ORIGIN

James perked up immediately, tail shaking like a lamb's as he simply heard the word, 'banana'. He trotted around in an excited circle and hopped up on his hind legs, excited at the prospect of bananas.

"Bananas!", he cried out happily, before spooking as his voice scared a nearby bird of some kind from a tree.

He took off for a few strides and came to a stop, looking over his shoulder timidly, ears down. Slowly, he walked back to Dragon, ears perking up again as he remembered what was to come.

"Nice name,", he added as an afterthought, "Dragon..."

James bobbed his head up and down, digging at the ground with a hoof, excited and nearly jumping out of his skin as he tapped his feet on the ground.

@Dragon

Dragon snorted briefly in amusement--not at the child running away, that wasn't really something to laugh at, but at his enthusiasm regarding, apparently, bananas.

"Thank you! I thought so," Dragon agreed, good-naturedly. He hauled himself up with a sudden surge of movement, a sort of reptilian lurch, onto the bank, and there he focused. It took him a moment--perhaps he was a little out of practice with his magic, he had to admit--but the banana did appear, in the end, and he bit into its peel again before nudging it James' way.

"That is magic," he explained. "We are all hatched with magic. My magic is usually to create fire! Some make light, or make plants grow; there are all kinds of magic. You will find yours, but it may take awhile to do so. -If you begin to glow, for awhile, that is just the banana," Dragon added, drily.

@James

James blinked at the long explanation of magic, tail flicking in excitement as he realized that he would have magic! James bent his head down, legs spread awkwardly as he lipped at the banana, barely able to reach it. His legs were too long for his neck to reach the ground. He got up, frustrated, letting out a kick in the banana's general direction before turning around a few times and flopping down. Then he ate the banana, peel and all, a bit better at eating this time.

"Will I have to be alone?", he asked suddenly, pausing in his eating, "... That sounds scary, I don't want to be alone."

The foal shook his head a few times and gobbled down the rest of the fruit, licking his lips to chase the last of the delicious taste. If he started glowing, he didn't notice, as currently, he decided that rolling in the mud was a good idea. It scratched all his itches, that was for sure.

When he was done, he rubbed his head on his leg once again, uncovering the muddy stone right in the center of his forehead. Not glowing... just so brightly colored any light reflecting off it made it seem so. His eyes crossed as he tried to look, head moving up and down as he tried to see the weird glow between his eyes, to no success.

@Dragon

The sudden attention to James' gemstone--the rubbing and fussing at it--drew Dragon's attention to it. A faint sense of deja vu flared into recognition: Azrael, the Hive demon they'd purged, had had such a stone in the center of his chest.

Dragon found himself wondering if perhaps he'd made a child, during his stay here, with the horse that lived here, too. Was this Azrael's child-? The stone was unmistakeable, but perhaps there were more than one. He'd have to ask Khloros about it, later.

"No," he answered, aloud--no point in voicing all his other thoughts to the child. They were too complex and there was no point in burdening him with all those details now. "There are many Gembound in the caves. Only the Children of Rot live here, in Cetus--that is this swamp cave!--with our father, Aquarian. But there are many in the other caves. Most of them are friendly," he added, mulling them over in his mind.

As far as he knew, the Kingdom of Eridanus (hrmph, some kingdom) were wholly in hiding. But the Seven were, if stern, benevolent and the Bonebound were like a large family. A large, weirdly bone-obsessed family. "I can take you out of this place, if you like. But you should find someone to look after you if you do not want to stay here! If you stay here you can stay with us," he added. He wasn't about to demand that a child join the Children; but the offer for protection was real enough. Dragon had no desire for children to die in their cave--this was their home, and children were children, after all.

@James

James watched the Alligator contemplate, wondering what such a creature would have to think about. A lot, if he looked as old as he seemed. And wise, too. Dragon seemed smart, from what he could tell, someone he could possibly learn from.

His ears pricked up at the deep bellow of the massive animal, eyes big and wide and curious, drinking in every word. "Cetus,", he mumbled softly, tasting the word on his tongue, "Is there somewhere... less muddy? My feet keep getting stuck."

Preferably he would not like to deal with getting his feet stuck in the mud all the time, though he supposed it would make him stronger. He didn't want to be strong, though. He yearned for safety, for that comfort... leaving sounded terrifying, if he was honest. He was a little bit familiar with this place, at least, and if there was someone else like him here, he had hope to grow strong.

"I want to stay,", he said, his words growing more confident, "I... I want to meet the other horse. And I don't want to leave. Not yet, at least."

James wondered what the other horse looked like. Like him? Were they brown? Black? Perhaps even green. That would be an interesting color to be. As of that instant, green was now his favorite color.

