ORIGIN

Pawpads scratched across the rock, toenails clicking quietly. Overhead, quiet and content, circled Omen; and the faint images Giggle caught, from time to time, were dizzying but familiar to her. The ground, Giggle herself, wheeling below.

She was making her way up to the bone pit--her gait indifferent, somewhat weary. Days blended into each other. The Bonebound... existed; not doing much, surviving. Damask was still a wreck, something Giggle was ever aware of--and wary of. Somehow, Eythan's blood in that one worried her: would fear become betrayal? Anxiety, tyranny? Or would she eventually settle down? There were the newer members, too: children, some adopted, some hatched into the group. Giggle did bone readings for them often enough, but she had had realized earlier today that she hadn't read for herself in a very long time.

Something prompted it: a warning from the bones? A call of the fungus itself, of the arcane that swept through the world in spider-silk webs? She didn't know, but she felt called to consult them, and she was hardly one to ignore such things.

Giggle reached the edge of the bone pit, and circled: a quiet observation, ensuring that nothing was out of place. That everything was as it should be. The bones were undisturbed, the fungus quietly growing without damage; no one had been here, no one had stolen or harmed any of it. Satisfied, she settled on her haunches and regarded the bones.

"You want to tell me something?" she asked, aloud, and her trust in the speech of the inanimate remains of the dead was bolstered by both accurate results time after time, and the need to cling to something after what she herself had been dragged through. We do, the fungus seemed to respond, the bones themselves, the life and death littered around the little pit. "I'll ask about myself, then," Giggle said, again aloud: and the hyena's tone--her feeling--was deferential in a way it was to no living being. Trust, she held there: and almost obedience. Certainly respect.

She stepped into the pit with caution, delicately wading chest-deep into the clatter of bones, and selected not Aza'zel's--that, she felt, was for Bonebound matters, matters where the old King was to lend his input--but a bone she often overlooked, blackened in places and twisted with old hair. It wasn't much to look at, but it was unique--as she saw herself--and with this carefully lifted in her jaws (and with a glance back at her old friend's sternum), she turned and pulled herself from the pit.

Her walk became an idle trot as she approached the short trail--nothing rushed, but it was simply easier to gain the momentum to get to the top, that way. Not that she was old, but the curve of stone was a little steep. It was an incline that wound up to overlook, on a jutting ledge, the pit; she had chosen this spot for that very reason. And here she paused, setting the bone down, and staring into the pit. She dropped into a half-meditative state, here, considering. Thinking.

Bones, it has been too long since I asked for your guidance. Tell me what you would tell me. What does the future hold for me; what do I need to be wary of? What do I need to know? she asked. And she held this question inside herself, tasting the essence of it, rolling it through her mind until it usurped all her thoughts; until she was the question. And then she lifted the bone, paused--and dropped it, a light toss to lob it into the bone pit waiting below.

A quiet clatter had her round ears briefly rotating back, then forward; dark eyes watched the bone scatter others, become obscured itself, then eventually bounce free.

Victory, she thought; Everything is going well, at first. Going well now. But then-... that is misunderstanding, where it's covered. I'll miss something. Some word, from the bones. And that-... That's endings like--justice. What's started gets finished. Children, I think.

Then she was trotting back down, mulling these over even while speaking aloud.

"You want me to return more of your stones to life-? I can do that. But what is it I'm missing--what is it that I'll miss?" she asked, head tilting to one side.

True, motherhood treated her well--she had no compunctions about raising more children. She'd have to warn Aure of it, of course; he was their Bone King, after all. But truth be told, it had been too long since she'd brought life to the bones of the dead, something she'd decided to do a long time ago.

Another bone was lifted in her jaws--a random, this time, something small and pristine and white. And this she carried again to the top, repeating the question in her mind: What is it that I'm missing? She understood, by instinct, that it was some message from the bones that she had failed--or would fail, rather--to hear.

A lob of the bones told her that no--she was already failing to hear this message. And the way the bone fell spoke of returns--perhaps children, already. And the glints of light off the bones that spun away told her of light, of clarity, of her own power.

"Children, then. I can do that," she said.

She was already seeking a stone as she headed back down: her eyes sharp, her senses reaching out. No point in delaying; she'd find some of the stones of the dead, and she'd grant them new life in this age. The bones could speak: the spirits of the dead, she thought, guided them. It was only fair to gift them life anew in turn. The bones, she felt, would decide who came back; who was chosen. Which spirits were to return to this realm.

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Ahh, there.

She stepped into her bone pit, carefully removing the first bone-with-stone that she sensed, gently setting it to one side: outside of the pit, where she could give it more attention in a moment.

