ORIGIN

Pride lay quiet, chewing his cud.

Somewhere deep in his gut, he had a parasite--resting, he supposed; it hadn't used magic in some time. But it was not, for once, his only company. Mercurius was here--the great white lion, far more beautiful than the concept of "gut parasite." The garden around him was company of a sort, if... inanimate; the well-tended bushes, ferns and leaves, the grasses and flowers, and the hanging ivy all formed a secluded hidden thicket, bushy and green and safe from the world. It was quiet, here, the birdsong of Eridanus fainter, though still melodic and beautiful--and Pride often rested here, alone with his thoughts.

But today he was not alone.

The chrysalises--one moonstone, one diamond--had been thinning, of late. He and Mercurius had been waiting for them to hatch. Pride felt--for the first time--a pressing, constant nervousness, an anxiety that perhaps something would go wrong. Would a child hatch monstrous, full of fang and claw, lopsided and in agony, or mindlessly fierce? Would one hatch sickly and small, with twisted limb and stunted mind?

Quiet, he shifted in place, pushing these thoughts away. His friend was beside him, and the world was at peace; surely the children would be safe... Wouldn't they?

"...Do you think they will be healthy?" he asked at last, his voice quietly fluting. Silver eyes glanced to the lion, worry shrouded within.

Pride snorted, successfully distracted at least into gentle amusement. Some vague part of him was also unnerved--handsome? Did the lion hold some interest in him that went beyond warm friendship? This bothered him, made him uneasy, and he had to ask himself--why would he mind if he did? He did--but he wasn't sure why.

But now was not the time for these thoughts; they were here, now, for their unhatched young ones. Pride rallied himself, turning his attention back to the conversation, and the situation.

"I do not wish to curse them by going on about how we are both the most beautiful things in the caves, Mercurius, but yes--you are ethereal. You have a ghostly beauty about you, though the distinctive presence of a majestic Gembound of flesh and bone. It is them I am worried about." He nodded down to the gemstones, for a moment silent before continuing.

"We must teach them, yes? Teach them of magic, and the elders; teach them how to survive, how to talk, how to recognize danger..." Perhaps tellingly, he said nothing of learning right from wrong, or being generous--to him, these things were logically innate, and he would not have thought about ever needing to teach them. He was, instead, worrying now--what if they were carnivores? Certainly Mercurius was, but the lion subsisted so much on plants that Pride had nearly forgotten this. What if they ate cave deer..? As half-deer? As his children?

He tried not to shudder, and tried to turn his mind from the negative thoughts.

Surely they would be beautiful. Surely they would be kind. Surely, they would be perfect.

Pride shook his head likewise, gently. He spared a glance for his friend, nearly at once forgetting his strange uneasiness.

"No, they do not. We will teach them." He was clearly in total agreement, even if he himself had not at first mentioned kindness, or steadiness of temper. "I do not know what you mean by leading me by the heart? I do not know, too, why you would not want me to think too fondly of you. If you are thinking of yourself as lesser because of some mysteriously sordid past, you needn't worry." Pride thought, perhaps, that Mercurius was putting himself down; his tone was warm humor, though not at the lion's sake.

He looked quietly back at the stones, and for a long few moments, he was silent. Then, in an almost entranced, quiet voice, he began to speak.

"Once upon a time, two stones lay side-by-side in a shade-lit, gentle garden. The wind rustled the leaves overhead, and the birdsong was but distant in its cradle of moss and ferns. One stone glinted, translucent, almost blue in its ethereal shine--pure diamond. The other shimmered, a play of colors over its shining milk-white surface: a moonstone too beautiful for this world." He paused, a faint smile playing over his expression--as best a stag could manage, anyway. "...Where do you think their stories will lead them, Mercurius?"

The diamond, with its translucent glinting surface, had quite thinned. The small, white, huddled fawn-cub within lay silent, still, none of the movement of a living being giving its presence away. Yet now the surface was but a membrane, the interplay of glimmering pastels barely hiding the furred body within.

He came to only slowly--came to a drowsy, content awareness of voices outside, of comfort, of warmth. He could hear birdsong, and he was content to lay, for a time, the shifting shadows of the leaves overhead providing a pleasantly languid atmosphere. It was only after a long few moments--in which he came to recognize these voices, to find them reassuring, and pleasant--that he began, instead of comfortable, to feel cramped. His legs were just a little too tight against his body. The thin stone, which would have cracked and tumbled him out had it been upright, had been, instead, planted in the dirt: and so he felt his body pressing upward, and against it.

