ORIGIN

Azure snorted at the new and astonishing concept that fire was hot. And upon being offered the half-banana, she took it, gulping it down... and then proceeded to stare at Dip for the entire, solid thirty seconds.

A break, though-... That sounded good. Dip looked around, considering. She eyed the building.

"Yeah. You wanna rest inside? Maybe--on the balcony? And after we sleep I can go find Mercurius. Maybe he knows how to do rope," she said, mulling this over.

"C'mon--I'll haul your stuff in." She paced over, pausing near the things she'd carried the whole way here. For a moment she squinted, and then--feeling weary by it all, but bolstered by the knowledge that a good, long sleep was imminent--she tried to use her magic one last time for the evening.

This was probably a mistake.

It was a lesson Azure would remember: when tired, don't do magic. One of Dip's things didn't lift at all. The other shot directly up, twenty feet into the air, and came down in a violent freefall--spiralling straight for Azure's face. She squawked in alarm and barely leapt out of the way as it slammed back to the rock.

For a long moment she simply stared. "...I'll do it manually," she muttered, begrudgingly, at last. Taking one end in her beak she turned and dragged, hauling it for the little house.

Serendipity only stared back. Like regular people do.

"The balcony sounds good," she said, once the staring contest was over. She started to push up, stretching her short limbs out with a groan. Sleeping off the mouth-pain might be nice, too-- it did always seem to be gone after a good sleep.

She paused to watch Azure, rubbing her eye-- though she was vaguely alarmed as a satchel was thrown up into the air and almost hit her friend-- sister? --in the face. That seemed dangerous, considering there were blades and other weapons in her pile.

"Uh, I'll help," she said quickly before Azure got the idea to try it again, scooting quickly over and hauling some of her things up. "There's some cloth in here that's good for sleeping on, y'know."

The sharp things, and the scrap armour and metal, were put on the ground floor. The soft things, like the cloth and the scraps of wool she'd found off the cave deer, were carried up onto the balcony. She laid them out carefully to present a makeshift nest to Azure, fairly proudly considering her twenty seconds of effort.

"It, uh, kinda hurts for me to sleep on the cave floor without like-- anything under me, so-- y'know. I dunno if that's the same for you but the soft stuff helps? And it's nice," she added, very wisely.

"Yeah, that--was my magic being an idiot," Azure mumbled in response, trying to pass the blame, with halfhearted humor, onto "the magic" instead of she failing it herself.

She picked back up what was left in her beak, dragging, hauling and carrying--manually, this time--until everything was safely inside. Once everything was tucked within, she had a brief look around.

Most of the rocks were now cleared out--not all, by any means, and it still wasn't clean. There were cobwebs and dust, but now there was light, too, and glittering dashes of color sealing up broken stone here and there. "...You know, I think this'll be really nice, once we're done with it. If you wanna get the soft stuff, I'll bring up some light? If you want it dark to sleep we can cover it but then at least we have it if we need it." Some part of Azure was again anxious (this seemed, she was finally noticing, to be a theme with her emotions)--this time, about sleeping somewhere unfamiliar. There was nothing truly coherent in this fear... it was vague, though when she wondered about it, her mind managed to conjure up all sorts of possibilities. That an unfamiliar predator in this strange cave might find them. That roaming groups she hadn't heard of (having been a Bloodberry, and in Monoceros, and virtually nowhere else in her entire life) might come here, and kill them, or take their home or stuff in their sleep. That Pride might have been lying, and return with others to drive them out or harm them.

Yet when she examined these they made little sense, really. She thought she'd have heard of other dangerous groups. Or predators, for that matter; Pride himself would have warned them, would he not? And he could've easily killed her when first they met. He'd seemed a little, coldly angry, but distracted, and at least tolerant. He hadn't seemed like he'd come hunt them down later.

Yet the anxiety lingered, even as Azure brought the small light-orb--one of the brilliantly-bright ones, the gold--up to the balcony. She said nothing of it as she waited for Dip to set up the soft-stuff, but her demeanor was a little tense, and she seemed distracted--not even thinking to ask how Dip's burns were feeling.

It was probably best she didn't realize how self-centered she was being, in that moment; it would have only added to her worries.

Having soft things to nest in would be nice.

She could gather grass, later. And bauble more stones, for moveable lights. Maybe even make a garden outside, line it with light? Or would that attract undue attention?

She hardly noticed that she'd curled up in a corner, hardly noticed the weariness suddenly sweep over her.

Within minutes, she was fast asleep, her breathing coming slow and even.

Serendipity started gathering together the Soft Things-- mostly scraps of cloth she had found in tunnel J, cramming them under her arm. She was unsure if half of these would even cover the length of Azure, but something was better than nothing, surely?

"Uhh," Siren began, thinking. Though when she turned to glance over at the unconscious lump of hybrid, she was already curled over and asleep.

... fair enough, she decided.

She marched over and carefully draped some of the blanket-scraps over Azure before settling down next to her with a weary sigh. She didn't fall asleep at first, but she was quiet. Watching the door, and looking around the new home. She listened to her newly-dubbed sister's breathing, and decided this was good. Peaceful.

Serendipity took a long breath and shut her eyes, slowly drifting off.