ORIGIN

Giggle's head flopped onto her paws. One big ear twitched, and she sighed through her nose, staring off into Canis. There was much happening.

Aure was doing his best to reform the Bonebound. Gembound were investigating, keeping secrets, learning about--and distrusting--the elders. A new cave had opened; Canis was no longer a quiet dead end, but a potentially noisy thoroughfare. And the cave itself was bad news. Hot. Deadly. How long until those things started swarming out and into the Bone Room?

It was a lot for one hyena to handle, though in fairness she wasn't technically handling any of it. Aure was, at best. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say, it was a lot for one hyena to have on her mind.

Sleep was, in such troubling times, hard to come by. The bones had given all sorts of omens, and she found that their warnings haunted her mind when at last she lay down to rest. She hadn't slept for over a day, though. That made it easier--as did the contented tiredness of her familiar, which bled to her along their link and couldn't help but ease her into sleep.

At length she drifted off, Omen curled into her flank-fur, head on paws and eyes slipped shut.

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ROLL THE BONES

The air was hot and dry, filled with dust and the smell of ancient, lingering rot. Bones clattered under foot, picked clean of any meat that would have once been the source of the stench.

The All Mother's Bleeding Heart stepped through the cavern like a shadow, silhouetted, ears pricking for any sound within the dreamscape. The last time she had come under the guise of performing the All Mother's work, she had sought to poison and torment. This felt like a parallel of that moment, a hunter stalking prey...

But... But she wasn't hunting. This was not why she was here.

She... Wasn't the Bleeding Heart.

Dovefeather blinked, the smell of fungi barely overwhelming a more familiar smell. The All Mother had guided her pawsteps back to Canis, and for a moment, her heart leaped at the thought of Bones. The scent, however, was distinctly that of a hyena, and the feline only knew of one hyena that lived in Canis. Actually-- she only knew one hyena at all.

She glanced about for the source, trotting forward through the dream filled with bones and dry, hot air. It felt like quite a mundane dream for someone who lived in Canis, all things considered...

The feline paused, abruptly realizing why walking in the dream felt like the lowest, darkest point of her life. Her feather was not at her ear. She flicked her ears, tail tip twitching, and felt abruptly naked and out of place. She hadn't even thought to check when she was still awake for the All Mother's gift. That... Did not bode well. Still, it was too late to do anything for it.

"... Giggle?" Dovefeather meowed quietly through the dim lighting of the dream, a bit uncertain if this even was the hyena's dream. What if it belonged to someone else?

A rat scurried out. It raced across the cave floor, and behind it came shadow. A thick shadow, spreading, sprawling, full of a thousand silver eyes. It swept over the cave floor like a carpet. Now it was shaped like wings; they beat, the eyes faded, the shadow became mundane.

A haunting cry, above; the Hallowed Caller, with its single red eye, turned to peer down as it circled.

Giggle had been dreaming, if briefly, of simply hunting near her den. The shadow had come--as it did often--but through their link, Omen usually chased it out. Giggle was unaware of it; she didn't know that she was dreaming. Now, though, there was another presence.

The hyena stepped into view, and turned, peering. There was a cat there, and that was odd, but after a moment memory clicked into place.

The one that purred, she thought to herself, and in her dream, her thoughts echoed like words, clear as day.

"...Was she the one who nearly drowned?"

A flicker of realization, as she saw the close detail on the stranger. As she saw the little things changed, things her own mind wouldn't have come up with.

I'm dreaming. I'm asleep. But she is real. That means that "you're in my dream?" Rough surprise, and faint indignance--as if she didn't like her sleep being invaded, or maybe it was just the unexpected nature of it all.

"Your name was? Dovefeather--wasn't it?" and then, her thoughts still as words, unable to be hidden from the other--"-the only cat I never hated."

The hyena reached forth with her magicka, threading it for the tenuous dream-link, the cat's mind to hers. She knew how fickle this magic was, how liable it was to drop from one instant to the next. Giggle would do her best to keep it open... if that was indeed what it even was.

Maybe it was all a dream.

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ROLL THE BONES