ORIGIN

Within a small rocky alcove, a chrysalis hatches. Kalama hatches with a bang. Her soft down is pressed against the hard oblong stone of her flint rock chrysalis, until finally she lashes out with a spurred leg. The chrysalis shatters into dust, stray sparks of orange glinting from where her spur hits the rock. She is left blinking on the dirt, soft down powdered with the dust of flint crystals. She hears the chirps and songs of lesser birds, and the world is rich and green and vibrant, but such beauty is lost on the newborn chick. After a few moments she shakes herself out, sneezing from the dust that falls. She tries to stand, wobbling on her fresh legs.

The chick falls almost immediately when the weight of her overgrown spurs drags her back down. The left one was throwing her balance off. At the very least, they break the chick’s fall. She finds herself rocking back on the overgrown things. She shakes herself out, and puffs out a breath. Kalama narrows her eyes in determination. She could do this. Kalama stands again. She manages to take a few wobbling steps forward, till she finds herself tumbling over a black rock that juts from the earth.

Kalama feels her frustration well up, and lets out an angry wailing twitter. Stupid spurs. Stupid rock. She slams her spur on the rock repeatedly, and then bright golden light pops. Sparks shoot out in a spray from the rock, and Kalama peeps in shock, falling onto her back. She blinks, chest falling and rising in a rapid pitter. She cautiously raises her foot to her face, eying the spur with fear and excitement in equal measures. Did I do that? She stands, shaking slightly, and slams her left spur back on the rock. Sparks shoot out once again, landing on grass and twigs, that miraculously dont catch.

Her pupil seems to glow in the light of the embers, and the charred scent in the air smells almost comforting. Realization dawns on the newborn gembound. It turned out her spur wasn’t useless. But she had more pressing matters. Like figuring out how walking worked. She fluffs herself out, and stands up again. She wobbles for a moment, but her balance holds, even with the massive spur throwing her balance off. She peeps in joy, and starts runs to run with the energy only found in newborn creatures. Her prance takes her off into a field of flowers, tall enough to rival her in size.

And then she finds herself face to face with a fat bee. It lounges on a pale flower, eyeing her with an air of disinterest. This is where she believes her troubles began. She blinks. It stares at her with black eyes. Then begins grooming itself. Was it ignoring her? She was twice the size of it, and it didn't see her as a threat. Fire kindles in her, and she opens her mouth to spit angry words at it, but all that comes out is a sharp peep. She blinks, and feels that same explosive anger rumble at the rude insect.

“Go die.” She managed to squeak out. For a moment she feels a spark of pride at her first words. She had wanted to say something more complex than that, but that’d gotten the point across. The bee doesn't seem to care. It flexes its mandibles, but doesn’t move. And then it resumed going its business, giving the flower its full attention as it drunk the nectar. That pisses her off. With an angry trill, Kalama charges the bee with her fuzzy wings spread, finally giving the insect the incentive to fly off. Kalama trips when her attack misses, and the embarrassment that comes with it does nothing but add fuel to the chick’s anger. The bee lands on a flower a bit farther away from the rowdy chick, having decided she was not worth the time. Kalama's anger reaches new heights.

“You mock me?” She shouts at the bee, throwing in all the intimidation her three minutes of life have granted her. Her anger reaches the tipping point, and she loses her newfound grasp on language, peeping her anger out as she chases the bee down, interspersed with the words ‘die’.

Kalama froze, startled from hot anger to cold shock by a new voice behind her. The fact she had been mid stride doesn’t do her any good. The newly hatched chick trips over herself, watching as the bee buzzes away, still ignoring her. She sits there for a moment, chagrin flowing through her. One of the many flavors of anger Kalama would become accustomed to in her life. It was by far her least favorite.

“I no need help,” she says with a venomous bite to her squeaky voice. She stands back up upon wobbly legs. Shakes herself out to get rid of the dirt clinging to her dark down. She flaps her wings once, to make sure her gait is balanced. It's not, but it'll work.

