ORIGIN

Oh, you can bet the boom kitty would be comin' back up here as soon as she possibly could.

One might say she was making a... bee-line for it? Eh? EH?! Okay anyways--

She wandered towards the middle of the room, wanting to travel deeper and deeper, further and further, to swarm and flood and envelop herself in the plants, in the buzzing, in the scent and feel and taste of it all. She'd find those lovely little technicolored buzzy bugs soon enough. Maybe she'd also find Sunny as well. But for now, she wanted lonesomeness. Just because she was alone didn't mean she was lonely, after all.

She sat in the typical kitten "loaf" position amidst the tall towers of ferns, the arching buttresses of bone. A beautiful palace of grace and solitude, of bugs and life. She'd missed life, in her little cave of chrysoberyl. She really had. Life suited her; a body and soul matched perfectly, both built for purpose, for construction and destruction, for a flow of constant motion. She wouldn't stay here long. She wouldn't just rest and do nothing when she finally had the chance to move.

Madhukar breathed in deep. She looked at the sky. 'Give me rain.'

And instead, all of the water in her body felt like it was going to dry up. Her eyes bulged, her mouth robbed of its hydration, its saliva. Her tail plopped on the ground with hardly any feeling at all. The shock of the sudden dehydration kept Madhukar's parched throat zipped and locked. What the heck was HAPPENING?!

@Sunny

Sunny generally minded her own business. The days in Eridanus were long enough and filled with enough ferns and rainfall and enough visiting with her friends to keep her busy, after all. However, sometimes it was nice to just nap -- Sunny kept a small den separate from the one she kept with Tema underneath a rib-bone that she sometimes gnawed on. She didn't have a proper calcium-craving shell to keep up, but she still had the instinct towards it, so she satisfied herself however she could.

She'd been entirely minding her own business when a sudden lack of moisture was detected. Sunny paused, and pushed out feelers -- magic, perhaps? Indeed, something pinged on her strange little radar. Blue like Carja's magic, or the wolf pup's, but filtered through a stone she knew well -- chrysoberyl honeycomb, webbing through a little body and drying it up. She started to pull herself up over the bones.

"Little-stone? Madhukar?" She strained her eyestalks, moving as quickly as she could and catching sight of the tortoiseshell. How lucky! "Madhukar! You had been going for very long! You went to the magic show, yes? And did not come back!" Sunny was moving towards her as quickly as possible (read: not very fast) to try and check her over. Thirst was a powerful force.


@madhukar

A voice interrupted the settling panic-- a familiar voice, uh oh. But this voice... no it wasn't a bad voice! It was a good one, yes! A very, very good one! It said her name. Madhukar might've melted, in any other situation, at the sound of that voice saying that name; a tiny, feral kitten, wrapped around that one creature's single goopy toe. But there wasn't enough water in her body to allow for any sense of comfort, safety. No purring. NO PURRING! "S-S..." No, too many words. Little-sto-- Madhukar had to get the most important point across first. "W- Wa..." 'COME ON MADHUKAR!' "Wat...er..." The kitten would try to look around, movements languid and drowsy, slow like old glass that oozes down from the top of the window pane.

She would try to meander towards the little bug friend, wobbling and eventually having to fall into a crouching position again for support. "Wah..." Her mouth felt so dry. "Give..."

Madhukar was tempted, in that moment of desperation, to try to summon rain again, but Sunny's question reminded her of exactly where she'd gone after the Olympics. Her own magic had been her downfall. Her own emotions. That stung; maybe it was good that she didn't have the right mind to speak or think well in this moment. The sting was numbed by shock, panic, a need for survival over emotional wellbeing. If she failed her spell again, she might just chrysalize again. So she'd just have to hope... gosh, to rely on Sunny to understand her.

She could hate this later.

@Sunny

Sunny's tentacles wiggled with panic. Madhukar needed her help?! Sunny was very not-good at helping people with physical needs, considering she was very slow. She couldn't exactly move her physically, or move very far herself, but... well, she was pretty good at locating water. "Water? Oh, oh, um, um--" Her own heart was beating rapidly, visible in her shell, and she focused. Moisture -- moisture. A big pool of it, at the edges of her senses. A sense she usually blocked out in a place like Eridanus, when the air was wet enough that she didn't need puddles, but-- but--

"There!" she said suddenly, indicating a direction with tentacles and eyestalks. The wetness was greater over there, and she was sure that if there wasn't a puddle, at the very least there'd be plants full enough of water to make her feel better. "And, and-- plants have water inside!" That would make Madhukar sick, of course, but might be able to help her long enough to get to a source of water???


@madhukar

Madhukar wobbled and hobbled away after Sunny's directions. Any form of water, just a slice of it please -- she'd take a plant if she could find nothing.

