ORIGIN - can't help falling in love

The tinkling music was warm against his ears despite the freckles of cold the drizzle brought onto him. Even with how tired the sound made him, he was at peace- his son was at his side as fingers worked over the board of wood he muddled with.

He'd made the bowstring, just without the bow. The noise it made- actually, it was a bit too taut to be bowstring- was akin to what he imagined the rain would sing to him as it dripped on to the flat plane of his camp. In the dark, the song he played was illuminated by the soft blue of the effigy and by the remnants of chilling embers outside of the hut they stayed in.

It was ancient. Something he'd never heard, but it felt like a part of him, like the words would come to him, and he hummed along softly to the newly made instrument as Asteri's eyes fluttered more and more closed. Words in ancient languages flowed from his mouth in the dull quiet.

In the dark, beings lurked, and he existed to protect his son from them. A makeshift hutch of covering made to hide the chrysalises from the rest, and they remained in the back of his mind as he sung to his children. He sung to all of them, he purred out his remarks, poured his soul into the somber tune. They were in the corner of his eye- tucked away in the bushes and out of sight but just visible from the camp.

Who knew how long it would take for their lives to begin, but for now, Attikias found himself content with his.

Attikias is playing/singing can't help falling in love by elvis! his instrument is like a kalimba but made of string.

@Vivilene @Astéri @Angela @Hunter @Volta

i need someone now to look into my eyes and tell me

However long she had been conscious for was beyond her. Whatever she was was beyond her. Where she was, what day it was, what was going on-- these were all things that she didn't know. The one thing she did know, however, was the nipping feeling that something was wrong.

It'd been this way for as long as she could remember. She couldn't place what, exactly, was the thing wrong-- only that it was, and that it scared her. At least-- she was fairly certain this was fear.

Some days (had they been days? Or had it only been day, singular?) were better than others. They were perhaps, almost peaceful. She could hear quiet noises beyond the darkness, the chirping of birds and footsteps crunching in leaves, but other days were so, so bad. Some days she felt like she was suffocating in the dark. Often she opened her mouth to scream but found herself unable to-- she was in something that filled her mouth. It was horrible.

Today (?) was the former. There was a strange pitter-patter she hadn't heard before outside, but it was relaxing. Calming. She felt at ease for the first time in a long time (or perhaps it had only been hours, unclear). Her eyelids felt heavy, nodding off back into unconsciousness in... where ever she was, when she heard something new.

A voice, speaking words she hadn't heard before-- but that seemed distantly familiar. It took her a few seconds to really truly realise what they were, what they were saying. She knew them, she took comfort in them. She had to see where they were coming from, she decided.

But how? When she shifted she realised-- with some mild alarm --that her leg (was it a leg?) hit off against something smooth and hard. Was she trapped? How long had she been trapped for? How did she get out?

This was worse than the bad days. She threw herself back, and the back of her head and her shoulder blades hit the same wall-- smooth, hard, oddly cold. She felt like she was choking on the panic, the urge to scream rose in her throat again. From the outsider's perspective, they wouldn't have seen anything unusual, however. They only would have seen the beginnings of a moonstone chrysalis beginning to break apart. There was no reason to think that the creature inside was in a state of hysterical fear, but hysterical fear was only a fraction of what she was feeling right now.

A process that took a matter of second seemed to take cycles in her head. When you know nothing but blind panic the world simply slows down around you; minutes turn to hours and hours turn to cycles and cycles turn to years. She thrashed and she flailed and she failed to cry out for help, but eventually, after an agonizing few moments later, her hind leg jolted out and crushed through gemstone.

From there the crystal prison shattered around her. Dull light assaulted her pale eyes and she had to shut them and turn her head away before they stung too badly. She coughed raggedly, spiting out the embryonic fluids in her mouth. When she shifted on the spot she heard the crumble of moonstone underneath her, but underneath that, there was something soft. Her hands reached for it and she felt blades of something gentle and delicate kiss her calloused palms.

For a time she was mesmerized by everything around her-- even the stone she had just fought against to break out of. The moonstone was pretty, bone-white and glittery. It took her several moments to remember why she had started struggling in the first place.

Her small head lifted, though it was mostly a mass of thick, silvery hair that was matted to her tiny face. She found Attikias-- the same colour as she was, she observed --with something in his hands and another something curled up to his leg, but this one was a new colour-- gold and black and brown and pretty.

