ORIGIN - salad.

Monoceros, for all its blustering winds, was rather peaceful and quiet. There were no longer any dragons roosting—the head honcho and loudest of them had gone, and others had followed—and few Gembound felt like braving the wicked zephyr. One stray breeze, and you're swept up in a thousand-year old tornado. Doesn't sound like a whole bunch of fun, hmm?

Shiloh, just a few days old, was already used to it. Sure, her nose quivered with an oncoming sneeze as she fumbled along the cave's walls, but she was used to it. All that roaring wind'd been tuned out and she barely tolerated the thought of dust battering her cheeks and getting stuck in her hair; her hair, which she'd already had tied up in a single, short pigtail. Her socks were already quite filthy, but she'd adamantly refused to put shoes on before venturing out on account of not being able to stretch her toes out. Dip had been unable to convince her otherwise.

Now that her feet were sore, the little girl wished she'd listened.

There was no need to dwell, though! She had an important, self-imposed mission that required and demanded every bit of focus her baby brain could offer. Glimmering eyes searched the crags with great fervor, and... there!

Her tail lashed behind her as she traipsed towards the spot of green. Claws hooked into the stone as she squatted down—like she could hold herself against a twister—and she leaned forward. She sniffled, and finally sneezed not at all into her elbow. The force of it nearly threw Shiloh off balance, but she had herself braced well enough to keep staring at the patch of stuff. It smelled pretty leafy, and not in a totally appealing way (eww, green?) Dip had already tried to get her to eat the stuff, and while it was cleaner to eat with her bare hands, it was still gross and crunchy.

But, well... if Dip wanted her to eat it, then she must like it, right?

Shy ripped the plant right out of the ground, grimaced at the specks of dirt that came with it, and launched back up to her feet. There was a little creek on the way home, so she made a pit stop there to dutifully wash each thin, pointy leaf. Halfway through, she discovered that rubbing against the grain kind of hurt. Leave it to her not to doubt the edibility of this, though. Every green thing was edible and healthy, regardless of how sharp it was. Dip would know how to make it for herself, right?

The kid made an exaggeratedly loud entrance back into the sweltering heat of the forge-cave, kicking a piece of metal and yelping when it turned out to be much too hard for her socked feet. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes, but she was otherwise mostly unperturbed. Dip was face-down sleeping on the bed, and that wouldn't do.

Gathering up her loose-fitting dress in one hand and still clutching a fistful of actual grass in the other, Shiloh shoved aside the 'curtains' and clambered onto the bed. With just one leg hiked up over the sleeping form, she muttered, "Dip? Dip?" She flopped forwards and dramatically onto the mane of cotton-candy pink hair. "I brought sawid. It's green and smells gross," her voice fumbled around the l sound, but the idea of salad was well enough there; especially with her draping her fist directly in front of where Dip's face would be, if she woke up.

Without any conscious regard for Dip's bones or how much she liked not being bruised, the elf baby put a knee right onto her spine.

@Dip

Shiloh might as well have driven her knee into the spine of a lion with the ensuing groan that left Serendipity. A goat-like ear twitched back before the mass of humanoid slowly shifted underneath her days-old daughter.

Her conversation with Attikias covered a lot, and although she left it quite confident, Attikias had failed to mention how much work it was to babysit someone-- particularly a child --that was totally reliant on you. Serendipity barely had the time to work on the forge or on the fucking wagon with Shiloh running around.

Had Dip been like that when she was a kid?

Another groan rumbled out of Serendipity as she turned, one burly arm lifting to lock itself around Shiloh and drive her off her back and her head, onto the mass of blankets right next to her (which Dip was content to call a 'bed').

Her eyes opened into thinly-glowing slits. "Salad..?" She rasped, making the mental note that, like herself at Shiloh's age, the kid struggled to say words right. She was also holding out-- grass?

There was a long pause before Serendipity rather gently took the bundle out of Shiloh's little fist. "You don't wanna touch that stuff, baby," she said as gently as a worn-out, smoke-damaged voice could be. She leant to the hole in the wall that was aptly dubbed a 'window,' gently tossing the grass out to be lifted with the wind. "Grass is for walking on, not eating. "

She moved on rather quickly before Shiloh had the 'I just touched stranger's feet' meltdown. "Are you hungry? I can get you something," she went on, still a little drowsily half-asleep.

@Shiloh

At least days-old Shiloh had the conscience to not stand her ground when Dip was trying to move her off of something—especially her own body. One of her feet got caught between the blankets and her own dress; but, after a little bit of finessing, she was politely sat with her legs side-saddled to the left. The 'bed' was definitely more comfortable than lying on another person, but she wouldn't admit it.

Besides, she was too excited seeing eyes open. Her own pupils dilated with grand intensity, and she immediately shuffled to her knees. Shy's face twisted up in her attempt to parrot back "salad," lips peeling back from her teeth and doing their best to enunciate the l. "Sawad" was the best either of them were going to get.

