ORIGIN

She'd been excited as hell about this upcoming festival. Nervous-... Oh yes, nervous, her heart fluttering and breath catching in her throat as she forgot, at times, to breathe. A cliche, perhaps, but truth: she'd have the split-second realization that she was out of breath and inhale sharply, trembling with excitement.

She busied herself now in preparation. She wouldn't have much of a booth, really, but what she would offer was cool enough. Dye, with permanent touch! Baubled stuff, and preserved flowers, things she'd worked on back home for weeks on end, purely for the joy of it. And if she could share that happy creativity, she was glad to. If someone could benefit from her work, she could tolerate the fear of crowds to offer it. As always, her creation was something of a powerful rejection of her old family and their ways: an assertion that she was a creator, and not a destroyer, everything else aside.

Now, therefore, she was searching for a few specific things, the thick pouch around her neck already bulging with goods. First she wanted shells--the sort swept aside by waters, and so she went to the widest part of the Polaris river she could find to search them out.

Yes! she thought, a sharp triumph, as she spotted the dim iridescence of seashells down below. They had been swept down this way from Fornax, most likely, though Azure didn't know that--all she knew was the shock of bitter cold as she dove, and kicked back up, feathers streaming with water but her beak full of her new prize.

The next thing that she wanted was a bit of an unfortunate one. While she stuck to plants as much as she could to eat, she ate meat very rarely, when weakness began to take her. And she knew that the oil from dissolving things could form another sort of dye--a very creepy one, in fact. But she'd have to catch prey, first, and she wouldn't let it go to waste; destruction wouldn't be a regular part of her creation, and she'd mourn whatever it was she caught. But for now, hunger and desire both rose in her, and she began examining the river for fish--for food.

There was a flash of silver, and again she dove--but this time caught nothing, and came up floundering and gasping for breath in the icy currents. She scrambled out with difficulty--and some flapping of her wings--and prepared to try again.

She cowered on the bank's edge for a few long moments, shivering against the cold as half-squinted eyes watched for more fish below. When another few silver bodies flashed past she dove, clumsily, into the wash once more. Her beak closed around something slippery and thrashing and up she came, holding tight. A few thrashing slaps and she had it dead, and quickly she ate her fill before stepping aside to leave the rest.

She would start here, then: to create gems while waiting for this one to dissolve and, when it was over, she'd have oil and bones to work with both.

Azure lay down a few feet away from the half-eaten little fish, focusing on the work that lay ahead.

Azure had very specific dyes in mind for this festival. She'd brought bone with her already, and baubled items, but she also had ideas for other dyes. One was her special own creation, Starlight Dye--and for that she'd need the nacre, along with some magic and some darker crystals. Then there was the green stone she'd need for the glowing acrid green dye. That meant she needed black gemstones, and green ones. She figured two decent-sized ones would do, but it would take time--and energy--to form them. Hopefully by the time she'd finished, the fish would have dissolved and she could carry on.

The bird hybrid focused on the ground below, thinking first of the green she wanted--she could then go, of course, from there.

The stone spiked up--not gemstone, just rock and a little too fast, sharply puncturing her left foot. Black scutes tilted to one side, impaled, bloody, and the hybrid screeched and pulled back and up, dipping her beak down and blinking back tears as she tended to it.

She limped quickly to the water's edge, dipping the foot in, wincing as the wound was washed. It would bleed for awhile... luckily not heavily, but damn it hurt. What had she been thinking?!

It took her some recovery time--an hour or more, in which time the fish had indeed decayed. She spent some time carefully maneuvering (with her beak and uninjured foreclaws) the crushed glowing stone from her pouch, laying it out beside the black goop that had formed. The bones she carefully picked free, washing them in the river and crushing them separately.

And when her magic felt sufficiently recovered, she gave the gemstone another attempt--careful, this time, to keep her feet well clear.

An emerald formed, this time, big enough for a dye or two, and Azure sighed in relief, relaxing when the stone didn't impale her a second time. Then she set about crushing this--and combining it with careful sweeps of a rock she picked up in her beak, mixing it into black slime, mixing in the baubled stone.

Azure had one more thing to make, in terms of dyes, at least: she needed black for her Starlight dye. She used one of the flasks that Dip had made her to sweep up as much of the Glare as she could, and then settled down to (once again, carefully) form a black stone for this work.

Black pushed upward, strong and not at all cutting, and Azure breathed a second sigh of relief. Then she set about using stones to crush this one, too, a now long-familiar work to her.

Within fifteen minutes or so of heavy work, the nacre had been crushed, another glowing gem produced and the whole thing melted into a pretty black dye--thick with glittering stars.

Perfect!

This was scooped into another flask, and Azure then turned her eyes to other things.

This would be so much fun!