The hybrid took a ragged breath, staring in silence as her fawn legs curled up underneath her to listen to the odd twanging instrument and the quiet voice nearby. She shivered, cold-- but she was, for now, at peace.

For once.

"girl you know you gotta watch your health"

The world sang while the children slept, still enraptured in their dreams, far from any reality-- at least, for the smallest of the selenite: a perfect sphere of moonlight turned solid. The babe wasn't really awake when the first crack started them awake, blinking blearily to try and peer through the crystal. Light came through the stone, but only blurred beyond recognition, pale and dim. Enough to hint at an outside world; same as the soft, muted music that weaved fairy tales through the haze.

The crack, though. It stirred the child, who could sense that it was time. Time for... For something. They did not quite know it, but their sibling had hatched, and now it was their turn. With a stretch and a squirm, the unborn child strained against the stone. A crack formed on their own shell, until, with another push that took all of their energy, they managed to burst free, tumbling out into the grass.

They... he, managed to cough and breathe in the fresh air of the forest, blinking squinty, multihued eyes up at his surroundings. He saw first his sister; a strange, half-doe like creature, and he reached out a tiny paw-like hand toward her. Immediately his mind connected her to himself, waving his tiny fingers at her.

But soon enough the sound of song drew his attention away. He looked toward the source: a bigger creature, the same shade as the two sisters. Immediately he wriggled on to his feet, and crawled with enthusiasm toward Attikias and the music.

He tried to get to his feet as he went, but almost immediately stepped on to his own tail and fell face first into the dirt. There was a split second, and then a desperate wailing began; the first great tragedy of a generation.

I'll spend forever flyin', I'll be singin' to the sky

Unlike the other gemstones, bright white and nearly glowing against the green background of Eridanus, this one was deep blue and a couple of feet tall. Within, the child slumbered for what seemed like forever, curled into a fetal position with wings wrapped tightly around her. She could hear, distantly, through her gemstone prison, the gentle sounds of the world but her sleeping mind didn't quite comprehend them, nor remember what she hear or felt. She was not ready yet.

However, this was soon to change. Slowly, to the sound of gentle music, a new mind began to turn, waking softly and curiously as a beautiful sound wafted through the thick shell of stone. She shifted just a little, wings pulling back a little as mismatched eyes fluttered open. But the world was not as beautiful as this sound...no, the world was just darkness. A closed, cramped space that she could feel pressing up against parts of her body. This didn't seem to bother her, for a moment. After all, this place was warm and safe and she could just got back to sleep now and continue to listen.

But there were other sounds outside of her gemstone cage - shattering, the sound of bodies hitting the ground, and a loud wail. Suddenly this place wasn't a warm sanctuary but a prison, holding her back from the discovery of the source behind these sounds. She uncurled, the back of her head pressing against the gemstone as arms unfolded, cramped from disuse, and began to press against the side of the stone.

At first, nothing happened, but as she pressed harder and harder, with both hands and wings in all directions, cracks began spiraling across the gemstone exterior. It began to gave way beneath her pushing until it shattered all at once and she pitched forward, heart jumping in her chest.

The dumortierite broke away, some of the pieces flung away as her wings flared out against the side of the chrysalis, dropping her on the ground. She caught herself with her hands, knees banging against the soft forest floor, revealing the young child, wings falling down, wet with fluid, and pooling at her sides. But she was more concerned about the sounds she had heard - the beautiful one, the shattering, and the wailing. Her head came up and she looked around with wide, curious eyes, watching her siblings without speaking, eyes pausing at the instrument in Attikias's hands. She blinked innocently, wondering just what that was and desiring nothing more, right now, then to hold that.

Astéri
seek what sets your soul on fire
Astéri is drifting off, slowly, comforted by the heat of his father’s leg, the soft music he’s plucking out on his newest in-stru-ment, (a new word! a pretty word; not as pretty as ‘blaze’ or ‘burn’ or ‘fire’, though) his voice crooning into the damp air, and even the little drip-drops of rain themselves, as much as he doesn’t like the wet.

His eyes flutter shut slowly, a soft ‘mrr’ drifting from his throat as he snuggles closer to the form of his father and his mind begins to drift. Just on the verge of dreams, he thinks—he thinks about hunting a mouse through the undergrowth, he thinks about the play of flame-light on a wall, he thinks—

—he hears sudden crumbling, crumbling, crack! noises, and his eyes snap open.

