ORIGIN

How could they find their big brother so easily? Well, the answer's obvious!

"I can always find you!" they exclaim, tail wagging, a smile going right across their face. They always know where their siblings are, after all. They gotta, so they can keep them safe and spend time with them!

Their attention is quickly diverted from thoughts of other siblings and i wonder how Enoki's doing! in favor of the sight of Bayo bounding away. His suggestion makes them perk up; ears pricking as they give him a rapid nod to his suggestion. "Yeah! That's a great idea!"

A soft glow emerges from the ground. Many thin, long mushrooms push their way up from the sediment, as if compressed and waiting underneath the ground the whole time; Chitin can't help but watch, enraptured, as they begin to glow a soft blue. "Whoa... mama will love those..." they murmur.

Well, they gotta contribute something, too! "Lemme try, lemme try!" they say, thrilled at the thought of making some pretty mushrooms for mama, too. They just gotta focus... use their magic...

Chitin narrows their eyes at a currently mushroom-less patch of ground beside them, thinking as hard as they can—make pretty mushrooms, make pretty mushrooms...

Soft as a firefly's glow, yellow, wide-capped mushrooms, short and stout to contrast Bayo's own creation, spring out of the ground, bright against the stone.

Chitin starts, leaping up from the mushrooms, glancing quickly between their own and the blue ones near their brother. "Look! I did it, too!" they exclaim, excited with their accomplishment.

Their brother always has the best ideas.

They watch with nothing short of total excitement as Bayo binds their mushrooms together, glowing blue next to gleaming yellow, like the crystals in that one cave they'd heard about but never really got the chance to visit. What else could they get for Mama, they wonder? She's so good and they love her a lot and she knows so much, even if some of that stuff is kinda spooky—they've gotta get more than just mushrooms!

What else… bugs, as pretty as they are, would just wander off. Shiny gems? But where would they find those…

...oh! Flowers, of course! "Yeah!" they call in agreement, following behind their sibling at a more measured pace—although their tail still continues to wag a mile a minute, displaying their good mood for the world to see.

In other caves, finding flowers would be a trivial task. Nothing more than a few moments' search. But Canis isn't like other caves—it's pretty in its own way, at least to Chitin, but it doesn't have much in the way of… greenery. The local decoration consists of bones, bones, and more bones—the local color scheme almost entirely different shades of 'ivory'.

And, thus, the search is an intensive one. Under bones, over bones—under bones again… Chitin helps the best they can, nudging bones aside and sniffing around as hard as they can to find pretty flowers for Mama.

But, then—disaster strikes. As much as disaster can strike, for two gembound children.

They leap to their hooves as Bayo cries out, eyes wide—"Bayo!" they shriek, all good mood pushed aside in favor of this sudden threat.

A spider! But not just any spider—one that spits acid!

Bayo doesn't need to tell them twice. As soon as they can see that their brother can run properly, even with his legs burnt by venom, they're off too, hooves click-clacking on the stone in a rhythm of panic as they bolt for the direction of their mother's den. "Mom! Mama!"

@Bayo

Mama comes into view all teeth and fury. Snarling expression, sprinting gait—Chitin ducks out of the way, taking a few hurried steps towards Bayo, as the spider suddenly becomes a target instead of an enemy.

It's not—it's not a pretty sight. Chitin sees for all of two seconds all of Mama's teeth bared in a row, vicious and angry, before blue blood spatters her fur and the stone and everywhere else it can reach and she pulls away with a leg and they've seen enough.

Too much.

With a soft whimper, they look away, folding an ear back to try to block out the sound of squishing, tearing—growling, and this is a sound that takes Chitin a few moments to place as coming from their mother as opposed to the spider, because they've never, ever heard their mama make a sound like that before.

It only lasts a few moments, but it feels like forever they tuck their head down against their chest and squeeze their good eye shut and wait for it to be over.

They don't like that sound. They don't like—they don't like what they just saw, with the spider all being ripped apart like that.

They didn't think it would look like that. They don't know what they thought it would look like, but not like that.

When their mother's voice sounds out—frantic, loud—they dare to open their eye.

They turn to look at her, putting their good eye in view of her, and—

—that's.

That's a lot of… blood.

Not the kind Chitin's ever seen before, the red kind that they associate with Bayo getting hurt (again) and bad things happening to their family. This stuff is blue. It looks alien and strange—but they still recognize it as blood. Still associate it with the terrible scene that played out before them, of Mama ripping something apart for hurting their brother.

"You killed it…" comes their response, a trembling whine that makes their expression twist, sad and uncertain.

Did it… did it really need to…

...to have that happen?

It was so bloody…

They look up and over at their sibling. Their brother, trembling, crying—the sight makes them sad, too. A lot more sad than seeing the spider made them.

And it's a lot and they still don't really know about the spider but… Bayo's sad.

Bayo needs comfort.

They get up, trotting forward on hooves that feel unsteady beneath them, and nudge Bayo gently with their nose. They sit down next to him and turn, looking back at Mama. "Pl—please don't be mad at Bayo… he didn't do anything wrong…"

Or if he did, it was both their faults. Chitin's for even suggesting the idea of finding things in the first place, 'cause if Bayo hadn't gone searching, he wouldn't have found that spider, and everything would still be okay.

@Giggle

Mama offers comfort in the form of touch—licking, snuggling, everything a mother could do to bring comfort, and this, at least, is familiar. Safe. Okay.

It's like a dam bursts. With a whimper and a whine, they lean into their mother, almost careless of the blue blood staining her, now. They bury their face into spotted fur, and a tremble runs through them as she details how badly, exactly, things could have gone.

Bayo could've been blinded. For the rest of his life, for a span of time that their little mind really has no way of wrapping itself around.

All because of a stupid spider.

And—Chitin still worries, about all the blood, about how violent everything was. In the back of their head, they're wondering if their mama really had to kill the spider. It was just scared, too… it was just defending itself, just like mama was defending them.

But they don't think about that for too much longer. Right now, they're scared, and Bayo is crying next to them and saying something about how his legs hurt, 'cause the spider spat at him, and if they can do nothing else then they just wanna help him feel better. They wanna make the hurt go away, because then they can pretend something like this never happened at all, and think about good things, like the mushrooms and flowers they were gonna get for mama as a gift.

Sniffling, they turn to Bayo, giving him another, more insistent nudge. Trying to comfort their brother the best they can. "Bayo… it's not your fault."

Another sniffle. "It's—it's my fault, I'm the one who asked about looking for flowers, I should have been watching better, Bayo 'm so sorry—"

They lay their head over their brother's back and shiver against him, trying their best not to cry as well but just feeling so bad about the whole thing. Feeling so much guilt in their little heart that it's hard not to cry about it.

@Giggle @Bayo (visibility!)