ORIGIN - boxcar cadavers

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Himmel

This cave wasn't too different from the corridor within which he'd travelled. Every wall looked to be faceted with gossamer glass, layered in some places to give off a purple-blue blush that was beautiful despite its incongruity. Himmel did not want to look at anything for long - the corridor prior to this room had made him suspicious and careful - but he was drawn across the heart of the room, to the east wall.

It looked like a cave system set in miniature within the crystal. He ducked his head towards one of the openings and sniffed the air there, finding that it smelled as empty as everywhere else in this place; he even gave the surface a tentative lick and thought, wow that's salty! It was cold to the touch, and the flavor diminished immediately, leaving Himmel wondering if he'd imagined it.

Something was sunken in to the wall of another narrow tunnel and after a quick look around to confirm he was alone, Himmel cautiously inserted his head to that tunnel and murmured: "Hello...?" If nobody was there then he'd feel confident enough to keep investigating.

_{(Set before he joins the Leo quest thread.)}

Somewhere near a wandering deer (hey that rhymed), a small bloodstone crystal shattered loudly and echoed around the room. Tukluk had been asleep for years. When he awoke, he stayed within the remains of his bloodstone egg, blinking in the sparking light of the cave. He remembered very little of his time in the caves before. He had been so young then… How long had he been asleep? Where even was he? He did not remember returning to his chrysalis, or even how he had gotten to this part of the caves… He barely remembered his own name, or the names of anyone he had once known.

Vaguely, he became aware of the sounds of a creature walking around nearby. ’Hello…?’ came a voice.

“He—

He tried to call out to whoever it was, but his voice cracked from disuse. He cleared his throat, coughed, tried again. “Hello?” His voice came out as a deep rasp, a noise foreign to him. He did not recall his voice ever having been that deep before. Perhaps it was simply from having been asleep for so long. He continued to lay inside his egg, staring up at the ceiling. He turned his head and nearly jumped out of his fur when he saw a million eyeballs staring back at him. His tiny heart thrummed in his chest for a few seconds before he realized he was looking at his own reflection, shattered into a thousand separate images by the facets of the geodes around him.

He forgot about the voice, and stared, transfixed, at his own face—faces—staring back at him.

Himmel

At first he thought he heard a squeak, or something very close to a word being spoken, but the voice would have been small or maybe too distant to fully comprehend. His ears pivoted, flapping forward to try and hone-in on the sound.

It was possible he had hallucinated it. Himmel didn't know if anyone else lived in these areas or if there might be dangers lurking nearby, so he was cautious as he sniffed the air. He tried kicking at part of the wall near one geode-crusted opening and listened as the crack of his hoof echoed back at him emptily.

He thought he smelled something that didn't fit, but couldn't place what. Maybe it was just a lesser creature like those fish from the ponds? At any rate, he was probably scaring away the local inhabitants with his presence.

Tukluk eventually recovered his wits after staring at himself in the multiple reflections for endless seconds. He managed to look away and began to get up out of the remains of his chrysalis. His stasis had kept him exactly as he had been the last time he’d been awake, but it had been so long since he’d moved his limbs that he stumbled out of the egg as if he were drunk. He lay, stunned on his back, on the ground, eyes dazzled by the funhouse mirror effect of this room, blinking rapidly. After a moment, he rose to his paws and began to make his way towards the place where he thought he had heard someone saying hello.

A sharp sound filled the air, and he paused, alert. From what little he recalled of the caves (his memories seemed like a distant dream), whatever had made that noise could be dangerous. He took a few cautious steps forward, and, as he wondered what could have made that noise, a feeling washed over him that he hadn’t felt in a very long time.

The magic came from somewhere within, automatically. It was weak, probably because he had spent so long in stasis, but the orb of warm yellow light appeared before him. The caves were illuminated; the orb wasn’t because he couldn’t see. He stayed where he was and sent the small flickering light forward, farther into the room, past him. He was small and hoped that he, himself, would remain unseen if whatever had caused the noise noticed the orb of light. He simply wanted to attract whatever it was so that he could determine whether it was dangerous.

Himmel

What came next surprised the boy more than the shimmering glass walls or the emptiness of the cavern around him. A small glow began to emanate from within the tiny tunnel. As the shape moved closer the light slipped through the walls and bounced from surface to surface, refracting and dazzling as it travelled, until it emerged from the geode-entrusted entrance just shy of where he had been knocking.

This cave was in a perpetual state of illumination. Light from the connecting corridor refracted in to it, and seemed to cascade forever, lending a glow to every surface and softening the mood. When this new light emerged it was too bright; a change that hurt Himmel's eyes and startled him in to backing up.

