ORIGIN

Fate had once decreed that the bear would be but a brute. A henchman, perhaps. A bodyguard. He was powerful, but simple. Trusting, loyal. Clumsy in his strength.

Circumstances had changed all that. His power was there, yes, but the clumsiness had suddenly given way to the gift of dexterity. Now the doors were open to new complexities. He would never blindly trust again. Betrayal had ensured that. Loyalty..? Perhaps. Time, there, would tell.

For now, though, rather than blank wandering, Sergei sat contemplating. And he sat; his back straight, his feet out before him, on a boulder here in Fornax. It had been hard going. Not just making his way up Tunnel M's icy ledges and snowy cliffs with his new, bipedal body: but doing so whilst keeping hold (or recovering fallen) of the shards of his chrysalis he'd brought along.

Massive paws turned over the largest shard. New thumbs ran thick pads lightly over the surface. It was domed, big, and he had plans for it; there was another piece about its size which he didn't quite yet know what to do with. But these he set aside, for now, and lifted a smaller of them.

"It is same as my stone," he rumbled to himself aloud, thoughtfully. "We try." The 'r' was thickly-rolled, and Sergei knelt, lifting a sharp stone he'd chosen, and a flat one. He wasn't entirely sure how this should go, but biting the crystal had only cut his cheek, so here he was, after some trial and error.

He laid the flat stone down across his lap (and what a strange thing that was, a lap!), and atop it, the gemstone shard. And then, holding this carefully pinned, he began to chip away with the sharper stone.

It was unsteady going. He'd never done this before; he'd never seen it done, nor even heard of it. He was reinventing it, in a sense: chipping away the shape of the stone to leave something pointed, something sharp.

Small, dark eyes glanced out at the water lapping at the island's edge. He had driftwood. He would use it, with the crystal--somehow--to extend his reach: and to fish.

For what was life, without constant fishing, and eating-? Sergei didn't know; and he sure didn't want to find out. But something told him that standing upright, having thumbs, and tools, would give him an advantage that he hadn't had before.

Though admittedly, wading chest-deep on all fours into the water and snagging some silverlings in his jaws right now sounded appetizing.

The bear shook his head, and went back to work; the quiet tap, tap, tap of stone-on-crystal echoing quietly through Fornax, to the backdrop of the breakers.