Now, which of the others would the bones direct her to-? Plenty still had stones within them--but somehow, like this, she felt it was their choice as to what to return to life. Or, at least, to grant new life to. After this she turned back, peering into the pit again, casting out her senses.

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At first, she sensed... nothing. A failure of magic, or were the spirits still deciding? Giggle did not know, but she waited a time, patient, giving the bones the time she supposed they needed to choose from among their number.

"My magic might still fail," she warned them wryly, amused--imagining a cluster of spirits hovering over the bones, debating over which to send her way.

After a moment she probed again, this time finding a stone waiting, fairly quickly; and with a sort of dutiful acknowledgment, respectful, she quickly stepped forward to retrieve it from the pit.

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...Right, one more, then. She'd held off for a long time when their fates had been less certain--when Masters had sent them Rezik to look after when Astraea had spoken of death and... whatever other gruesome things he'd imagined for them.

She set the second bone gently down, turning back to the pit to seek a third: chest-deep in the bones, then, and again she opened her senses, waiting for what she felt was direction from the bones.

"There," she murmured aloud, as a third stone-in-bone seemed to highlight itself to her, glowing in her third eye among the rest. A clatter, careful, and she'd picked it out with her teeth.

She turned to lay it alongside the third, and paused to look them over: to examine the stones the bones (or had it been she herself?) had chosen.

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Giggle eyed them over. Fascinating, these; three colors, three different bones, three stories that she'd never know. Or perhaps she would--but she had already been utilizing her magic, and she could perhaps look into them later on.

For now, she lifted all three--carefully--in her jaws. It was something of a mouthful, and it took her time to trot back to her den--and there she laid them down.

This wasn't Giggle's first child. She knew how the stones worked--knew they fused into the rock beneath. And so she began to clear a space for these, nestled up against the wall, hidden beneath her fungal garden. She was sure to give them plenty of space to grow--if one turned out to be massive, she didn't want it somehow engulfing another. That might be... horrific.

By her side, Omen--still silent, quiet--landed, a curious tilt of her head accompanying the flutter of closing wings.

"New life again, Omen," Giggle said softly, glancing her way. "Wish me luck."

Granted, if these were the stones the bones had chosen, she doubted she wouuld fail--but it was always possible that one of them was a gamble.

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Time for the first, then. The pelvis, with its strange, rough orange stone. The pelvis to which it was attached had once been broken, and she winced a little at its appearance. The creedite itself seemed an almost organic, chaotic, perhaps even cancerous spray of orange, all nodes and spines, and she wondered at this.

"A strange one," she murmured, aloud--and picked it up gently in her teeth.

She carried it to lay it at the farther end of the den, and then pressed her nose to it, dropping to her haunches to concentrate.

"Live," she murmured, a mother's insistence carrying magic toward it.

She felt this one take, and exhaled--feeling already the drain of this magic, the imparting of a part of herself to the stone. But that was more than a fair price for the counsel of the bones, and spirits: returning a choice few of them to the mortal coil, when she could.

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The femur, with its aventurine, was next. There was something almost mundane about this one; a purity to it that struck her. She wondered what its story had been: it was a beautiful stone, a mossy green, and one that she somehow equated with peace and... well, plants. But perhaps it hadn't been; perhaps it'd been something else altogether.

It mattered little: she nudged this one gently against the wall, and there she took a breath, resting for a moment.

When she was ready, she pushed her nose to it, one paw holding it in place; her eyes closed,and she concentrated.

"Live, by the bones," she whispered again, and waited.

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Giggle had been planning to go straight to Aure after this, but as she felt the second flow of magicka escaping her--sweeping to the bone and its stone, engulfing it in new life--she felt spectacularly drained. It was a weakening feeling: fatigue, fading, dizziness.

She knew she had perhaps one more in her, and then sleep would take her--water, rest, for a day or two.

But she had one more stone left to tend to, first.

The spinel on its mandible was fascinating to look upon; it held two halves of the jaw in one piece. It wasn't particularly large--a little smaller, perhaps, than her own--and smooth, curved. Strange.

She set this one gently down--teeth in teeth, and wasn't that odd?--against the rock, evenly spaced as were the others. She lay down beside this one, knowing full well she would likely pass into sleep after granting it life: and there, pressing her nose to this one, too, she focused.

"Last one--live, and I promise I won't go weak on you," she told it, gentle, hoarse but wry. And she gave it her all.

When the magicka had faded, she felt exhausted: she picked herself up, waddled a few paces to the little stagnant pool, and drank her fill. When that was done she staggered back to the three stones, no thoughts left in her head--no room for wonder, or motherly expectations. Only weariness reigned, and she would barely remember, later on, lowering herself to the rock. There Giggle sprawled out, dark eyes slipping shut, sleep rapidly claiming her.

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