ORIGIN

Black paced along cautiously, his stride measured and his gaze calm, but his eyes hardly leaving Giggle. The hyena had gibbered the whole way back to Canis, her own gait stiff and jerky with rage, her dark eyes glaring and her muzzle wrinkled back in a perpetual snarl. She'd been muttering to herself for half of it, and her bird called hesitantly overhead as they walked--which seemed to be the only thing that calmed the hyena. Black had noticed her glancing up, on occasion, sighing and muttering, looking forward, so that by the time they reached the hyena's bone pit, she appeared almost normal. Angry, but normal.

The black dog spared Llamrei a few glances, too, as they walked.

A rumbled "Are you harmed?" was directed to her, stately and dignified in its aloof sense of responsibility. It was as if he considered guarding the strange horse part of his duty, somehow, just as much as herding Giggle from Canis, and warning Senka of her boundaries and not to overstep them, was something with which he had been tasked.

As Giggle flopped down by her bone pit, paws overhanging her ledge, Black took up position at the closer side. He looked to Llamrei, explaining sombrely. "It is her pit of bones," he explained. "In them she sees things others do not. Perhaps she will look for the cat. I do not know."

He was, in some sense--though he was often relatively detached from emotion, in a matter-of-fact and dutiful sort of way--glad that the situation in Orion had not come to blows. Senka had obvously been deeply stressed and even afraid, lashing out at all those around her in defense of her seemingly-fallen sister; and the others had been by turns terrified or violent.

Black had lost Kera in the chaos, but he had seen her departing, just at the end--a single flash of golden-white in the distant darkness. He was fairly certain that all the others were accounted for, as well, and so--thus satisfied in his responsibilities--he now lowered himself to sit on his haunches.

He would let the horse relax, and let the hyena rant or vent, and decide, then, what to do next.

________________

Giggle ignored them both, for the time being--though some part of her was glad for the company, glad there were others who had survived Senka's assault--and who had now witnessed it. Others who might now understand what had befallen her. She'd rarely had the presence of mind to feel embarrassed about her constant, twitching terror, but there were rare times when she'd been aware of her difference, of her new... broken-ness, and it had shamed her.

She had drastically recovered, given time, but still... It had stung. It had all stung.

For several long minutes she simply watched the strangers, and the bones, while muttering. Her gaze was on them, but her attention was not, and at length she looked up, nodding once--and the one-eyed, black bird lit at her side in a soft rustle of wings.

This apparently concluded--as if Giggle had been whispering to the bird, high above--the hyena looked more sharply--albeit oddly calmly--to Llamrei.

"I see whatever the bones are willing to show me. Truths. Futures. Pasts. More the futures."

She stood, then, slowly, more calmly, now--though faintly trembling with the adrenaline that was passing through her system--and picked her way back down to the bone pit. The bird fluttered up to land on her back, at the junction of neck and shoulders, riding in her mane; she didn't seem to mind.

For a long moment she merely eyed the bones, muttering, again, to herself.

None of them fit. The cat is ugly. A dark thing, a skinless thing, a horrid thing. None of my bones are so ugly! At length, however, she did choose one--one slightly twisted, charred and burnt, broken before its owner had perished. There were burn marks where the marrow had been torn out. She carried this in her teeth with a strong sense of resolve, and tossed it into the bone pit, watching it clatter back down among the others.

"I am asking the bones now of the shit-cat," she spat hoarsely, and watched them. Watched the way they fell, watched which ones flew and which ones merely rocked, watched what they did. Go home and read your bones, you old fool, the cat had said--and now, she did just that.

"The way they fall is chaos! There was destruction in her past. Great disruption! Then I see conflict where they strike--and the black bone, it has cracked. That is very telling. After her chaos, came battle, and a triumph, at great cost. A sacrifice to hold back the dark, so they say! And the patterns of the fall... the rest cast aside. We are not ready to fight her. We need more light," Giggle finished bluntly, before moving to flop again, calmly, this time beside her pit.

Something about having confronted Senka had lifted a weight from Giggle. Even if she was still seething, still enraged--and still hell-bent on vengeance--she felt calmer.

She knew, now, that Senka was just a cat--a spiteful, deranged, disfigured cat--and not some immortal, immeasurable form of unfathomable darkness. That Omen would always find her in the void. And she knew she had her spores, scattered at Senka's den. It was merely a matter of time, and patience.

Giggle knew better than to think herself in control... but she did have an edge, and one, she hoped, of which Senka was unaware.

________________

ROLL THE BONES

"It is good," Black responded to Llamrei--presumeably regarding her state of being "just startled." Then the hyena began to speak, and Black turned his attention to her.

The dog listened, ears pricked up, and he slowly lowered himself to lie by the mushrooms. He was not tired, exactly, but he saw no reason to remain upright--for the time being, at least.

"There are those," Black explained to Llamrei, "who can see many things. I see, at times, the past--when I touch a thing. I have seen the throne in the room from which we have come--do you know the one?"

He turned his head to peer at the black filly, wondering if she knew of Orion's throne--though, granted, it was fairly hard to miss. "I saw it, in vision. Long ago. Stone red as blood beneath, untouched by time. Chanting, of triumph, ringing through the caves. Shadow, filled with silver eyes--as the cat's--sitting upon its seat. The shadows and the eyes are not new." He delivered this revelation with no emotion, no more than he had shown at anything else thus far.

He wondered, even, if Senka knew what it was she carried with her, and served. She seemed, or so he thought, desperate--frantic, a cornered and wounded beast. Perhaps there was little of her left.

Almost idly the dog turned his attention downward, to the stone at the edge of the bone pit, idly feeling along it with his mind. Nothing came, straightaway, however; and after a time he turned his attention back to the hyena and the horse.

It was likely, he thought, that all that Giggle said was true. For whatever reason, Black simply accepted it all--though with the faint acknowledgement that it might all, in fact, be wrong. Perhaps, however, even he knew that Senka must have had a reason to target Giggle--and what could be more dangerous in a foe than the ability to see the future..?

________________