Thinking he was under attack, he focused his energy and attempted to blast the shape with his magic. The fire ignited with such spontaneity around the glowing orb that he was surprised by his own efficacy, but it served to add a roar of orange to the object; the light grew stronger, the fire consuming that speck of light in a flash of red before dying out as the spell dissipated. The glowing orb remained but Himmel had managed to effectively blind himself as a side effect.

He blinks around the array of dots burned in to his retinas; they floated before his vision like constellations and slowly faded the more he blinked and looked around, ignorant to the small gembound who lingered near the tunnel's mouth.

In order for the orb to remain in the air, Tuck had to follow along behind it; if it disappeared around a corner, it would go out. So he remained at a distance, but still followed, keeping it in the corners of his vision as he looked around for the creature. It was a deer, he saw—

His orb was on FIRE!

Tuck froze in place, his burnt-orange eyes wide in awe and fear as a roar of flame engulfed his orb. It remained for a few seconds after the fire went out, and then blinked a few times before disappearing. He was too shocked to maintain the spell. Well fuck, he thought. He knew that if that flame had swallowed him instead of the light, he would have been dead in a second. Frozen in terror, he remained where he was, now in full sight of the deer, but too afraid even to run for safety.

He was a far cry from his younger days, when he would have screamed in rage in the face of danger.

Himmel

Himmel stood there blinking in to the haze left behind, waiting for it to clear from his vision. As it gradually receded his eyes narrowed and he glared at the span of air where the light had lingered; it was gone now, fizzled out after his fiery reaction. Beyond that was a small brown shape that did not fit among the bruise-colored glass; it took him a moment or two to recognize that the small thing was staring back at him.

His first thought was to compare the stranger to a lesser. They were smaller than anything he'd seen (but then again Himmel was pretty new to this whole life thing, and his experience was with minnows rather than terrestrial creatures). He leaned around the orb and with his neck straining a little bit, tilted his head to look down at the bundle.

It had a face. It was a squished face, very small, but a face none-the-less. With a snort the boy stepped around the blacked-out swatch where the orb had been flaoting and in to the path of the waiting creature, certain that he could trample it if anything untoward happened. "Was that your orb?" He asked, unable to veil the stern tone of his voice.

The deer that could, if it wanted to, burn him to a crisp, was glaring at him. Gods, it was glaring at him. He was going to die—so soon after coming back to life. How ironic. Tuck stared at the boy, waiting for the inevitable fire to sweep around him and burn him up, but nothing happened.

’Is this your orb?’

Tuck visibly jumped at the boy’s question, letting out something between a gasp and a squeak. “Wha— uhhh…” he said dumbly, trying to process what the deer had even just asked him. “Y-yes, it was my orb. It-it’s gone now.” He eyed the deer nervously, gaze flicking to the place where his orb had been a moment before, and then landing on the deer again. “S-see? No orb. Uhh… Sorry if I… scared you.” His voice was raw and rasping, still, so he cleared his throat again. In an effort to distract the deer from his anger, Tuck asked, “Wh-who are you?”

Himmel

The creature responded. Like.. Actually spoke. With words. That's not something lessers could do right? The fish hadn't protested when he'd tried to gather them up from the pond, they'd flit away from him. The bats in the corridor outside of this cavern had watched him and flown off without a word, too. That single difference made Himmel reconsider exactly what this creature was. If it wasn't a lesser then it had to be something closer to whatever he is.

It was oddly fulfilling to listen to the little thing bumble through an explanation; their voice was so small and very raspy, which made Himmel feel powerful.

"Wh-who are you?" Asked the creature. Himmel was busy basking in this new-found sensation. It didn't last long though.

"My name is Himmel. You're... not a lesser, are you." His retort didn't hold the same inflection as a question, as he'd answered it for himself already, but he wanted to confirm. He dipped his head so he could look at the little thing eye-to-eye, his shoulders looming behind him, and gave the marmoset a curious sniff.

"Who're you? How'd you get here?"

Himmel. The creature who had almost murdered him (not really but that’s how Tuck saw it) was named Himmel. It was such a simple name. He had expected something much more intimidating.

’You’re… not a lesser are you,’ Himmel said, his voice a statement as opposed to a question.

“No, I’m not,” said Tuck. “My name is Tukluk, but no one… no one that I remember… called me that. It’s Tuck. Just Tuck.” He tried to remember more of his old life. Certain things came back to him: his home in Eridanus, a gigantic tree amidst a forest. A flying creature he had once had as a pet… Garmer? Had that been his name? He stared past Himmel, somewhere far away, but the more he tried to remember, the more his head hurt.

He blinked, coming back into the room. “I-I… I don’t know how I got here. I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep.” He looked around at the unfamiliar walls. “I don’t think I remember this part of the caves at all.”

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