ORIGIN

He had come alone, this time; Reseda not here to guide him. He was unsure, in truth, where his "benefactor" was. Perhaps doting over another of the "sins," another hatchling she had found and determined to raise for her own use.

It mattered little, to him. He was aware of her now-transparent attempts at manipulation, and he benefited more from their relationship, at the moment, than she did. In time, he would--so long as the situation remained acceptable--aid her in turn, to make her... leadership... more palatable to those growing youths. Unless they were complete fools, they would soon come to realize her angle, her plans, and she would need someone to smooth it all over.

Gray hooves clicked delicately on the stone as he paced toward the crackling Spire; pale coat shimmered in its blue glow. Until he grew, until he was old enough to clearly speak and to understand, to garner respect for himself, he had to train. To grow as a gembound, to be the strongest that he could be. He had pride in himself, and he took pride in pushing himself, too: in struggling against his own boundaries, in climbing higher and higher with his abilities.

And so the white fawn had come back here, to train.

An antlerless head raised on its slender neck to gaze up, regarding the Spire and its chaotic magics with a placid, detached expression. Reseda had explained its nature to him--or, at the very least, its effects on magic--and he had decided that he may as well learn to swim by leaping straight into the sea. To test himself against the strongest of waters, and to grow powerful by its opposition.

He turned, slowly, and looked around; at length he chose a stone, a black and jagged rock perhaps ten inches long, and likely fairly heavy. Focusing hard, remembering the vast power of his mind over the physicality of matter, he attempted to lift it: to raise it into the air, and to hover it there, focusing on it.

Good, he thought, eyes drifting over the rock as he held it before him. Good.

The spire. Aster had quickly grown fond of it and she disliked leaving it's side for very long. It felt something like a parent to her-- a very.. unresponsive, crackling-with-dangerous-magics, glowing parent.

The borzoi didn't particularly mind. She only watched with wide eyes unblinking as the spire snapped and crackled aimlessly into the air. As she heard the clicking of hooves, a slicked-back ear flicked but otherwise, she was unresponsive.

She only moved when she spotted a rock moving out of the corner of her eye.

Moving. The puppy hadn't been around for very long, but she was rather certain that wasn't meant to happen.

Turning herself around, Aster quickly caught sight of another thing-- a white deer. As the gears began turning in her head, she came to the following conclusion: the fawn had done it. She was only half-sure of this, however.

Her maw opened, briefly, though she could not find any words to speak in his direction. Instead, she turned her head towards a much smaller, nearby rock. The gemstone replacing a part of her skull began to glow-- primarily, out of her mouth and at her forehead where it protruded between her eyes.

The rock-- perhaps only a foot tall or so --began to lift very evenly next to the much larger one. Satisfied, the puppy peered between that and the fawn, her ragged tail thumping hollowly against the cave floor.

Pride turned, blinking in some surprise at the other rock hovering midair. Somehow, his focus on his magic remained strong, firm--the stone continued to simply hover, Pride blinking pale eyes at the black dog that had, up until now, gone unnoticed.

Were that a predator, I would be dead. ...I might still be, he realized. Yet-... He didn't think so. It appeared to be pleased, perhaps with itself--and it was, as he was, small.

Delicately, gently--with the caution of an apprentice--he lowered his stone to the ground, exercising his magical hold on it with great concentration. His grey eyes, however, remained curiously fixed on the dog, and after a moment--when at last he was able to release the stone to the floor with a soft "click"--he spoke.

His voice, too, was soft--melodic and youthful, but it was confident, too, with a quiet, friendly detachment. "I did not... see you, there," he offered, after a moment. He seemed to be choosing his words carefully, enunciating them as perfectly and as clearly as possible. "I am Pride. I am... learning. And you..?" He inclined his head as he asked, gaze drifting curiously over Aster, but without lingering long enough to be impolite.

So proper; so formal, but it was, so far, all he knew.

The pup, for her part, seemed to be--well, the polar opposite of he. Black, and more thickly-furred. Yet she, too, had long and slender legs, and gems visibly glittering, though hers were atop her skull. He thought about this, for a moment. Most of the Gembound he'd met thus far--Reseda, Karma, Giggle--they all had stones atop their heads. Was his the odd one..? Was his misplaced?

Strange, he thought, and for the first time, a twinge of worry flickered through him. What if he were not perfect?

Staring with eyes too big for her face, Aster did nothing for a moment. When Pride placed his own rock down, the puppy immediately cut her attention away from her own rock and from casting, letting it fall to the ground with a hard thump.

She watched the fawn move closer, but she did not speak at first. Instead, she took a time to dissect the words she just heard, picking them apart, very slowly trying to define each one in her own mind.

Pride, she gathered, was his name. Learning, what he was doing-- but she did not know, exactly, what it meant. The dog's ear flicked before she spoke, slowly. "Hello," she said, beginning with the one word she did know. "Watching. I am watching."

