ORIGIN

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There was a thoughtful buzzing, though quite brief.

"...The Queen has a stone," they responded, after a moment. Wilder's paw indeed passed through, part of the Aure-shape smoky, dusty, parting at her touch with a soft hum. "The Queen--gathers information. We all speak. We all listen. Consensus!" Legion tried to explain. He wasn't even sure on some of the words. "She decides--what we all decide."

There was a low buzz, as if the creature considered its own words, and then agreed with itself.

The lammergeier eyes then regarded Aure curiously. 

"But you are only one? How do you know you--... Decide, correct...ly?"

@Aure

How did she just say <3 out loud? Aure marveled over that for only a moment before she (rudely?) stuck a paw into the image. Was that rude? "Canis doesn't have a lot of bugs," the wyvern agreed rather curiously, head tilting, "bugs are cool but I think you... guys... have got to be the coolest I've ever seen. I've never seen bugs that can talk." Were spiders considered bugs? And Aether a bug? Time for a moment of contemplation.

A beat.

Alright, contemplation done.

Only the queen of the swarm seemed to have a stone, which was odd --- did that mean the rest of them were simply lessers? How did that work? Aure was absolutely astounded, but forcibly held in his one thousand questions for the sake of keeping conversation going. Besides, Legion had asked him a question! He stared right back at not-Aure, ears flicking up and down. How did--- that was a good question, hmm? His beak clicked a few times, brows furrowing.

Adjusting his wings, Aure concluded, "well, we're like your Queen but... we're by ourselves? You said she decides, right? Well... I decide."

@Wilder

Wilder nodded with agreement at Aure's words. She thought that she should try to put her input as well, although she found it extremely strange that there were two Aures in the room now. She had thought it weird that she was talking to herself but now that she could see them both in her line of vision...that was just mind boggling.

"Yeah, sort of like I'm the queen without a ton of other bugs to make decisions for. I make decisions for myself! I'm one body and one mind. I think that's how most creatures are." She flicked her tail thoughtfully and thought of Thothaga. Spiders were bugs, right? Was she made up of tiny little bugs like Legion? Did she listen to a queen or was she a queen herself? How many other sentient bugs were existing in the caves?

@Legion

After the pair spoke, Legion seemed to... think, for a time.

Its crowd was excitedly conversing, covering these new concepts with awe, which was reflected as a hum that might have been considered "thoughtful." Really, it wasn't so much a "thoughtful hum" as the excited buzzing of thousands of mites as they tried to figure this riddle out.

"But--we can't decide alone," Legion offered at last--and here, suddenly, its form reverted into the strange, alien-esque one that Wilder had first seen. It looked vaguely like a muddy puppy, albeit with fins where there shouldn't have been any, and luminescent bits, and--wings? Ish. Still stubby, but definitely there--and gills? "How do you know when you have an answer? We all give ideas and-- sort through them. Very fast! But. How do you know it's a right answer? A--right decision? --We don't always know," it went on, as if it (with its several hours' experience with life) held great wisdom in this field. "When we do not have enough--information. Then we have to guess," Legion lamented.

But how did these other beings process and sort through all that information--all the input, all the senses and data and memory?! It took so many of them. "It takes all of us to--remember and to think and do. But you do it with only one?" There was wonder in its buzzing tone.

@Aure

Aure had meant to explain further, but Wilder already did that and a much better job than he would have. He kept his mouth shut as the odd creature thought; no need to repeat what the little black cat had said. He did have to, though, blurt out as Legion shifted into a somewhat familiar shape: "you look a bit like my brother Vinea." Wonder if that was coincidental? The mites seemed to take shapes of things they had seen... had they seen a creature similar to his brother or... ?

"Well," he began, in a tone suggesting that he actually had no idea what tangent he was about to go off on, "maybe we have a lot of bugs in our thoughts. Or, a really big one." As if size equaled intellect and memory compacity. Regarding decisions, though... "it's basically impossible to know if a choice is the right or wrong one until you make it."

Ah, wisdom.

@Wilder

Legion's next question actually struck Wilder a bit. She was confused. How did she know she was making the right decision? Legion had many many little minds to help come to a decision but Wilder only had one. Strange. Why couldn't she have a lot of minds too? "I...don't?" Probably her best answer. "I make a lot of mistakes. Sometimes I don't think enough or I think too much. I just go with what I think is best in the moment." She shrugged, not really sure how else to put it.

