ORIGIN

Pride hesitated, then gave a soft sigh through his nostrils. He kept eyeing the hyena sidelong, faint guilt and even fainter doubt (he still wasn't entirely certain that it hadn't been her own madness, though he was relatively sure) still gripping him. Her insult rolled over him without him taking any real notice--he knew he'd upset her, knew he was in the wrong.

There was a very faint pang at it, of course, but it was something distant and insubstantial.

"I am sorry," he repeated. "It--wasn't my intent. I would have asked you to read the bones again, on my behalf, but--I suppose I have far overstayed my welcome? I don't wish to make demands, on top of having overstepped my boundaries," he offered quietly. "I know that once you offered knowledge, and I forgot it, and it turned out to be very true. And the forgetting was my own fault, and to my own detriment, but--I believe. I would ask again, but not if I have too badly offended--I know that would be asking too much."

He was polite, repentant, in tone--yet there was some slender part of him that, even without meaning to, was simply manipulating. He was sorry, yes--truly so--but he was phrasing it all, too, so as to make it more difficult to reject. He did want the bones read, again, and he didn't want to be turned away.

If she did, though, he would accept it. He most certainly did deserve it.

Giggle eyed the white stag sidelong, resentful--but she couldn't turn him away. It was part of her own personal code to never turn anyone away; she was merely a conduit for their magic, for the knowledge of reality itself, and it wasn't her place to shirk responsibility for personal reasons. She'd have even given Senka a reading, had the shit-cat turned up to ask for one.

So it was with an angry huff that she stood, and after a brief additional nuzzle to the bird (who then, at her mental urging, hopped out of sight) she paced to the bone pit.

"It's asking too much. You're rude," she said bluntly, but her anger's edge had worn away. She still disliked Pride's superior bearing, his flawless appearance, but there were worse Gembound out there. Worse by far.

She peered into the bones, trying to pick one to represent him. She couldn't remember what she'd used last time. "I'll do it anyway, because I can't turn anyone away," she explained roughly, and then she was prying a long-tined broken antler from the pile. It was long-since bleached pure white, and it was from a different sort of animal than Pride--smaller, more rounded, rather than long and straight and branching. But that didn't matter. She turned and trotted up the path, her brush tail behind her.

It was true, Pride hadn't exactly asked a question--but looking down at him, questioningly, she found him just standing beside the bone pit and staring questioningly back. He asked nothing, and so she assumed the question was the same as before: a general glimpse into his future.

Can't see the messes he's walking into, even when I warn him about them, so he's gotta ask for me to look again, she thought irritably.

Then she turned her attention to the bones themselves, focusing deeply on her question the sooner I get this done the sooner I can leave and on Pride himself. What was his future? What lay in store for him? She was silent for a very long time, stilling her breathing and doing her best to calm her mind, to slip into that space where she became one with what she asked, where the universe itself could whisper and she would hear it.

Then, and only then, did she lob the antler, with a little toss of her jaws, into the pit below. The antler clattered down, and its echo was strange to her. As if in slow-motion, her mind picked up that tiny detail and held onto it. Misheard. Then it landed in a pile of bones and simply stayed there, a few rolling in against it but not covering it, as if cradling it. Gathering. Stability. It rocked, and fell slightly, but only into more bones. A chance well-taken.

The hyena's dark eyes snapped up to Pride only after the bones had fallen wholly still, and she spoke with confidence. "The bones speak clearly," she began, more distant than before. Her mind was on the reading, now, and not truly on Pride and his arrogance. "There is something you have misunderstood, or a path that has gone wrong in your life. Something you do not correctly grasp! Soon comes stability. It is as what you gain from family--not only closeness, but material things. As... inheritance. Territory, perhaps. Something you gain, or are already gaining. I do not know what family you have or what you might gain. And in your future I see a chance that you might take. Take it." This much was stated bluntly. She looked to Pride again. "Any questions?" she asked, and she didn't snap it quite as nastily as she could have.

________________

ROLL THE BONES

Pride listened, closely.

He was proud, certainly--hence his name--but only of those things he felt he had the right to take pride in. It wasn't, as the hyena said, arrogance... not usually. He was proud in himself: even if he failed, he always did his best, and he was usually damn good at whatever he tried. He worked hard, he set himself to his tasks and he took pride in the results.

Thus on the rare occasion that he felt that he had made a mistake, he felt true shame. Humility, even. He dipped his head, ears flattening back a little at the hyena's tone, and felt all the more respect that she was still willing to look into her bones for him. And are they accurate, I wonder? ...Misunderstanding what? Stability..? Bemusement hit him, and he wondered for the first time if her fortunes were merely generically vague enough to be applied to many situations. It'd be hard to get them wrong, if so. But given his prior rudeness he pushed this thought aside.