With this, she turned her head back to the spire, staring upwards for a time.

"Learning," she then said, repeating Pride and testing the word in her own maw for a moment. "Why?"

Pride flicked one ear, and took a step closer, feeling that this stranger could likely be trusted. She seemed young, as he did; methodical, calm. And, too, she seemed unfamiliar with language. Cautious, he extended out his mind, seeing what he could to do establish a link between them. He felt it, felt his consciousness touch upon hers, feather-light; felt the faint brush of her thoughts. He reached out his words like a limb, offering them to her. In his thoughts, he could add concepts: images, ideas, feelings. He would not be restricted to words alone. This is how Reseda had taught him, so quickly, the few words that he had known.

Each word he "spoke" into Aster's mind was supplemented with meaning, so that they would not be empty, and confusing; with luck, this magic would help her, as it helped him, to more swiftly learn and understand.

"Do not be startled. This is how I learned to speak. To--communicate. It is easier, this way."

He gave her a moment, and then looked at the stone--then back, at the Spire crackling behind him. "I am learning, so that I may be the best that I can be." There was pride swelling in this statement, pride in himself, a quiet and calm sort of pleasure that was derived solely from striving to be the best that he could. A pride in his hard work. A pride in his well-earned accomplishments. It was far from arrogance. "I do not yet know much of our world. I am learning, to know more. My name is Pride," he explained again, this time sending with it the very idea of pride, as best he could. It was not the strongest link but he hoped that it would, for the time being, suffice.

"I practice here, because the magic is stronger. More chaotic. Easier to learn, but harder to control. It is good for learning. Do you know your name? What is it you are watching--and why?" he added, echoing Aster's own question back to her.

At first-- once again --Aster did nothing for a moment. She almost didn't even notice as their minds linked, as Pride began communicating. When she did notice, her head turned from the spire and back to the deer, watching, thinking for a moment.

Pride may be aware that, now that he's reading her thoughts, Aster is taking the time to study him. His movements, the way he carries himself and, more importantly, the thoughts he was passing over to her. Thinking them over very carefully-- perhaps a little too much, and all quite slowly.

"This is fine," was the first thing she intentionally offered back, more of a feeling of mild acceptance than anything else. "It is easier. I do not know words. I am new."

She thought this over carefully, for a moment-- at first, trying to calculate what could be considered 'new' before ultimately deciding that hatching only a few days ago was, in fact, new. Otherwise, she listened, considering, thinking.

Pride. She lingered on the thought of 'Pride' for a short while, considering the feeling of it, but there were no real elaborate thoughts on it-- merely, after a time, a faint sense of approval, that might be translated to "that's nice."

Her own name, however, her mind drew to a blank. "I don't know. How did you find your name?" She half-asked with an air of uncertainty, bringing unblinking eyes back to the Spire.

"I do not know what it is," she soon replied, more matter-of-factly this time. "It's nice. It glows. I think it might have someone inside it. I was inside something similar, something blue, but it didn't glow like this one. Another someone-- a lizard had a glowing rock in it's head, like this thing. I think it will hatch soon."

She showed the fawn images of a lizard with a hunk of radioactive gemstone jutting out of her skull; how she linked the glowing of the gemstone to the glowing of the spire, how she linked her own blue gem to the blue of the spire.

In her mind, it made perfect sense, at least.

Effortlessly, Pride maintained the magical link between their minds. It opened further, clearer, allowing thoughts to flow freely both ways. Magic seemed to come naturally to him, and as he turned his gaze back to the Spire, it took little focus to keep the bridge open.

He did not speak, now, instead communicating purely mind-to-mind. A thoughtful image, considering, of his own shattered chrysalis--sparkling shards of diamond beneath a glittering quartz cave roof--flickered in his mind. "...It may be. It may be a gem, a chrysalis, for hatching? I do not know." He eyed over its crackling blue, and wondered what sort of beauty, or monsters, might hatch from such a gargantuan gem. "Perhaps all the cave is but a home for this one egg."

He turned his grey eyes then back to Aster, looking at first her blue gems, then to her. "The one to find me upon my hatching was a gray-green--" and here he paused in his words, substituting with them the image of Reseda--for he did not know what she was. The image, however, was clear enough: a great komodo dragon, fully-grown, shards of green gem erupting around one eye. "--creature, who linked to me as I do to you. She calls herself Reseda, and when she felt my pride, as it is my... self-image," he said carefully, after a time (the time seemingly used to select the proper phrase), "...then she said this was my name. I do not know what yours is--not yet; how do you think of yourself?"

