ORIGIN

Oliver was sitting quietly in the darkness on the other side of the pile, well away from the glitter of dead scales.

He had come to gather plant seeds, to look for his mother (if she were emerged; he hadn't seen her in some time) and to check on those he knew, here. So far he hadn't seen any of them, and the faint worry that they might have died in his absence gnawed at him. But he knew, too, that Cetus was nothing if not good at hiding its secrets. They might all be present--just lurking elsewhere in the misty darkness, as unaware of his presence as he was of theirs.

He had stopped upon seeing the old offering pile once again. He'd not been here in some time, and the mountain of death pulled at him in some way. He was thinking about it--of life, of death. Was there meaning to it? The violence that had been unleashed in Eridanus still haunted him, and he wanted nothing more than to understand it all. Why did Gembound act the way they did? Why were some kind, and some terrible? Aquarian demanded tribute, in return for his aid--why was he somewhat benevolent, but only when it pleased him to be so?

What happened after death? Where were the spirits, the minds, of those dead Lessers, now? Those fish, that Hallowed Caller, that cave deer--did their incorporeal selves still roam, somewhere? And where? What did they think, how did they feel?

His quiet rumination on these somewhat morbid thoughts was interrupted by a small shape in the mist: a brief flicker downward, something with broad wings and a very faint golden glow to it. For a moment he thought perhaps that it was Eve, with a baubled gem--but no, this thing was much, much larger. Still small--still a bird, or a bat--but what struck him was that it had made absolutely no sound as it ghosted through the fog. It was quite unlike all of the birds of Cetus that he knew.

Quietly, he stood, hesitating before beginning to pad his way with taloned forelimbs and dog's rear paws over through the wet swamp. To even his sensitive, tufted ears, he was relatively quiet--but to an owl, undoubtedly the soft squelching of his distantly-approaching feet would be quite loud.

He did not yet speak--he was still some distance off, but curious as to who--or what--the stranger might be.
{Table code credit to Madison, altered a bit!}

Oliver paused and winced, heavily, at the sudden shrieking, half-muffled as it was by the mist. He cowered down, a little, memories of violence threatening to flash through his mind--but he was also briefly taken aback by the language.

His first thought, therefore, was not exactly one that inspired confidence as to his origins: ...Mom?

But it wasn't Eve--though the language was equally foul (even if Eve had tended to try and watch her tongue around her children), the bird's voice was distinctly more gruff, and its body much larger.

...Maybe all birds just talked like this. Maybe all birds were violent..? Oliver tried to think back. Blackberry certainly had been. But then, so had all the -berries. He shook himself free of his thoughts, not having moved from where he crouched in the muck some thirty feet away. He looked as frightened as the owl was.

"Um--no," he called out finally, his voice holding a faint tremor of his own fear, and a tone of apology. "I just--I wondered who you were, that's all. I'm Oliver, I'm not--mean," he added, a little lamely.

Caves knew there were enough of those types around.

"I can go away, if you want me to, but um--this is Aquarian's food pile and someone might eat you if they find you taking from it alone. Unless--uhh--you were putting stuff on it," he added. It wasn't a threat, but a soft, fearful warning. A bird might get seen as prey, and swallowed whole along with the rest--or snagged by one of the Children to add onto the pile.


{Table code credit to Madison, altered a bit!}

Oliver watched Shoal in respectful silence, and though he approached more closely, he did so slowly and not that close. He sat back down in the mud perhaps twenty feet away, craning his head to peer up at the corpses.

He answered the question with what he thought was a self-evident truth, and simply so: "I wasn't near them. I was watching from far away," he explained, "I came over 'cause I saw you in the fog. I don't think anyone would mind if you take something small," he added, glancing at it--"if you were hungry. But I meant--if you sit on it or if you take stuff without them knowing you're a Greater they might try to, uhh. ...Add you to it. Or you might get eaten on accident if he comes out and swallows the pile," the hybrid added.

The information was imparted gently, softly, as if he was too frightened (for whatever reason) to be loud--or merely very quiet-natured. His taloned wing-arms were placed neatly, almost politely, before him, and he seemed by his body language almost to be awaiting Shoal's orders. It was as if a butler or a servant had materialized from the mist to offer gentle advice, and to place himself at the owl's disposal.

Whatever he was, it was clear he had no interest in eating her--or was a very, very good (and particularly strange) actor.

"I don't know if I'm a predator. When I was growing up I ate rats and things, mostly--but my mom's a bird who eats almost anything, and I learned magic to help with that. I eat a lot of plants now--uhh. Fruit and seeds and nuts and things, too," he added thoughtfully. "But I was only watching the pile because I was thinking. Do you know where we go, when we die?" he continued. This question was delivered without pause from his other stream of thoughts, gently curious, as if he did not consider it a separate topic from any of the rest.

It was, at best, odd.

{Table code credit to Madison, altered a bit!}

Oliver listened intently, curiously, to Shoal's ideas. And he blinked at her question with surprise.

"Uhh--no? I hope not?!" he answered, alarmed. "Not as far as I know, I mean. I guess it's just--"

He paused, eyeing the pile, and perhaps wisely decided to move somewhat farther away. He'd heard stories about Aquarian swallowing it whole, and how once the alligator Dragon had barely escaped being consumed along with it. He slinked a bit toward the trees before sitting back down, turning his attention back to the owl.

"Well, it's just something I wondered, I guess. But then there's also the Bloodberries. They went and attacked Eridanus and tried to kill everyone," he went on, his soft voice somehow both matter-of-fact and sad. "One of them died and a bunch of Gembound got hurt. I guess it was--uhh. Scary," he admitted, sinking down a little at the memory, his ear-tuft feathers pressing back. "I didn't know that, though. About sleeping. So--thanks for telling me. Can I, uhh--ask you things? Like--how old you are and--what happened to. Um. Kill you? You don't look very dead," he added, glancing over her--and his tone suggested that he felt this was a compliment.

{Table code credit to Madison, altered a bit!}

Oliver paused, for just a moment, at Shoal's words.

"Thanks," he said at last, tilting his head a little. "And I didn't--let them go? I'm not a fighter. And there were a lot of them," he went on, "and a lot of gembound fighting them. I tried to just-... heal the hurt ones. A couple of them are being kept by Rift and them, in Eridanus. That's-... I dunno if you know, but it's a group of, like, healers and plant-growers and things and Rift named us--Rift's a big cat, but he's nice, mostly--anyway he named us the Kingdom of Eridanus."

A pause.

"We don't have a king, though."

For a moment Oliver went silent, studying the scar-studded owl before him, the way her beak was cracked, the eye that he could now see wasn't quite like the other, the missing tufts of feathers and her generally ragged appearance.

"Well, I don't think you're ugly," he said, at last--and his words were honest enough. "You look like a fighter. Like--I'm sorry you died a lot, that's awful and musta been really bad. But you look--um. Interesting? To look at. Like you probably have lots of stories, and uhh--experience. And it's not ugly," he added, somewhat repeating himself.

To Oliver, she looked distinguished. Aloof, perhaps--above other things (and not just literally), from a world, perhaps, of war and strife. She didn't look like a part of the shining, magical caves, its so many pristine and wondrous creatures. Instead she was grizzled, battered, and--"Tough," he realized aloud. "You look tough."

She looked like a badass, really.

{Table code credit to Madison, altered a bit!}