ORIGIN

The hyena was hard at work. The quiet rattle of bones as they scraped over the floor broke the stagnant silence, and her pawpads rasped on the rock. To her left, a mournful croak announced that her familiar was again awake, and watching.

Giggle paused, setting the slender bones down and looking to the bird.

Omen's wing was ragged, hanging at something of an angle--sore and torn. She had tended it as best she had been able; the bird had been capable of one final flight, but now needed rest and recovery. Giggle could feel the sharp, throbbing ache through their shared link, feel the dull tiredness and the lingering fear.

She took a few steps over, and licked the bird on the head, warmly noting the gratitude that flooded along the link. The relief. The bird was afraid, after what Eythan had done to her--and no wonder. I still need to make him pay for that, Giggle thought to herself grimly. She lowered her jaws again, carefully taking up the thin-boned ribcage once more. The bones were barely held together with tatters of skin half-mummified by the metallic waters; some had fallen off, and she'd been carrying the entire skeleton here, bit by bit. This was the last piece, and as she moved it, she thought about the son of the owner of these bones.

Eythan.

Eythan was a leopard, and a lammergeier; he had killed his father in a fit of emotion. A father that had been Giggle's King, and friend. A father who had led many and kept them safe in this very cave. A father whose bones she carried now in her teeth. She'd only found them a few days ago, and she'd at once gone off to confront Eythan--Eythan, who, if he'd obeyed her words, should be waiting at her den.

She would go there once she was done here.

Carefully, she set the ribcage onto the same thick-based, point-topped stone as the others. They lay scattered around it, or carefully held in place by threads of fungal filament that grew up within and around them. She settled it there, a grimace of concentration on her face, one ear flicking at the rattling sound that they made.

At last, the bones fell still, and Giggle cautiously--reverently--lifted up the bird skull that lay at the base. This she settled atop the pointed stone, so that it appeared as though Azazel's skeleton were enshrined around it. His torso bones were wrapped around the rock, the wings folded against it (and, again, held in place with fungus), the skull sitting at the top.

Then, she sat down, staring at it.

A sense of tired satisfacton hit her, and a sort of empty, weary grief. So much had happened in so short a time.

She now knew who had killed her friend. She had opened communication with him, and had no idea how it would go. Perhaps he would attack her. Perhaps he would speak. Perhaps it was all lies. She did not know, but she would find out, soon enough. And as to the consequences..?

"Azazel," she began hoarsely--and immediately had to stop, her deep and masculine voice choking up for a moment. She lowered her head, and gathered herself.

She had a farewell to say to her friend, and King.

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A eulogy, then.

"You were a good friend to me. I am sorry... that I was not there for you. I don't know why you didn't come for me, but I know you had your reasons. I know they must have been terrible." Grief roiled through her, and guilt--she had not been there in his hour of need. And, surprisingly even to her, anger--anger that he had not been there when she needed him. He had been her King! Her friend! Where had he been, when she was going mad, when she was thin and gibbering and afraid of the world?

"None of that matters, now," she continued hoarsely, pushing it all aside. He was dead. They had been friends, and that bond was stronger than all else. "I do not know if there is some afterlife. I haven't heard from you, if there is. Perhaps you are with the bones that I throw. I will add one of yours to my pile, so you may guide me," she added, quiet.

"I wish you rest, and I hope you are at peace. You did not know if you were worth anything, but you were the world to me. You aided me when I was young. You listened when I had advice to give, and did what you thought was right, even when it frightened you. You protected those close. I ask you--if you are not resting--to guide me. Guide me with Eythan. I do not know what to do with him. He killed you; he lied. He attacked my bird. I would aid him, Bone King, push him to do better, to get ahold of himself. To be your son. To find himself. But if you think he must die for what he has done then you must tell me."

This last was faintly harsher in tone, a near-desperate demand. In these words, she laid the responsibility for death on a long-dead ally. In a sense, now she couldn't be blamed for leaving Eythan alive. In her own mind, if he deserved death, Azazel would tell her--somehow. It justified her sparing him. "I will speak with the bones, once one of yours is among them. I will speak to you, whenever I can. I hope you will some day speak back."