@Dragon

Dragon laughed--showing a lot of conical teeth, but it was a hearty and very real belly-laugh, at least, and nothing particularly sinister. "Everywhere is less muddy than here," he explained.

"I will try to find the other horse, if you want. But I warn you, he is--strange." He'd initially been a skeletal wreck with glowing green eyes and dripping greenish, putrescent black hide, as much as the child's thoughts might have imagined a healthy green horse. Now the horse seemed bizarrely normal on the outside, but... "He only talks about the time he died, and I think his mind is strange from that! Don't tell him I told you this," Dragon added, with wry amusement.

A pause, as he stretched out his magic, his senses flaring with it. He could see the dim red glow, in his senses, of dozens of cave rats and deer, of birds overhead but honestly, why was he checking the tree canopy for a horse-... There was a vaguely horse-shaped figure off in the distance, perhaps two hundred yards away. "Do you want to meet it now, or later?" Dragon asked, settling back into the mud.

@James

James's ears flicked back a bit at the laugh, taken aback by the volume, but his tail flicked back and forth in excitement, "Strange is okay- I mean, you're strange, and you're not that bad."

Strange to a foal who'd been born maybe half an hour ago, at least. An alligator that not only did magic, but actually bothered to take care of something that should have been food? That was pretty strange to anyone, really. Anyone normal, that was.

"... Death?", he asked, head tilting to one side, tail falling still again as he wracked his brain for information. Nothing seemed to come up, a lack of knowledge leaving a metaphorical wall between him and cracking the barrier of ignorance, at least for now.

He shook his head and puffed out his chest, standing as tall as he could, "I want to meet him now!" James wanted to meet this mysterious horse! Perhaps he could teach him how to be one- how to do things around this strange place. He watched the Alligator look around, feeling as if he were looking through the trees rather than at them, judging by his slightly unfocused vision, and relaxed a bit, wondering what he was doing.

"... What was that?", he asked, having lost interest in any previous questions he may have asked, the subject of magic already at the forefront of his curious mind.

@Dragon

The alligator laughed, again, short and very real, at being called "strange." He didn't comment on that, though, instead just answering James' questions.

"'Death' is when your body is damaged enough that it dies. It stops being alive, and fades away. You no longer exist," Dragon explained, launching right into what might cause existential crises. Oh well. "He claims that he died and was brought back! It is a long and very boring story, but I imagine there is some truth to it. Just not the truth, perhaps, that he sees in it." Dragon declined to explain what, exactly, he thought might be the truth, or which details about Khloros' story he doubted, instead moving right on to the second question.

"What was what? -Magic?" Dragon asked, glancing at the foal. He wasn't sure if it had sensed its use, somehow, or wondered why he was looking around, or if he'd heard something else entirely. "If you mean me, I was sensing for him. That is one of the things I can do, with magic. And now I will do another thing! Back away, yes? And do not be afraid. I will not hurt you! I am going to use magic to get his attention. Are you ready?"

@James

At the description of death, James felt... indifferent, actually. It made sense. Once the body stopped working, that was that, right? He hadn't formed any emotional attachment to anything to understand why that could potentially be bad, or really figured out emotions in general. A good thing, one might think, at least for someone his age.

He wondered what the truth was in the horse's story. Perhaps he could figure it out, since it sounded like Dragon hadn't, and deducting from how he spoke of the other, he suspected no one, or at least very few, had.

"What will you do?", he asked, taking a few clumsy steps backward and bracing himself, unsure of what was to come. He didn't like the sound of, 'get his attention'.

James watched his movements carefully, tracking every small movement, every twitch of his muscles. Even though magic didn't seem to be very physical, from what it seemed, the best way to channel it to get a good outcome was to use your body to control it. Maybe someday if he learned magic, he could use that to his advantage.

@Dragon

Dragon took a deep breath, turning and facing away. At James' question he paused and looked back.

"I am going to make fire," he answered, bluntly, and then inhaled.

Orange emberlight flared in his gullet, and when Dragon exhaled, a torrent of flame some nine feet high poured forth, crackling and hot, into the misty air. It served the purpose of illuminating the muting fog for some distance around them, its powerful blast both muffled and amplified--dimmed, but spread--in terms of visibility.

When it was over the alligator briefly took a gulp of water, which steamed--and it was clear, now, how badly-scarred the interior of his jaws were, made leathery by long use of flame--and then bellowed. "HOOOORSE," he roared, a bass thrum that vibrated as much as echoed through the swamp.

"Now we wait," he said, with satisfaction. He glanced sidelong, then, at the foal, smugness in his eyes. "That," he added, "is fire."

@James