ORIGIN

Hecate shifted in place, her feathers ruffling again with irritation--this time at herself. Conversation, she urged herself--mentally reminding herself that she was a lovely, charming social butterfly. (She was not.) I can do this...
She cleared her throat with a soft trill, thinking. "We'll think of something together," she decided, keeping her tone cheerfully positive, for now. "There's many things in the caves. There are other Gembounds; there is magic. There is the Spire, and there are places with water, or dangerous creatures. We can talk about any of those, if you like?"

Some faint part of her resented the forced conversation. The rest of her was proud at her attempt, as weak as it was; maybe she could learn to be a better conversationalist today.

Hecate considered, for a long moment, even as she fluffed herself back down. Her black beak briefly preened through her breastfeathers, and she spread her trailing tail out behind her.

"The Spire," she began--and here, she struggled to remember colors and their names, from what she'd seen in visions and been told by others--"is a great crystal in another cave. It is very very tall, glowing with its own light, and it is dangerous to go near. I don't know why," she added; she'd certainly not approached it too closely herself. "It is blue, now, but once it didn't glow; once it was black, and green, and slick. I don't know why, about that, either," she admitted, and kicked herself a little both for her clumsy phrasing and her ignorance. Graceful, she reminded herself, chiding. Be graceful in movement and in word.
"As for dangerous things, well; I eat small things, rats and mice. But there are much bigger things to at big things--who could eat me, or you," Hecate explained. "I've seen many of them--spikes, or dark-colored, or... with glowing green eyes," she added, remembering her visions, again. "Certainly, some things can fly--I can fly--but I'm no danger to you, of course. I'm a friend."

A loose interpretation of the word, perhaps, but whatever.

"There's things in the water, too--fish, but also larger things that eat the fish. I think they could eat us, if we were not careful," she added, in a quiet tone of warning. That was one of the things that had frightened her the most--seeing a Gembound surface from the dark waters, snagging down a fish before vanishing again into the unseen depths.

No, thank you very much; that, she could do without.

Hecate turned, peering quizzically--if blindly--at Aran. Her wisp still hovered there above them, its soft blue-green light illuminating her confusion well enough.

"...Well," she began, and then hesitated--"They eat you." Her feathers ruffled; her beak clicked, as if the very topic were uncomfortable to her. For a creature who considered herself dainty, the idea that hunger drove her to such a brutish thing as tearing at flesh was abhorrent to her. But from her deer ancestry she had, at least, inherited the ability to sustain herself on plants--and she did her best to do so. But a small, sharp, pointed beak was difficult to graze with.

"It's all terribly messy and unpleasant." She glanced around, as if blindly checking whether anyone else might overhear, and then leaned in close with a conspiratorial whisper. "Blood and bones, and shrieking and all of that," she hurried to say, and then she shuddered.

"I don't know," Hecate began--reluctant as she was to admit it. With a little ruffle of her feathers, she hastened to elaborate, to sound just a little less foolish. "It depends on how big it is, and how strong, and how fast you can run. And magic," she added.

Which, luckily, was the next thing that Aran asked about.

"No," she quickly answered. It was jealousy, plain and simple: no one was allowed to cast her kind of magic! ...Just in case he did it better. She couldn't have that! Reluctantly, though, she elaborated. "There's all kinds of different magic. I don't know them all, but they're all different sorts. I've seen Gembound use water, and others use plants and things. I think it changes the things around you," she added. "I make lights, and I see visions. I believe I see things hidden to the eye." Hecate, of course, was blind--and she didn't know why else her visions would be in full color, nor show things that she couldn't otherwise see. But her heart already pined for the world she saw in memories.

She placed one taloned foot flat upon the stone, and focused; a moment later she was blank, and still. Her eyes flared up with a deep emerald glow. At length, she spoke, lifting her talon again, that eye-glow fading. "There's someone out there, but I can't see them without my magic. They have many spines, and are quite tall; but I don't think they can see us." She had been saddened, as well as relieved, to find that the creatures she could see could not see her. And there was some wariness, there; for one day one might share her magic, and what would happen then-?

"I did, and I am able to see many things," Hecate answered, drawing herself up proudly as though she were some sort of erudite scholar.

She was not.

"I've no way of knowing what sort of magic you have. But you can try to find out. Just--try," she suggested, with a spectacularly unhelpful lack of specifics. "If you concentrate on it very deeply, perhaps you can make magic, yourself." Not as great as mine, of course, she thought smugly.

For one with almost no experience with the caves, Hecate certainly had a very high opinion of herself.