She did eventually find a puddle but golly was it small and did it take too long to find. She slurped it up, licking even at the ground that had held it for any remaining scraps, before taking her chances with the plants. Oh, it'd make her sick alright, but right now her body needed it.

After she was done, she still felt parched and she knew she'd be feeling queasy real soon. But at least she felt like she could talk now, even if very little. "We go t' wah...ter." She managed. "I carry." If Sunny so chose, Madhukar would attempt to pad up close to Sunny and crouch down, to make potential boarding easier.

@Sunny

Sunny bobbed her head in a facsimile of a nod as Madhukar returned. "Good, good. Bigger water, yes? The big pools, they might be somewhere... there-seeing, yes?" she said, starting to climb up and indicating the direction of The Eyes to the best of her ability. It would take Sunny quite some time to get up to Madhukar's shoulders, but as long as she didn't move too fast, Sunny could probably hang on fine. "Where did Madhukar go? Was gone for a half-cycle. Very long time. Missed her much." Sunny had a lot to update her on! Meeting Binh, for one -- and finding the stones with Carja, and Tema learning new magic... all sorts of things.


@madhukar

Sunny boarded successfully, directing towards bigger waters. Madhukar simply nodded and started padding off at an uneasy, slow-ish pace in what she assumed was the right direction. Kind of hard to tell when Sunny didn't have the same appendages as most creatures Madhukar had seen did, but she was gonna try her best anyways.

As they walked, Sunny asked questions. Madhukar wasn't sure if she was prepared to answer. One, still needed water and was already starting to feel the queasiness rise in her. Two, it was... it wasn't easy to say. "I..." She considered. "Missed yo too." Madhukar's brows furrowed. Water would be in sight soon. She didn't know if she could get close enough before the vile fluids began to rise in her. "Was um... got hurt. Magic." There was so much more to those words, and deep down, the kitten knew it. But she didn't want to let that out, not now. Not yet.

@Sunny

Sunny laid her head totally down as she settled between Madhukar's shoulder -- a comforting gesture, and one she'd only done while sitting still a handful of times. Her eyestalks stuck straight up. It was upsetting news, that her friend had been hurt and hadn't come to see her... but Sunny could understand, if Madhukar had been embarrassed. "It is okay, Little-stone. Sunny-snail understands. She cannot do magic so well, and yours is so unstable."

She raised herself up, cringing internally at the feeling of fur pulling away from her foot. "I have made a new friend, too! His name is Binh, and he can see through water. He is a snake, but very slow, like me. Have you known him yet?" A change of subject was probably a good thing... right?


@madhukar

The cool slime nestled in between the kitten's shoulders put her at a kind of ease she couldn't explain. Somehow, the snail kept finding all the perfect ways to make her melt. Somehow, Sunny kept finding her when her magic failed her most. It was strange, perhaps a coincidence... Madhukar wasn't in the right mind to be suspicious. She didn't want to be suspicious of her friend-kin anyways.

Sunny couldn't do magic well. Huh, Madhukar never would've guessed. The words of this snail were often butchered, as her own were, but still so much more magnetic. It was wild, honestly, noticing their effect. Maybe Madhukar was just too soft. Her own magic was indeed unstable; so even Sunny had noticed? Not like it was hard to. Electricity... no one had a clue was it wanted. You could give it directions, and if your wire wasn't hooked right, it could backfire miserably. Or it could just choose not to even follow the directions because it was also magic, and 'magic is mean', 'magic is fickle', magic and laws mix as well as oil and water.

Sunny shifted again, without taking the comfort of the gesture with her. Apparently a new friend had been made: Binh. Slow, snake, sees through water. "No," Madhukar replied. She'd never heard of him. Seeing through water sounded cool though. Could he see through any kind of water? Raindrops, perhaps?

Raindrops. They'd finally reached the pools in the center of the room. Madhukar crouched down, allowing Sunny the option of getting off. In a matter of moments, Madhukar's body would likely reject what it had eaten for water. Madhukar would berid of it from her system and then take a drink out of these pools. That was the plan.

"Where yo' fin' Binh?" Madhukar wondered where Sunny was even capable of going to find such intriguing snakes.

@Sunny

"I found him by the mushroom!" she explained brightly, staying anchored between Madhukar's shoulders. She didn't really have anywhere else to go, to be fair. "Binh-friend was looking at a puddle. Showed me Fornax in it! Binh has far-seeing -- very good for a creature who has no legs. He traveled once, when very small, but not so much any longer. Want to take him going someplace, if I can. Wanting to find a magic to help me."

Binh was nice. Sunny had recently started to take a tally of her friends -- the ones who wanted to stay with her permanently, that is. Madhukar and Tema, of course, but Binh was being added. Carja was... one of her friends, certainly, but only an honorary member of her family. There was a distinction there, she knew.


@madhukar