Now that they were deep in the reading, he forgot to be ashamed, and instead drew up, businesslike, to look from the pit to the hyena and back. She was performing work, and on his behalf, and he turned his mind to it; and when she asked if he had questions, he considered.

"Would it... be possible to elaborate on what it is that I am misunderstanding? --And more than that, more importantly perhaps--what chance I ought to take..?"

A wry, grim mental image of himself standing at a cliff's edge, leaping off due to the witch doctor's advice, when the chance had nothing to do with falling. Of course, he was certain it would not be so obvious--so it was good to ask.

Giggle listened, and grunted.

At least Pride was listening to her, and taking her reading seriously. There was that. She, like he, turned her mind to the businesslike mentality of her task, and she trotted down at a swift pace to take another bone--and another. A pristine white scapula with a single crack down it, and three vertebrae fused by long-dried, dessicated cartilage.

She loped back up to the pit's ledge, carefully balancing both in her strong jaws, and then, one by one, she threw them and read what she saw.

The scapula tumbled, and bones rattled out, and then back in, landing where they'd started. She spoke at once.

"When you act, things react. Effects, consequences, come back to you. You are misunderstanding them. Something that you have done or are doing, and its repercussions." She didn't bother elaborating much more, though she herself thought about this for a moment in silence. What was it that the deer could have done..? Harmed someone? Taken something?

She didn't know; she didn't know him, and so after stealing a quick glance his way, she tossed the piece of spine over the edge, too. The vertebrae hit remarkably hard, despite their smallish size. They scattered the bones so that some spun wildly out of the pit altogether and rattled off down the path, and the bones themselves smashed their cartilage, two vertebrae breaking away from the third. Giggle perked her furry brow at this, surprised.

"...Your choice ought to be clear enough, when it comes. It will be associated with wild chaos, Pride--possibly heavy destruction. An attack, or a natural disaster, or deaths--I do not know. But you must take a chance, when it occurs to you to do so!" Vehement. Certain. She looked to him, staring, to impart the strength of the message she felt in this--a clear, unequivocal guidance from what lay beyond. The bones were talking to her--talking to him, through her--and they were rarely so direct.

Whatever choice he would have to make, it was important.

________________

ROLL THE BONES

Pride listened in silence, and sharp misgiving took him.

Some part of him hoped she was wrong, and some other part knew that she was not. A faint stirring occurred to him, in the back of his mind--the creation story he was forming up for Mercurius. Something about magic, and everything's interconnectivity, as the hyena claimed--but that he tucked away for later.

For now, he fidged a little uneasily. My own actions..? Envy? I wonder. Perhaps he was being far too hard on the weasel..? He'd have to think this over. And as to his choice-... destruction didn't sound so good. Damn.

But all he said--after a soft inhale, steeling himself--was "Thank you, then. I apologize again, and I won't take up more of your time." He paused, and then--impulsively--added, "If you ever need my aid for anything, I dwell mostly in Orion, and in Eridanus as well. Don't hesitate to find me. I-... I wish you peace, until then." A brief flicker of memory of the horrors she'd shown him, and he pushed it back down, and inclined his head.

After she responded he turned, pacing away, his mind full of thoughts--a great deal to go over. His own future, what he'd learned of Omen and lesser Gembound... it was a lot to think about.

Giggle grunted as the stag replied. Some part of her wanted to dismiss him, to snap at him and tell him to fuck off--but he'd done more than most merely in offering his own aid. She was surprised by this--and an instant later, suspicious. Empty words from a pretty face?

"Good luck with your choices, stag," she snapped in response--a well-wishing, but certainly grumpy. As he left she shook herself, irritable. What could she possibly want from him?

What can I use him for? But then, she chided herself, her bone-reading was free for all to take advantage of. But was it all right for her to accept repayment, of sorts, if it was a friendly offer? If it's an offer to repay for going into my mind, or trying to, she answered herself wryly. Yet--she had gotten him good, hadn't she? Showed him far more than he bargained for. Far more than his perfect, pretty little head had expected.

Some measure of dry and bitter triumph gripped her. She stood silent for a long moment, and once the sound of his hoof-beats on stone had fully faded, she went to Omen. A nuzzle, a reassurance, and down she flopped--to think, to push away the nightmares that would now undoubtedly come, and to try and rest, at least a little.

"Everything's all right," she told Omen hoarsely, but it was more to reassure herself.

________________

ROLL THE BONES