But she giggled a bit at the memory part. "Yeah! We only have one brain to store all our memories in! And I'm sure it's much less efficient then you since I can't even remember what I ate yesterday!"

@Legion

Legion buzzed and hummed, the swarm considering both gembound's words. To Wilder, it listened closely at her mention of memory. 

"Maybe a mouse!" it suggested helpfully. "If that is how you work," it continued, looking between both Aure and Wilder, "if that is how you--decide, and think--then I think we are not very different."

Another hum, a shifting blur, and the swarm swivelled to look around Orion. "This place. It is very different from the last. What--mmm--are there other places? Do they have--purpose? Are different caves for different--things? Are there many more?" Its questions came curious and rapid-fire, and it spun a circle before looking back to Aure.

"What is a brother?" it asked. "Are we brother?"

@Aure

Well, the saying always was 'two minds are better than one'... how did that translate to thousands of minds? A mouse seemed feasible enough, and Aure nodded sagely at the response, chirping a brief "maybe." He rubbed gently at his forehead with vestigial wing-claws, contemplating. Mice were a little bit to fit in his head, though. All of the mice he had ever seen were pretty big --- mouse, here, meaning rat. He was thinking about rats. Babies, maybe? Growing and preparing to hatch out of his face like a bunch of bugs?

Yuck.

"We all do that," he reassured, though he was pretty aware the little black cat didn't need it. Such was the problem of having just one mind. Well, one problem. Memory was a whole 'nother animal. "Being able to actually remember more stuff would be pretty nice," Aure mourned, mostly to himself.

The not-Vinea(?) shape churned, microscopic little eyes taking in the sights and the wonders. It was quite an odd thing to witness, but the wyvern was already pretty used to and could react to nonchalantly; these caves were chock-full of weird things. "There's a lot of places, here! If you go through, hmm---" bright eyes scanned Orion's edge, before indicating, "that tunnel over there, you'll be at the Core! That's where all, uh, magic comes from." Aure glanced at the little black cat warily, adding, "there's a big shiny rock there that hurts a lot if you touch it."

But, yeah, there were a lot of caves. The wyvern barely had a chance to breathe before a less objective question was posed: what is a brother? Looping right back to the idea of family, Aure furrowed his brow, starting gently, "well. A brother's someone you're... really close to? Not in the physical way, but--- uh, in a friend way. It's another word for family, which is like... a group of really close friends or kin."

Oh, heck, wait--- Legion's the perfect example, aren't they? "Like all of you in the swarm and the Queen! You're all family, right? Really close and doing a lot together."

@Wilder

Wilder nodded thoughtfully. She never really remembered what she ate. Sometimes she forgot to eat at all! She didn't really care, though, as long as it didn't make her sick, which she probably would have remembered if it had.

But Legion's question once again sparked excitement in her and she jumped to her feet. "Oh there's a lot of caves! There's the Spire-cave, the plant-cave, the bone-cave, the water-cave, the big-water-cave and there's probably others too! They're all different and really really fun to explore!" As she spoke, small little images of each of the caves appeared around her. An image of Polaris with a small glowing Spire in the back shifted into a dense world of trees. That shifted into the desolate, bone-filled Canis, which changed into the great waterfall of Pisces and, finally, the ocean that was Fornax. They shifted through relatively quickly, probably because Wilder was excited and on a roll now but they were fairly clear images.

She didn't really have anything to say on the brother thing, since she didn't have any herself, although Aure's description made her realize that they were probably brothers. Or, well, brother and sister since that was the other word! It didn't really matter to her. She raised a paw and pointed at Aure. "He's my brother! Because we're really good friends! ...Right?"

@Legion

The swarm buzzed, thinking. The idea that Wilder had had a mouse for breakfast, and that Aure had drastically misinterprested the suggestion of "mouse," was lost on them.

Instead, they were paying attention to these new concepts: the idea of "family," and the description of all the caves.

"Family," the swarm murmur-buzzed in thought. Wilder's magic imagery had it all--well, abuzz--again in a heartbeat, its form shifting and blurring rapidly as it twisted and turned to peer at the different visions of the caves. They seemed fascinating--especially the magic one and the bones one. 

"Magic?" it asked, and it wasn't clear what, exactly, it was asking. And then--"What are bones? What are they from?"

And, in an abrupt shift of topic, and again with little context: "What should I do?"

@Wilder @Aure

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