Kids! Sib-lings! (another new word)

The chrysalises are hatching!

“Dad, dad, dad!” he says, head snapping up from where it’s resting as he pushes his noise into Attik’s stomach to get his attention. “Dad!”

He watches with wide eyes as his siblings come out of their gemstone shells—their hatching, the emergence of many bodies from the gemstones, all so different, but, yet, all so similar to his dad, with grey-colored skin and little bits of gemstone on their bodies exactly like the ones on Dad’s shoulder, so clearly his.

Siblings…

“Hi…” he says, quietly, almost shyly, sparing a glance towards the chrysalis in the back that still hasn’t hatched yet before looking back at the other three.

His siblings…

...he can’t help but feel a sense of childish wonder at the sight of them.

His reverie is interrupted by a very different sound: wailing.

Astéri’s head rises to look for the source, finding it in his smallest sibling, the one that looks the most unlike Dad in appearance and most like…

...well, him, if barely.

He can’t help but feel a kinship towards this little nugget of a baby as he walks over Attikias’s legs to move next to his wailing sibling and curl around him, surprising himself as he finds himself big enough to do that. He nudges the little baby up with his nose, remembering vaguely a time when another cat had rumbled his chest to comfort him.

But no chest-rumbles come no matter how hard Astéri tries to do it, so he instead settles for resting his head next to his tiny sibling and murmuring, “It’s okay,” as gently as he can.

He glances back at Dad searchingly, a look of ‘Am I doing this right?’ in his eyes.

The morganite- idle in its spot- has stewed for long. While its inhabitant had no idea of the music of crackling outside, it stirred nonetheless, the magic of family bringing it to life. It begun to roll in its chamber, consciousness slowly arriving to its mind. The presence of music came to its memory first. It had pierced through the thin walls of gem, flowed over it and gave it life- it was singing to her.

Lungs stirred to life as it pumped through fluids, dual eyes blinking softly in the dark as they struggled to form their own impressions of their surroundings. A cough rumbled through her. It shook her back against the walls, rubbed the hard halo of her head against the roof of her temporary home. No... No, she shouldn't destroy the love being filtered to her!

She stalled, panic of finally waking up running through her as she struggled to grab back onto the coattails of fleeting sleep. She wasn't what she didn't want to feel- what she was chasing, and she didn't even have the thought to be able to know what she was doing.

Her head shook violently in the cage that held it, her wings tensing more and more as she rumbled out her own discordant music of displeasure. Why did that sweet tune deliver such anger through the cracks now louder and louder to her ears? She hated it, she hated the stop it had, hated that she had to wait for it to come back. Slick, black feathers were peeking through the top of cracked away morganite.

She wasn't sure why her eyes were so wet. She wanted the music back, not that cry that rang through her ears, the unfamiliar, yet all too familiar, voice ringing within her like a tuning fork. Now, though, her lungs tensed again, the anger flowing to them in a desperate need to breath. Why can't she go back to sleeping? Tensing again, she burst from the ceiling of the chrysalis, the dam of energy flowing out as she lifted her head to stare down the offending noise with bleary eyes.

And then, she tried to walk. Sadly, the morganite was still in the way, and she pushed against it with dull claws before it let her free to tumble to the floor, a yelp of pain escaping before she even knew she had music of her own.

She'd tumbled right out into the rain, and she shivered at the cold of it, slit eyes finally seeing through paper-thin pupils of fear. 'Why do you sing like that?' She wanted to ask of her- sister? Sister... But, soon, her own cry rose up too, a brief sob shaking her body before the rain made its own tears down her eyes. She wanted back into that peaceful time of music and-

The rain. She lifted her head up to it and felt its own rhythm against her fur, her wings fanning out with the fins beneath catching the water as if they existed to be within it. This music was good, too, she decided, and halted her emotions to clear them with the rain against her face.

With a sigh, she laid her body down in defeat to life given to her, a smile on her face.

His head snapped at the first one from just inside the camp, his skin tingling at the feeling of fear elicited from him. Things that snap aren't usually friendly. Was it a twig- no! There was another one! The music halted as he placed it down, Asteri falling from his lap and already rushing off. A quick "Shhshsh SH!" tumbled from his lips before he even thought of it- but the kid (was he even a kid anymore?) was already racing off.