She sat for a time, staring at the bones of her dead friend, wondering what else there was to say. She supposed that she could update him. Though most of it was grim. "I think that many of those you and I knew have gone to join the bones, now. But Bones himself is doing well. I have... children, now. I took stones from the bones, here, and I gave them life. They are good children," she added quietly, "and I think that you would like them. Perhaps you have already seen them... who knows." Soft humor.

"Skeena is very small, but she has the fire of a much larger thing, and is bright and quick. Vinea is something I have never seen; yet intelligent, and a good child, too. Very pretty to look at! And Serek--he has gone to the swamp, to Cetus, to seek knowledge with those who live there. Diligent." She paused, thinking. To her knowledge, Kerberos was still somewhere--and alive. But many of those who had once called themselves Bonebound were dead. Though they were now exactly that... bones, she supposed.

Quiet, she leaned in to look over Azazel's bones. What best represented him..? The talons? No, he had never been one to rule through violence, nor to let violence or even power rule him. The skull? Perhaps; he had always used his mind, but a bird's skull was a fragile thing and she hardly wanted to shatter it in her pile. Anyway, the shrine would look very strange headless.

No; Azazel had ruled through his heart. Through what he had thought was right. Despite his image as an intimidating King, he had often had a warm, soft soul beneath, a spirit that yearned and feared and loved. Quietly, the hyena reached forward, and delicately plucked his sternum from the skeleton with her teeth.

She set this on her paws, and looked down at it.

"I know what this bone does," she told the skeleton. "It is the bone that guides a bird's flight. It lies close to the heart. It is sturdy. May you guide me through it as it guided you--and from the heart." She nodded to herself, satisfied with this choice, with this outcome.

And then she gently set the bone aside, and looked at the last thing that she needed to deal with.

The stone.

The oval-shaped, smooth, dark red jasper gemstone lay there between her paws: the last thing Omen had been able to retrieve. The last spark of magic or life left from Azazel. "I will try to bring it back. This is your decision, Azazel-..." and her breath hitched as his name actually left her lips. Grief twinged, and she fell silent for a moment as she gathered herself.

"I wanted to know what a good punishment for Eythan might be. He needs purpose. He needs to make up for what he's done--for his sake, and because what he did... was terrible. He knows it. If you approve of this, I would give life to your stone. Raise a new Bone King, and ask Eythan to guard and guide this new child--if I deem him trustworthy, by then. It can be his way of making up for what he has done. A new purpose for him. If I cannot breathe life into your stone, then I know you want Eythan to be the King, and I will teach and guide him as best I can, as I have done you. Either will be a great burden to him." And this, she knew, was as it should be.

Giggle fell silent, for a time, watching the stone. When at last she moved, it was not to give it life--but to once more tap into its past, to see what it had seen. As she did so, she spoke hoarsely. "If you hold any messages for me, Bone King... now is the time."

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Giggle slid down to lay her forelegs on either side of the stone. She pressed her black nose to it.

Her dark eyes slipped shut.

Her mind opened.

The stone's red depths shimmered with magicka. She lay still.

There was a rustle of feathers in her mind.

The black leopard stalking in. Azazel's voice, friendly. "Cancer. What do you need, my old friend?" Warmth. The clicking of talons on stone, the quiet sound of two friends, talking, in peace and solitude.

The vision changed: another time, another place. Suddenly the black cat was more clearly visible--and Giggle knew him, recognized him as yes, Cancer, one who had once come to her bone pit. Now madness laced his features, and rage-filled grief broke his voice. "KERBEROS DID THIS." A shuddering image of the face, of Azazel's confusion, of everything spinning away into the surreal. "HE TOOK HER FROM ME! MY ENNA! MY BEVY!" Bones, her Bones--her son--trotting in, blank-faced.

Kerberos killed Bevy at the meeting. Bevy had turned on others. That madness, the one I had warned her of-... She never played the game. She never played the games. If she had... It was memory, of Giggle's own--and realization of some of the details she had never known.

The images shifted again, unbidden--Giggle had little control over what she was shown. Now she saw Kerberos, her adoptive son--blocking tunnel K against Azazel's approach. The Bone King was speaking, and somehow, Giggle felt there to be far more meaning to it than what lay on the surface. "Don't you even believe in me? Have I fucked up too many times to be believed in anymore?" Grief. Guilt. Misery. Desperation. And in this, Giggle suddenly knew, lay all of Azazel's fears and self-doubts. He thought that he was never good enough. Oh, Bone King-... if only I had been there to tell you otherwise.