He flexed, a little, trying to breathe, and found that it had a little give, there. He was already calm in his realization that he was... him, a separate creature from the universe around him; he was already certain that the world close around him held no threat. This was in no small part to the care of both his stone-giver, and life-giver, even prior to his hatching. So he felt no fear in his pressing, in his flexing, each time he breathed--using his natural inhales, and the inflation of his ribs, to push against the thinning stone.

He began to feel a relief from the pressure, then--and with it a dull, faint crack. At length the stone broke--not shattering, but cracking along faint lines, and then falling a few inches to the side. The young one did not push up and climb out. He couldn't fit, not yet, but at least the stone was open, and his long, slender white neck raised up. Silvery eyes, lit with a faint moonstone shimmer, peered upward. There were not yet the grey nubs of antlers, and the diamond horn on his forehead was barely a blunted twist. Deerlike ears seemed oversized, and the fur around his neck was not yet even approaching a mane. He looked like a fawn, yet with a lion's grace to his gaze, and his muzzle. He peered up, blinking placidly, taking in--for the first time--the sights of Mercurius and Pride.

"Arsu," he told them, softly.

At Mercy's reassurance that he had not spoken as a "lover," Pride laughed. He felt warm reassurance, and the laughter was almost feminine, a husky sound, his voice (as always, indistinguishable as strictly male or female) musical.

"You are not," he responded with soft mirth, "lion."

The first stone was cracking. Pride's attention veered sharply, his breath stilling, eyes widening. He crowded in, too, leaning in to sniff at the youth, pulling back a bit as Mercurius took charge. Only for the briefest of instants did he worry that the lion might hurt the child--though his fear was more a what is he doing? Does he know how to not hurt it? than any belief that Mercurius would willingly do harm to a newly-hatched.

Pride gave them a little space, feeling only slightly left out by the lion's grooming of the child--he couldn't get in as close as he'd have liked--but that emotion fell away quickly as he found himself watching. Mercurius' expression--soft, warm, parental--as he immediately began to care for the youth was... reassuring. Warming, yes. There were not, Pride reflected, enough words that meant "warm" in the world.

"Arsu," he agreed, softly--and then looked to the other stone.

It remained still.

Worry spiked within him, and he paced over to it, giving it a faint nuzzle over its surface and sniffing softly at it.

What if only one of them hatches? Great sorrow threatened to bloom in his chest at the tragic thought of a child whose destined twin was never born. Who grew without a sibling, unaware that this had never been the intention--with a ghostly, empty place throughout their childhood where a friend should have been.

The stag then roughly checked himself, thrusting this thought away. Surely it was just a little later. They'd given life a few seconds later--maybe it would be hours, or even days, before the second one hatched. He doubted they were on any sort of strict schedule.

It just wasn't ready yet... surely?

Silvery eyes closed as the warm and rasping tongue began to work over his fur. It was reassuring; it felt like home. Arsu's contentment only rose, the feeling of well-being strong. He heard his name, too; recognized it, knew it as him. He'd given it, hadn't he, after all? Quietly he stood on trembling legs, pushing up within the confines of the stone, more shards falling away to either side.

For a moment he stood there, shaking with unused muscles, within the opened chrysalis.

He opened his eyes, wide and young, and surveyed his situation. He had to step out of the broken stone to take a place alongside the far larger, white creatures, which brought him no fear--only happiness. Very carefully, with a studious expression and a very slow, cautious series of movements, he began to lift his leg from the stone. He had every appearance of someone performing a dangerous and highly-calculated maneuver. The leg stepped carefully out, his weight transferring onto it, his limbs still quivering as he then lifted his second out--and the third, and fourth, stepping out hoof by delicate hoof. Soon he stood alongside Mercurius, and shook himself softly--nearly falling over. His tail tried to shake to and fro rapidly, a short series of happy twitches, like a deer's--but it was a long lion's tail, and just sort of flopped a little before hanging quietly behind him.

Instinct drove him as he stepped in closer toward Mercurius, toward the white, comfortably warm shape. He made sound somewhere between a mewl and a bleat, and blinked up at his new parents.

Everything was still a little blurry, but to the newborn, all seemed... perfect.