ORIGIN

Fresh from her chrysalis and the heels of the white fawn Karma first encountered, she stumbled nervously into the unknown. Like a child first lost from its mother in the aisles of a grocery store, the short distance she had traveled away from him seemed unsurmountable, and in every shadow lurked a monster ready to carry her away. This venue didn’t serve to soothe her, either; the statues of the tunnel made her hair stand on end. The spooked little fawn sped up, only serving to move her farther from her companion.


As the cat entered her field of vision, she stopped abruptly. The creature was slightly smaller than her, but otherwise very different from herself or the other fawn. She gawked, curious but nervous, eyes roaming over the soft long fur and strange limbs. Further, the thing seemed very intent on looking through the rubble. She took a few tentative steps toward the stranger, unsure. Finally, it occurred to her that perhaps the way to go about things was how she herself had been approached. “Welcome,” she said softly, deliberately, not yet fully understanding the meaning of the sounds. She paused, watching the thing with interest, quietly proud at her noise-making capabilities thus far.

Karma lowered her head, intrigued by the friendliness of the creature. Her typical company was a bit more… reserved, so this sort of effervescence was a new, interesting experience. She listened intently, still working hard to assign meanings to each of the sounds the cat offered her. “Karma,” she stated simply, taking a couple steps toward where Aurora stood, each word still foreign on her tongue.

“You are… looking?” The fawn chewed her lip nervously, glancing at the rubble with which the other had previously been occupied and seeing little interesting. Still, she was new to this world and to this creature alike, so she supposed there must be some merit to digging about in these sorts of places.

Intrigued by the cat’s actions, and watching her closely, Karma stepped forward to a pile of rocky rubble and pawed at it cautiously. Wedged against one another and against a large central lump of granite, they did not yield at her soft interrogation. Frustrated, the fawn focused hard on the rock, willing it to move as she looked for a different solution.

And somehow, it worked.

Stunned, Karma nearly dropped the thing as it ground from it’s embedded home with a satisfying scraping noise. She was only able to budge it a short distance, given the surrounding pile, but that didn’t matter much to her. Fascinated, the fawn bounded forward, nosing around the rock as if there was some trick to the operation. Finding no mechanism that could have been responsible, she turned to look at the cat with wide, violet eyes. They shone with a sort of pride unique to a child discovering a world of possibilities.