ORIGIN

Daughter
the voice in my head was no longer my own.

Her gait is stumbling, unsteady—Daughter is not used to running, especially not this far, and she struggles not to trip over her own two feet as she follows Solis, blind to everything around her except the familiar orange of her brother’s pelt.

She has to help her family, she has to help her family—those words repeat in her head over and over again like a mantra as she forces herself to keep running through burning lungs and aching muscles, desperately trying not to fall behind the much older cat. No longer is her mind focused on summoning her wisps, although the one she has managed to drag up gleams in the air above her, a perfect, orderly orb—just like Mother wants, except in this case—

—except in this case, there is only pain, anguish, fear in her head, pulsing from her siblings in waves so sharp and strong she nearly does trip over her paws, tears beading in her eyes as their feelings pulse in her chest as if they are her own. No, no—it burns, it burns, not hers but another’s pain, Legion, her buzzing hive of siblings, and she reaches out into the bond as if to take their pain on but it’s too late too late too late and Legion—

—falls, and she does too, finally giving in to her burning muscles and the ache she feels within them, finally giving in to that pain, anguish, fear, hurt hurt hurt—

Legion!— she cries, but she can’t feel them in her head anymore.

She can’t feel them at all.

Too late too late I was too late—

She hears Mother’s voice in her head, and calls out before she registers the words, looking for comfort, like a child crawling into her mother’s arms, her tears overflowing and dripping down onto the tunnel floor—Momma…

Her words are like daggers in the little kit’s heart.

Mommy, no! she cries—please, there has to be a way, there has to be a way out of this, there has to be a way to save her family—

—even as the links in her head wink out, one by one by one, as her siblings are quickly lost to her, (Sergei, Azrael, brothers and sisters and—no no no no no she can’t REACH them she can’t hear them she can’t feel them they’re gone gone gone gone—) she pulls herself to her feet and keeps moving. Solis has long since vanished from view, having most likely run ahead of her while she cried, and all she knows, all she knows is that she has to follow his footsteps.

Avenge her fallen, lost siblings, now good as dead to her in her mind now that she doesn’t know where they are, now that she can’t contact him, now that they’re gone from her head, lost, her heart already mourning even as she keeps moving—she has to keep going.

And so she does not recognize the danger of the fungus in the tunnel until it is too late—does not recognize the fact that they are not like Mother, unable to receive warnings from her momma, from her siblings, now that they are almost all gone, gone, gone—

—and she registers only the slightest brush of fungus against her paw before everything goes white with pain.

She thought—she thought her burning wisp had hurt—she thought—she thought—no, no, she can’t, she can’t—her siblings are gone, her family is dying—the nest is lost the nest is lost—she can’t think, only register a tearing, grasping burning coming from within, as the fungus reaches into her core and pulls and pulls—

—her mind goes blank with pain, and Daughter screams as she feels something squishy and rootlike being dragged up through her throat, the sound distorted into a sort of gurgle as she falls to the ground and writhes.

Daughter
the voice in my head was no longer my own.

She stays there a while in the tunnel, trembling with pain, just barely able to hear the—the commotion further in. No, that’s not the word—the, the howling cries of pain from further in, the screaming and squealing of what feels like a hundred different animals, the pounding in her head and the dead mold in front of her curled body a backdrop to the—

—the cacophany. That’s the word; this horrible mess of howling that she wants to hide away from yet can’t stop listening to, hidden away and alone in the tunnel, terrified that she’ll hear one of her siblings’ voices in the screaming.

But the sounds she’s waiting for, the sounds she’s dreading, never come. The tumult fades away, eventually, after what feels like an eternity of listening to the hellish sounds, and no matter how much she shifts her ears forwards and no matter how much she strains to hear, none of the horrendous sounds are familiar.

And then there is silence except the distant voices of people talking among themselves, the leathery sound of something very, very big moving in the distance—and this she flinches away from, all too reminded of Legion’s last moments, the thought of her siblings being swallowed up by a great, dark mouth before their connection was cut—

—and now hers is too, isn’t it?

She’s alone. Completely alone.

She’s never felt so isolated before; even physically alone, she always had the thoughts of her family in her head.

She’s never… never felt so afraid in her life.

Solis? she asks, to no response—of course there isn’t, yet she doesn’t know how else to say it. She doesn’t—she doesn’t know how to make the words come out of her mouth. She can hum and she can bark and she can growl but she can’t—she can’t speak. Momma never told her how.

And now momma is gone. Gone forever; it feels surreal. She can’t be—be gone. She was in her head just a few moments ago.

Something deep inside her won’t accept the crushing fact that she’s alone. She doesn’t feel… well, she feels sad and lonely and scared but those are all distant, fuzzy.

She feels numb.

With a tremble of her body, still aching from the pain, the fungus that was in the tunnel but seems to have receded with all the screaming, (she feels like she’s in a fever dream—no, a nightmare) she gets to her paws and turns, walking down the tunnel, back the way she came. She doesn’t know where she’s going, or even if she has a destination at all—she just knows, distantly, that she needs to walk. She wants to leave this place.

And so she does.