ORIGIN

Haven had so much energy, and enthusiasm--and normally that would've been infectious, to Warrior. Normally he'd be warming, smiling, joking.

But not-so-distant nightmare were haunting his mind, lurking, memories threatening to push up from the recent past. The dark ceiling brought black goop and puppetted limbs to mind. The sparks of light across the roof, beautiful as they were, reminded him of points of light vanishing in shadows. He shook himself and turned, trying to force a friendly expression.

"Ha, I'm not sure what they're called," he offered, trying for friendly politeness and damn was it hard; "I'm new here, myself, remember? You sound... very nice, for rescuing your friend. Are they okay, wherever they are now?"

The mention of a 'water cave' had him interested, and he tilted his head some. "Where's the--water cave, you mentioned? I do want to explore as much as I can, before I go back home." Warrior then looked around. "Can you see everything here? The--ruins, in the distance; the tower? I'd like to go look at them, if you want to come with me; do you know anything about them?" He began a slow (and deliberately noisy--he didn't try to hide his hoofbeats at all, to let the blind dragon-creature better follow him) walk off toward the ruins, glancing back to see if Haven would follow him.

Warrior blinked at the sudden, unexpected flash of pink beneath Haven's wings. It was surprisingly pretty, a complementary color to the slate gray, and he admired it briefly before focusing back on her words.

"Ask-?" he responded, quizzically; "Is there, ah--someone you can ask about these things?" There was so much he didn't know of the world outside of Hydra. But it made sense; the Masked Merchant had acted like some sort of authority, so many there was some sort of... hierarchal structure, out here-?

He did his best to follow Haven's 'over there' directions--the mention of tunnels was somewhat confusing to him, but he tried to take a mental note nonetheless. And--"Discs?" he asked, curiously, blankly. Was this some sort of common, strange thing outside of Hydra?

He glanced sidelong to admire the strange creature's drifting grace, for a moment, and then blinked as realization struck him. "I wonder--has your friend... or, well, anyone--ever described you to yourself? Do you know what you look like?" he asked. It was with a friendly, gentle tone, not some sort of mockery--but he was genuinely curious. "If not, I could describe you, if you like-?" He realized perhaps too late that a list of colors might not do much for one who had never seen them, but-... Well, he could describe the rest, at least.

The ruins were slowly drawing closer, their charred and crumbled structures clearer to his eye, and only now did he realize how truly ancient they must be. He wondered at their history--and what might lay inside.

He slowed as they came in among the ruined buildings, peering through the dark and the drifting dust. But one ear was toward Haven, listening. "The discs sound--strange; do you know what they're for?" he asked, half-absently, but curious nonetheless.

When Haven asked about her appearance, though, he turned and gave her his full attention, studying her for a moment. "I wish I had a way to describe color to you," he lamented, to begin with. "There's lots of colors--everything has a color. Rocks are usually dull; gray, or brown. Common and not much to look at. Plants are green... Sometimes dull, gray-ish green, but sometimes," he explained, thinking of the water-plants around the Crucible's rivers, "bright and vibrant." He continued, trying to put adjectives to the colors, so that Haven would have some context. "Water is blue: calming, pretty, I think. Light is often yellow, or a little reddish, or white. Bright. It's life-giving, warm colors. And flowers-... You know what flowers are-? The little, soft parts of plants? A plant's green, but the flowers are all sorts of colors. Yellow or red, blue, white--they stand out. And lots are pink. Pink's... the color of, um, meat, skin, but it's also lots of flowers, a pretty light color. Uh, delicate? Kind of. So you," (and here Warrior finally came to his point, his meticulous explaining reaching a sort of questionable apex), "you're a dark, dull gray, mostly. Like the rocks in some places. But then, on your neck and sides, and under your wings, you're this beautiful bright pink. It's an unexpected... sort of flash of color, and it complements the gray. You're very... sleek, lightly-built but strong-looking, like... well-balanced? You look a little alien, different than others. Not furry, not scaly or feathered, and you don't have eyes like most Gembound. Instead you're... you're like some flowers on a stone came to life. You're unique, and I think beautiful, yes," Warrior finished.