Other images, stray thoughts, ran through his mind as well: glimpses of the cave of bones, Canis; a brief flicker of Eridanus, and its juicy leaves and grasses, and a tawny-colored fawn with a single violet gem antler there. Too, he thought of the Spire, and Reseda beneath it--and an image of two Resedas, and his own triumph in lifting one, flinging it into the other hard enough to send it tumbling over the stone. This last was a violent thought, yet oddly, softly triumphant in its memory.

"Perhaps," the response was immediate, the dog's mind flicked to the glowing gemstones above Orion briefly, the quartz that shone like stars on the ceiling. "A thing of many gemstones, perhaps. Perhaps there is more. Perhaps it is multiple things." She lingered on this thought for a moment, drinking the images of Canis and Eridanus to wonder what glittering gemstones may lie there, and what creatures may hatch from them.

It took her a moment to drift her thoughts away from it. She flicked her gaze away from the Spire and to Pride again, watching his face for a moment before unblinking eyes scanned over his body, his legs, his hooves-- and her own lanky legs and paws, drawing to the conclusion (and not bothering to hide it from Pride) that they must be something similar.

She did not know what she looked like, after all-- which made Pride's question a little difficult for her to answer.

Instead, she took the time to study the image of Reseda, linking her to the thought of Amazon, the lizard-- they were both similarly shaped, after all, and they had similar gems on their heads. They must be, therefore, "the same. But she was new."

With this, Aster turned her gaze back to the Spire. "I do not know what I am," she replied quietly, ragged tail flicking, but never once opening her maw. "I simply, am."

It was clear, however, that this bothered her. She did not think anything of herself, not in the way that Pride did. She could try and be prideful as he was, but that wouldn't make her her own thing, and having the same name would get quickly confusing.

Eventually, however, she remembered. "I see things," she told Pride, wide eyes staring blearily at the Spire. "Things that have been." Fleeting images, like shadows dancing across a wall fluttered along her mind, sharing them to the fawn. She touched something and she saw what it had seen, or so she assumed.

"Not a lot," she then added. "But I can practice. Learn. Then I will see more of past things."

Pride listened, polite but genuinely attentive, paying close attention to each word. This link lent a certain intimacy to their communication, a "knowing" of the other that could never be garnered through vocal speech alone. Quietly he turned, and began to pace toward Polaris' river with quiet clicks of his hooves.

His magic had now at last begun to tire, and began to flicker away; the spell was an advanced one for such a youth, and he let it slip from his grasp. He resorted, instead, as the words and thoughts faded, to carefully choosing what to say with lips and tongue, instead.

"Follow," he said carefully, voice naturally soft. It was not commanding, not exactly--more an invitation, of sorts. He glanced back at Aster to see if she would. Once she at last moved, he then led the way with precisely-placed steps down to the swift, cold river. He'd been here before--it was the first place he'd seen his reflection, and he turned, stepping aside and watching Aster from atop the steep and rocky bank, as if to invite her up alongside him.

He then nodded down at the water. "Do not-... fall," he warned, and his words came far slower, now, as he judiciously picked through his limited lexicon to select precisely the right ones for his meaning. "This other... you, in the water. It is a reflection. That is you."

He looked to the water--the reflection was rippling, but visible enough with Polaris's lights. It might be harder, he knew, to see a dark thing compared to a light one but it was, for the moment (with the loss of the mind link) the best that he could do.

"You see what was?" he asked, after giving Aster a long moment to see what he had brought her to see. "Things that have... happened before?" His tone was curious, and so he was.

Silence. Again, Aster did not notice when the link between them was broken; but when she did, there was a twinge of sadness. She turned her head only to realise that, some long seconds ago, Pride had spoken and was moving away.

The borzoi picked herself up, stalking after the fawn quietly. When they came to the river, a memory flickered into her mind: she'd been here before, for a time, to watch the fish. Turning her head towards the white deer, and only half-listening to his words, she concentrated.

She had tried to link their minds again, in silence, but found that.. simply, she didn't know how. With her ear flicking, Aster turned her head back to the river and stared down at the rushing water. "No," she rasped quietly-- it was a response to 'don't fall in the water,' but it may be unclear what, exactly, she meant by it.

She watched, instead, the black dog staring unblinking back at her. She leaned in, sniffing, but only smelled cold water and fish- not another dog scent. "No name," the dog croaked slowly. Seeing her reflection had not, it seemed, given her any ideas to who she was.

Even then, it was hard to see who she was. She saw the blue of her gemstone and her eyes a lot clearer than her crooked face and ragged fur. When she looked across to Pride's reflection, she saw him very clearly.

Her ear flicked. She tried not to think too hard about it, instead focusing on the deer's next words. "Things," she said slowly, testing the word in her own mouth. "That happened before." She did not mean to exactly repeat Pride, but here we were.

Instead-- albeit without explaining herself --she moved away from the river, loping along the shore before she came before a single boulder. She paused, sat by it, and turned to stare after Pride half-expectantly with her tail curled in front of her paws.