ORIGIN

It'd been a long time since she'd seen Giggle-- a very long time --and Kera couldn't quite remember if Giggle had found out who turned the lights on or not, or if she'd somehow heard all the way back in Canis.

It was easy enough to find her-- the bone pile was one hell of a landmark and she quite easily remembered the way from her walkabout with Giggle in the dark, illuminating the caves with bioluminescent mushrooms as temporary lights.

Giggle said Kera would turn the lights back on in the cave.

And then she did.

Kera was curious-- that fortune had been frighteningly accurate. It even specified that Kera wouldn't do so alone, and she hadn't, even if Kera liked to pretend it was her doing and her doing alone.

The wolf heavily plodded along Canis, stepping over bones. As she did, a terrified, wounded cave rat went careening in front of her paws and vanished into the wall. Kera lifted her head, quizzically, to where it'd come from.

"At least kill your food cleanly," she barked. "Now it's gonna bleed out for a few hours and die in the wall and stink the whole place up until somebody digs it up, idiot." But other than this-- Kera didn't quite pay the pup any mind.

Instead, Kera went straight for the bone pile. "Giggle?" She called out, loudly. "It's-- me, Kera. Do you remember? Are you here?"

Giggle slowly lifted her head, blinking a little. She was--as she often did--resting... or rather, she had been. Now she came awake, and pushed slowly up, calling out in her masculine voice as she did so.

"I'm here... I'm awake," but really, had that last part been necessary? The hyena yawned, stretching herself, and then shaking the dander and dried gunk from her fur.

Slowly she padded out from her sleeping spot, trotting up toward the bone pit at a lazy lope. She remembered hearing--had it been from Kera, or from Black, or someone else entirely?--that the wolf had indeed turned the lights on at last. Hell, Giggle couldn't even remember if she'd seen Kera since then.

Probably. Did it matter?

"So, it's the one who brings the lights. Anything I can do for you?"

The greeting was friendly enough, if distinctly punctuated by the yawn. Whether the wolf pup had arrived yet, Giggle hadn't noticed.

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ROLL THE BONES

Kera turned her head, ears rotating at Giggle calling out. She sat herself down onto her haunches, pale, shaggy tail thumping hollowly against the cave floor. "Hello, Giggle," she said. "Visiting. I just woke up and I wanted to see how you were getting on?"

She turned her head again when the puppy started shrieking. Or, at least, in Kera's eyes it was pitiful shrieking. The wolf bared her teeth briefly, though she at least managed to restrain a growl, long enough to at least explain.

"You can't just bite things because they're close to you," she said, ears twitching. This was, in fact, the logic Blackberry had. And that sort of logic should be curbed out of young gembounds damn quick. "I'm calling you an idiot because you still bit it when it didn't attack you, and you didn't chase after it and take it for food. It's going to die out, somewhere, and become wasted food. You can't just do that."

Fucking kids, Kera thought a little spitefully, ears flicking. She hoped her own wouldn't be-- like that. She'd teach them well, at least. Probably.

"You shouldn't talk about people like they're not sitting right there, either," she advised, before turning her head back towards the hyena. "How have things been here? A deer said the lights have stayed on-- and you look a lot better than I remember."

Giggle perked a brow at the pup, and at her venom. The interaction of the two wolves was distinctly unfriendly and for a moment she wondered where Kera had picked this pup up.

The hyena's first instinct was to bare her own thick fangs and snarl heated words through wrinkled-back black muzzle, but her age had loaned her at least some measure of patience. She took a deep breath and spared the child but a glance, speaking with a forced, low calm.

"Child, this is not your space, nor do you have the right to attack anyone wandering through it. If we held that right I'd have killed you already. If you want to succeed in life listen, learn, and speak--do not blindly attack. Now shut up and sit down, and if you want respect, treat others with it. That includes your food." New blood was always ..."fun." Unpredicatable. Half the Gembound seemed mindlessly violent at birth, the rest friendly, and Giggle never knew which one it'd be. But this wolf cub put her in mind of her son Kerberos--incredibly violent, at first, until he'd been put firmly in his place. They'd have to see whether this pup demanded a fight, or if she'd settle down on her own.

The hyena then very clearly turned from Zandram to Kera, making a point of ignoring the wolf pup. If she wanted attention, companionship, she'd have to learn that she didn't run the world, and that others would ignore her if she tried to pull that sort of shit.

"Kera," Giggle started again. "I am better, yes. The lights have stayed on and that is always a good thing." She turned and lightly pawed over a few of the bioluminescent mushrooms that still ringed the bone pit. She'd maintained them carefully ever since Kera's departure. "I assume that however you managed it, you managed it well. The Bonebound have come back together, so that is something. Some of my children are in its ranks--the son of our last Bone King, as well--and too many youngsters. I worry about that," she added dourly. Aure'd been taking in a lot of children. There was nothing wrong with that, exactly, but she knew that it might be hard to defend themselves, or to teach so many youngsters, if so many of them were newly-hatched.

"But, we're together, at least, and you will always have friends here. How have you been?"

The hyena certainly sounded more stable than the last time she'd seen Kera--and though she didn't realize it, she certainly looked it, too. Kera was observant--perhaps more aware than Giggle was about her own changes. The battered hyena was unaware of the weight she had gained, of the faint gloss that had returned to her fungal-caked straw-dry fur, of an odor of rank health returning to the distant and stale scent of death that had clung to her for so long.

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ROLL THE BONES

Kera remained silent while Giggle went for scolding the pup, tail still thumping against the ground. She wondered if the lights had done this-- helped Giggle become more stable, and healthier, and got her to eat more and speak in regular-speak instead of confusing riddles.

She'd assume the lights had done it, at least.

"I did," she grinned, pushing up to inspect the ring of mushrooms. She bent her head down, sniffing and then delicately nuzzling the dimly-lit caps. "There was something blocking the generator-- a big thing that was helping the lights stay on --and I helped to get it out with two others. Your bones were absolutely right." She licked her muzzle, then settled back down to sit.

She took a glance towards Zandram, flicking her ears back and forth for a moment before offering a nod. "I'm Kera," she said. "The Lightbringer. You're forgiven."

She lifted a leg up to itch her neck with a hind paw. "I've, uh, been asleep in a chrysalis," she explained. "Went to sleep a little bit after the lights were turned back on and now I'm getting back into the swing of things. Trying to protect everybody again, from the, uh, geese and shit."

Only when the pup was sitting more quietly and, notably, more politely did Giggle offer her further attention.

"Better," she barked curtly. "And I'm Giggle, the Bonecaster. This is Canis." She turned, pacing around to flop beside the bones, looking weary again already. Still, she gave Kera her attention once more.

"Good, well--if you consider yourself a protector then I guess you are one. I'd imagine a good one, at that," she added, then laughed roughly. "So, what brings you here? And you?" she added, glancing the wolf pup's way.

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ROLL THE BONES