perhaps she knew of her strange visions and the screams. "Kera did say something about turning the lights on. You saw her do that? You predicted it?"

Asimona stared at the dog with awe. That was incredible. To be able to see into the future using...what? The bones? She said the bones showed her. How? How did the decayed carcasses of dead gembounds show her the future?

"I won't bit you, I promise. Or claw you. Or harm you at all. I'm not here to hurt anyone. I...I just need answers. My name's Asimona. Would...would the bones tell you anything about me? Why I see these things?"

"Find the one who'll guide you."
To the limits of your choice.

tags: @Giggle
notes: here

Giggle chittered, again uneasily. She shook her pelt out, and then looked back at her bone pile for a long moment. At length, she looked back to Asimona.

She was reluctant, a little, to trust this stranger in any way--as so often she was, these days. But, with this reluctance showing in her tone, she spoke.

"...I must offer the wisdom of the bones to all who ask, to all who pass. They will be offered. It will be offered. Come with me. Come. Walk. I will ask them what they will tell. That is your question? Not what is my future or what lies in store but why you see what you see and why you hear screams where there are no screams?"

The hyena turned, loping somewhat crookedly up the slope. The bone pit lay ahead--a few meters across, and a meter or so deep. Around this lay a ring of bioluminescent mushrooms she had grown there, with Kera's aid--and a trail wound up and around, leading to a ledge that overlooked the pit.

Giggle paused at the pit itself, however, not yet heading for the ledge. The Hallowed Caller continued to circle overhead as the hyena looked back to Asimona, awaiting confirmation.

I must know the question, before I can seek the answer.

________________

ROLL THE BONES

@Asimona

Asimona lowered her head, aware of the reluctance in the hyena's tone. She made her uneasy and a little frightened, despite being bigger. "I mean, y-you don't have to..." But she was already walking away, leading her somewhere else. With a shiver of apprehension, she pulled herself to her feet and walked behind Giggle, the splinters of the scattered bones trying to dig into her thick hide. She would get out of here as soon as this was over.

The bone pit was chilling and sent a shiver down her spine. This was an incredible place, a strange place, something in the air she did not understand. How could she understand? She was so young. The mushrooms were familiar. Kera had made mushrooms very similar. She liked to grow mushrooms. Perhaps Giggle did as well.

She stopped moving when Giggle paused and looked at her expectantly. This was her moment, her moment to choose. What did she want to know? A hundred questions raced through her brain. Why did she have visions? What would become of them? What would her future be? Would she always live in this fear?

She sighed and picked her question carefully. "What...what will become of me? And the visions. What will become of them?"

"Find the one who'll guide you."
To the limits of your choice.

tags: @Giggle
notes: here

The hyena chittered, dark eyes and mind both focused wholly on the strange winged creature before her.

"Two questions. Two. Perhaps interlinked. Perhaps together, but they must be asked apart. Apart." She turned, abrupt and jerky in her movements, plunging chest-deep into the bone pile and looking over the bones. She had to search only briefly before she found one that fit the dragon: a thick white thing, smooth and beautiful as Asimona herself.

This she seized gently in her jaws, and turned, bounding out and loping up the slope, pausing at the ledge that overlooked the pit. Here she spoke, shaking out her coat, after setting the bone carefully down at her feet.

"Bones above and bones below, surrounded by the things that grow! The white thing here wishes to know! To know! What lies ahead?" Then, Giggle glanced at Asimona and added down in a conspiratorial whisper directly to the bone, "I think it seems she's filled with dread."

Then, with a shrill cackle, one of amusement for once, the hyena kicked the bone with a forepaw down into the pit below. It rejoined its brethren, scattering over the bones and sending other ones flying.

Her dark gaze flicked from one bone to the next, watching how they fell, how they clattered down, how they settled. Connections ran rampant in her mind, perhaps her own madness or perhaps some way for a mystically-linked mind to simply make sense of what it already knew.

"I see them," she stated almost coldly. "Now I see them in the same place. Frozen there. Those, stuck. There. Like ice. You are stuck. The same place, the same things, not moving, as ice does not move. You face obstacles, dragon, obstacles you are not overcoming. Like a wall of ice before you."

Her gaze scanned farther down. "The rotten bone, exposed. Broken by the fall. It is death or a loss of all you are. And the one beyond--new, fresh. It means you will be reborn. I do not know if you will die, and rise again--like the birds!" Giggle cackled abruptly. "Or if you will endure what you endure, and emerge from it stronger, better, newly-born. But you will know. Your ice will melt. But when it does, a warning for you. The white bone. The fresh bone. The new life. It lies beneath the rotten. It may turn rotten, too. When your new life comes, it may be damaged. Difficult. Slowed. Perhaps those you call family will betray you." Giggle's words came fast, smooth and monotone, nearly untouched by her normal chaotic thought pattern. She was thinking swift and straight, the words tumbling from her jaws. "Endure, dragon, and be wary of your rebirth, that it succeeds, and does not land you behind ice once more."

She eyed Asimona, thinking. The readings were rarely so clear, so linear. The dragon's path was quite well-laid-out. Her fate was crystalline, with a clarity not unlike the ice that she saw in the unmoving bones, in her mind's eye.

With a huff she trotted back down, heading back to the bone pile, shifting about. Above, the Hallowed Caller circled, letting out an occasional haunting cry. Giggle chose, this time, a small and thin bone, scattering the rest of the pile deliberately with her paws, reorganizing it into pleasant chaos.

The small bone was the voices, in her mind. Asimona's voices. The visions, the things she heard and saw. It was a slender bone, but strong--a thing that might remain unnoticed, yet it was there and it was a part of the rest. Quiet, confident in her choice, the hyena trotted back up to the bone pile, and tossed this one down as well.

Here, Giggle laughed, and sharply, as the last of the bones came to a standstill. The little bone had had an impact, enough to divine by.

"You ask of your visions. I see a hundred pretty bones thrown toward you by the single visions-bone. It is a gift, and not a curse, strange-white-thing," she declared. "Perhaps you See as I do. Perhaps they are hints, clues, echoes. I do not know. Yet see how they have scattered! It will bring you chaos, difficulty. As they fall, as they tumble, so will you, so will your mind and your life and it will be hard," Giggle added, but her dark eyes kept scanning the bones. And after a moment, she let out a crowing laugh of triumph.

"Strength! There! They do not break the core of the pile and beneath your bone still lies where it lies. You will cope. You will overcome!"

The hyena shook out her fungus-matted pelt, peering down at Asimona where the other stood beside the bone pile. "Embrace your gift and you will learn to live with it. It will strengthen you. You will face this challenge and overcome!" she barked.

This reading, too, was clear, and she was confident in it. The bones spoke loud and with great clarity about this creature, as if she held some affinity with them, or perhaps with that world--that Other Place--that gave Giggle her answers. Perhaps they answered, too, the dragon.

________________

ROLL THE BONES

@Asimona

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