Had he known about more detailed mind-magic, perhaps he'd have sought someone out to give Haven a genuine image of herself--but the verbiose description was the best that he could do.

After a moment his attention turned back to the ruins, phosphorescent eyes searching their dark corners and finding only shadow. The way the stone was recently-charred, crumbled in places, struck some dull instinct distant within his mind, but he didn't know what to make of that; he'd never seen a raging fire, before, not like this. "So-... what's in here? Where do we go?" he asked--since Haven had apparently 'seen' this place before.

'...so I focused on personality instead.'

Warrior blinked as he realized what Haven was saying, and hoped he hadn't planted some sort of insidious seed. Not one of vanity, but one that might imply that he--and others--valued looks over morality, over care, and the like. He hastened to correct that, just in case, albeit with careful phrasing.

"Well, I think it was--smart of you, to focus on personality. It's more important than looks anyway? We can't help how we look. I keep changing color," he added, a little morosely, the conversation shifting as he trotted for the ruins. "I hatched brown, and then I was this... really bright, glossy reddish-brown with lighter spots, and black legs. Um. Earthy? Strong colors, flashy. Then after one of the Trials I woke up white, instead. No color, just bright, pale. And then after this last one I woke up... gray? But light gray, not slate, dark grey like rocks, like you. Mine's just... dull. Ashy?" He shrugged as best a horse could, and trotted on. "Anyway, you're welcome. I'm--glad it--uh, helped? Are you okay?" he asked, hoping--but not one hundred percent sure--that Haven was just happy enough to tear up. He hoped he hadn't upset her, at least.

He nodded toward the ruins as they came up on the edges. "Uh, up to you-... We can do both, I guess? What's in these outer parts?" he asked, and moved to stick his head into one.

Inside was a dim glow, and Warrior squeezed into the worn and empty doorway to approach it. He picked his way over rubble, nostrils flaring with faint instinctive alarm at the still-present odor of charred rock. "There's something glowing in here," he told Haven, in a near-murmur (as if afraid to speak too loudly, as if afraid of what might come). "Um--making light."

A moment's brief search, and a press with his nose, found a baubled stone in the rubble. It wasn't much--a rock just too big for him to carry in his teeth, covered in dust and dirt. But the soft glow still broke through the dust, and he wondered at this.

He had no way of knowing that the stone's glow indicated that its owner yet lived--somewhere. To Warrior's mind it was probably some ancient relic, and he gently nosed at it a few times, thinking. "It's a rock. A glowing stone," he told Haven, curiosity in his tone.

Warrior found himself more than puzzled by the flat, plain disc. "It doesn't... look unusual. I mean, it definitely isn't natural--too round, and too smooth, but... There's no real interesting color or design. It's just... like, smooth rock?" he told Haven.

It was... confusing, to say the least. He tried to puzzle out what it could have been, sniffing it, nosing it gently this way and that. He flipped it, and looked at the back, but this offered no clarity to the puzzle.

"It's just... round. Maybe it's--maybe it's how something poops-?" he added, a tentative guess with no anchor in reality whatsoever. But it was the best he could really do. Maybe it was for 'putting things on,' but what things, and why? Maybe to carry stuff, but how would this possibly help..? "Or maybe someone put... all the little light-rocks on it? But I'm not sure why they'd do that."

A mystery, indeed.

He pushed back and took a slow walk around the interior of the structure, taking scent and sight in with care. There was nothing really unusual about the place, bar the smell of old fire, a few cycles old at least. No more small objects of interest, nothing mysterious, just... crumbled ruins.

It was odd, and he wasn't sure what to make of any of it, but it was certainly different from Hydra.