"I let bee fly. I make bee fear me." She turns to direct a glare at the foolish creature who dared interrupt her. And stumbles back with a high pitched peep. when she realizes how much bigger it was than her. She turns her fear into a false bravado, and stamps her claws upon the earth. In the chick's point of view, the unicorn was as massive as a tree. And it's horn was pointed at her. She swallowed, and began to speak, trying to hide the slight tremor to her voice.

"You mock me, too? You think me afraid of big pointy thing?" She was very afraid of it. That was why she had to destroy it. With a trilling war peep, Kalama charges at the Unicorn.

The chick throws herself against the unicorn's legs for what felt like the twelfth time. She wheezes with her breaths, and the only thing that budges with her tackles is the fuzz upon the unicorn's fetlocks. She leans herself against the unicorn's legs for a moment. Just a moment. She needed to rest. She hears the unicorn question why Kalama would attack a bee.

“Bee mean.” She says, giving the unicorn a strange look, as if she'd asked her why grass grows, or rocks are hard. The confusion gives Kalama pause. She backs up, beak open in a pant from her relentless assault against the unicorn's hoof, and prepares to charge once more. The unicorn looked so thin, Kalama was baffled by its lack of reaction to her extremely powerful tackles.

And then Kalama catches the word 'fruit'. Everything between the question about the bee and before the word fruit had, quite frankly, gone through one ear and out the other of the baby chick. But fruit, now that had caught her attention. She perks up slightly, and started paying attention to the unicorn's words. She feels her mouth beginning to water. Kalama claps her beak once.

“Fine, twiggy.” She says, eying the unicorn suspiciously, as if it would suddenly decide to fight back against something a quarter of its size. The irony of the chick calling someone else twig legs was completely lost of her. She moves to the side of the unicorn, wobbly and tired, waiting for the bigger animal to lay down with impatient hops.

“But,” she tacks on, almost as an afterthought, between panting breaths. “Me win. And you no startle me.” She stumbles a bit with the 'startle' word, and quietly tucks it into her slowly growing vocabulary.

Kalama began the task of climbing the unicorn. An already difficult task, compounded by her new legs and tenuous grasp of balance. She scrambled against her white hide for a couple of tries, trying to grasp at hairs with her beak.

Her frustration grew with each failed attempt, but she refused to show it, she didn't want to let the unicorn think that someone as powerful and collected as Kalama could struggle with such a small thing as height. She refused to even consider looking in the unicorn's direction. She was stoic and independent and extremely macho. The unicorn was probably very impressed by how cool Kalama was.

Her earlier conviction lasted a good fifteen seconds, when Ayr brought up the existence of even skinnier creatures. Kalama tilted her head at Ayr, trying to comprehend things more twiglike than her. It sounded strange, but she didn't have anything to dispute that with. She really, really wanted to, though. How could something so skinny move?

She tries and fails to consider the possibility. She doesn't bring it up, though, in fear of not looking as cool as Ayr very clearly thought she was.

“I say star-pull fine, Ayr.” She attempts to snap, but its missing a good chunk of its bite. Her valiant tussle against both the bee and Ayr's hoof have drained her energy.

She does, however, shake herself out very aggressively, nearly losing her balance at one point. After a couple more tries, involving some impressive platforming with the unicorn's forelimbs and her very own wings, she finally managed to scramble on top of the unicorn.

She wheezed a couple more times, swaying with exhaustion, before getting her breathing and body back under control. Ayr quickly decided she liked her position upon the unicorn's back. It made her feel very tall and important. She could squash all her opponents with a talon. All one of them. That bee would know her fury. She would find it, later, and enact her revenge. She would be the one to mock the bee.

Eat its flower. Eat all its flowers. Then eat the bee. The thoughts of such wanton violence filled Kalama with a sort of self satisfied warmth. That, and Ayr had helped fatten her ego. Ayr had called her brave. She settled into a self satisfied puffball with these thoughts in mind.

“Me Kalama.” She paused. If they were going to find fruit, Kalama needed to protect them. What if there were more bees where the fruit was? She couldn't imagine Ayr fighting more than three bees off. She would bear the weight of such tasks.

“How make things die?”