Oh. Oh, that noise was familiar. His feet moved fast to catch up to Asteri, his breath quickening as he raced under raindrops falling on his head. He'd risk getting wet for his children, here. "I'm coming!" He spoke after him- and soon, they stood looming (at least, in Attikias's case, with his hands on his knees) over the hatching chrysalises before them.

The first out had his body- white hair, and... Legs, so many legs. His hand quivered with anxiety as he wanted to clear their face, but he didn't have time as more and more emerged. It was time! He got the sense that it might've been a while, but his heart ached with joy to see them emerge.

One had begun to crawl towards him, and Attikias stooped down to squat, holding his hands out to catch them- but they fell and the chaos began. "Shh..." He reached over as Asteri pressed against the child. Asteri was worried, it seemed, and Attikias only mirrored the expression back. He had no clue what he was doing, either! But, it seemed like they were doing fine..?

Gingerly, he took the smallest of the children in his hands, cradling them closer as he moved to cross his legs to sit. How much did they know? "C'mere," he purred out tentatively, looking to the rest of them. "I'm here. Shhh... It's okay." His hand curled around the child's head (oh how its cry was like a little hunter's roar!) and he petted them gently to calm them down, cooing all the while.

"You'll be okay. You're home."

He could feel tears dotting his eyes from the joy of his own children being before him. Was it rain?

No. When it drew down his cheek and traced his smile, he knew how truly at peace he was.

@Vivilene

i need someone now to look into my eyes and tell me

A lot of things happened all at once.

She watched the figure and the thing in his arms until she felt something touch her. The damp hybrid jolted, nearly flying up to her hooves though finding they were largely unstable, falling over again. It didn't hurt-- or maybe it did, and she didn't notice. She was watching the other thing as it lifted itself up and then fell on its face.

And then it screamed. And then the other chrysalises began to crack open.

She felt like she was back in the dark-- panicking, not knowing what was going on. She didn't want to make a sound, there were too many going on as it was. The nugget-shaped thing crying, the cracking, the sound of something moving. It was too much for her, and to make it worse something tan-and-white pushed by her.

It seemed to be crowding the screaming one-- as did the largest of the creatures, picking it up and cradling it in his arms. She moved back on the other hand, skinny legs scrambling backwards with a great skid and slide and thump as she kept falling backwards on the mud.

How terrifying, she promptly decided, this situation was.

The other creatures nearby were unusual. A glance told her that she didn't really have any of the same limbs as them; though she did share long, thin paws like the tallest figure and the feathery one. She was purple like the majority, white strands of hair clinging to her face told her she must look like the one clutching its gem-thing, but with more limbs.

Limbs that didn't work, it seemed. She'd managed to get some distance from the crowd but she was caked in mud and rain. She wished to cry, but the fear and the reluctance to add to the noise kept her silent aside from the occasional, trembling wheeze.

Where was she even doing? Who knows-- but she was going to go there, very slowly, one wriggle at a time.

@Hunter

"girl you know you gotta watch your health"

The nugget-child did not see until it was too late that something large and scary had approached; and suddenly, he is nudged by a nose. The wailing stops for a moment as baby blue eyes stare up at the terrifying face of a monster. The newborn hiccups, and then wails more, reaching a useless hand forward to grab at the beast. Warmth surrounded the babe, a reassuring murmur of "It’s okay," trying to hush him.

The next moment, it was plucked from the stranger and into the arms of a strangely familiar smell, more words came spilling out from this new person. His big eyes blinked up at a face that he recognized as his own... The word familial did not come to mind; he was still struggling with words, but the feeling was the same. He knew it before he had the word for it.

"... home," he squeaked, tiny, floppy ears picking up the words and trying to repeat. It was difficult, he shivered with a shock and alarm of dozens of new experiences hitting him all at once. "Who...?" He pieced together another word-- this one, a question, one of many questions that he would ask in his lifetime.

He grabbed at Attikias's hand that brushed down his fur, gripping at whatever fingers he could wrap his tiny hands around. "I'm here!" He discovered with great delight, and apparently, all his crying had been soothed away. It was replaced immediately with wonder and fascination, and from his high vantage, cradled in the arms of a weirdly familiar person, he peered down at the strange thing that had nosed at him.

Asteri looked a lot smaller down there. It was no where near as scary, now that he was up! A toothy grin spread across the baby's face, and he reached out one of his tiny hands to try and grab at the big kitty cat too-- he definitely couldn't reach, but he sure did try.

@angela