And Kerberos--her adopted son. All several hundred pounds of him, a mass of three-headed white fur, pink noses bobbing as he spoke. Earnest, and strong. "I believe in you, Aza'zel," he was whining. "More than I believe in myself. But sometimes the best thing to do is wait-- to stop, to listen, learn, and speak." As the images faded--devolving into a flurry of violence--Giggle felt a choking surge of loving pride. Her son. That was HER SON. She had taught him that, and he had been a good son--such a good boy. He had learned to listen! Learn, and speak! He had taken this to heart, and what a damn good heart he had. He had tried to save Azazel, with what she had taught him.

Grief and love tore through her again, but now the images shifted once again. She could see Azazel in a darkened tunnel--Cancer's gemstone horns lying there. He was turning this way and that, muttering to the darkness, and there was a strange nervous tension to it all. A blue stone, too, lay there, and Giggle sensed what Azazel was doing--through the history of this spell. He was bringing life to the stones. Eythan, then... and Carni, too. I hadn't thought--of course they could not both be Cancer's stone. So who was the other..? Was it that shit-cat, the white one? I hated her, Giggle thought absently, but before she could go further, the images shifted again.

She saw the Bone King sitting by her bone pile; they were speaking. And suddenly she was a cub again, bounding into him, calling for food. And then she was sitting with him, in Pisces, letting out a ringing, chittering cackle to draw in the members of Maji Walezi, a sense of mischievous humor to it. It'd been revenge, that laughter in Aza's ear, for all the times he'd shrieked around her. She felt his wince. His quiet concern for the situation. His own amusement.

Feathers again rustled in her mind. Wings beat. Azazel was searching for Giggle. He fluttered through the stillness of Canis. He soared through the thick brush of Eridanus. His cry, repeated over and over again, each more desperate. "Giggle!" He spiralled downward, hysterics, broken sobs as he gazed down at her bone pit, the bones she had once read. He begged the caves for forgiveness, pleading for them to stop taking from him. Taking, and taking, and taking.

He failed everyone. He sat staring off toward her pit, and she knew she had returned, but--broken. He blamed himself for losing members of the Bonebound to death. He blamed himself for everything. Every failure. Every loss.

And when Eythan came for him, it was almost a relief.

Wings rustled.

Giggle's eyes snapped open as the images stopped, her breath exhaling in a sharp rush. For a long moment, she was silent and still, slowly processing all that she had seen. All that his stone had shown her.

And then, slowly, she lifted her gaze to peer at the bones. "You did look for me," she choked out hoarsely. And she understood; perhaps he had never come to her for the same reason he'd avoided Eythan, and avoided Carni. He'd felt guilty. Responsible. He'd felt like a failure. "You fool," Giggle sighed sadly. "We all loved you, did you not understand? And that--it was an easy way out for you but a burden to your son! It was unfair to him! And your absence was not fair to any of us." She flattened back her ears, and laid her head back over the stone, her dark eyes closing. She trembled as she held it close.

"But I forgive you, Bone King. We would all have forgiven you, even if you wouldn't forgive yourself. I hope you have realized it was not your fault, by now. None of it was. You did your best to protect us. I will do my best to protect what you've left behind."

Giggle was silent for a very long moment, and then twisted her head again to press her nose to Azazel's stone. Still, she waited, a deeply respectful silence extending outward. She mulled over all the time she had spent with her friend. All the time they'd had together. She thought about all that he had created, and influenced. About the suffering he had endured, and how she deeply wished that she could have helped him. How she wished that he had never suffered, nor blamed himself.

For any of this.

"I'm sorry for everything, Azazel," she rasped quietly. "I would have taken the pain away if I could. If I had known! ...The irony that your seer never knew. But those damned eyes had taken my Sight. It won't happen again," she said quietly. "Whatever comes of this--of you--I will not let it happen again."

And as quiet sniffles began to escape her, her magic flooded the old jasper stone. With it came all her hopes. Her apologies. Her forgiveness.

With it came life itself. And one old hyena's love.

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ROLL THE BONES