Her rapidly swishing tail slowed in its beat only a little, pupils shrinking back to a catlike sliver. Ears pricked up, then her face pinched with thinly veiled worry. "It's green, though," she insisted boldly, not-so-subtly smearing her palms on the covers. Hooking a toe in one of her socks, Shy peeled it off and "cleaned" those off too. Rinse and repeat with the other sock. The grass was tossed out the window, and with it, her concern about having touched something icky. "We eat green."

Exceptions? In our diet?

After a long moment of consideration, she responded simply, "no." Shiloh shuffled across the blankets, abandoning the spot where she'd rubbed off any acquired yuck and moving to a nice, clean part. Which happened to be halfway to lying on Dip again. She didn't press her luck this time, but leaned nonetheless.

"My hair stayed up this time," she said, on a sudden baby tangent, "but the wind made my nose itchy. So I b'wew it out." Riveting storytelling, kiddo—"and... um, my feet hurt. I wawked on a'wot of rocks." Shiloh fumbled with the folds of her dress, muttering now, "I'wl wear shoes next time."

@Dip

"Your feet'll toughen up eventually, if you really don't want to wear shoes," she said, half-beginning to sit up again until Shiloh draped herself back onto her. She slumped back down onto the blankets and sighed tiredly.

If she didn't want food, at least Dip didn't have to get up. But the kid was still very much awake. She hmm-hmmed and uh-huhed through her way along Shiloh's story, only interrupting once-- "sneezing" --because helping a kid learn new words was never really a bad thing.

Her eyes were beginning to shut again until an intrusive memory came back, of cutting her own feet on all sorts while walking through tunnel J and how it'd been hard to walk afterwards. Dip shifted-- she took a hold of one of Shiloh's ankles and twisted it slightly to see, but there didn't seem to be any blood leaking out of it.

At least there was that. Serendipity let go again. "Maybe take it easy on the wandering for a bit," she said. "Let your feet rest and get better."

But enough of feet.

"It depends," she went on, folding one arm behind her own head. "You can't eat everything that's green, but some green is good for you. Some if it's just gross." Dip squinted a little at Shiloh's teeth for a moment, though-- it didn't seem like she'd be much in the ways of eating fruit and leafy vegetables, though.

Her nose crinkled. "We can take a trip to Eridanus sometime and take a look around. There's a lot of nice things there, and some nice streams. And it'll be good for your hair," Dip suggested anyway, though she was slightly wary.

Not of her daughter's diet, but of Attikias. She'd grown a little hesitant to keep kids near him after the 'gave his kid to a murderfuck monster' debacle. At least that came with the reassurance that Dip couldn't fuck up that badly.

She yawned. "What's keeping you up anyway, kid?"

@Shiloh

"'Tuffin' up?'" she parroted, ears pricking even further up, "how?" They didn't seem like they could get buff and strong like an arm or a leg. All they were was feet. Shiloh glanced down at the blanket tent Dip's own two feet made. Both of theirs' were basically the same, as far as she remembered (which wasn't very, because again, she was literally days old and equivalent to a kindergartener.) Unfortunately, Shy wasn't content letting the subject go without an answer.

("Sneezing," she repeated, interrupting herself after Dip interrupted her story.)

Not that having her soles checked did anything to dissuade that; the only aberrations were just a bit of scuffing around the pads. No blood to be seen. "Let your feet rest and get better," Dip advised, and the kid was happy to comply.

Her legs hurt a little bit too, but she wasn't aiming to get the world record for most complaints from a youngster. Priorities.

No more feet, anyways.

Lip sticking out in a half-pout, she crossed her arms over her chest and blew an errant hair out of her face. Can't eat everything that's green? "That's dumb." Blink. "How can you tell if it's food, then? Smell it?" Maybe only bad-smelling things were edible? Shy dropped her apparent pretense of annoyance and put on a hat that said This is possibly an earth-shattering question that will dictate all our future interactions together. Wide eyes, completely incredulous. The brat even pushed Dip's hair a little aside so she had direct line of sight.

Question number four hundred of the moment: "what's 'nice things?' It better not be green." Then, "good for hair?"

Finally, though, there was a question for her to answer. Shiloh couldn't suppress the yawn fighting its way out—darn hominid imitation!—and she shuffled just a bit. "'m not sweepy," she lied both to her mother and herself, "wanted to expwhore." Baby fat fingers grappled for Dip's shirt as she moved to lean halfway on her and against the wall. Despite the blistering heat of the forge and Monoceros at large, the babe seemed completely content snuggling up to chat away.

@Dip

There was yet another rumble. Serendipity spent a moment dumping one arm over Shiloh and absent-mindedly rubbed her back, mulling over answers to Shiloh's many, many questions, only briefly wondering if she had been this inquisitive as a kid, too.

And of course, she had been. Dip was still inquisitive to this day, though she left it to her own brain to figure it out, these days. "They get tough," she started explaining. "Like armour. Your feet grow thick and calloused and it makes it easier to walk without shoes on."

She sniffed upon the next topic. Some things were just bad to eat-- it was trial and error for her, really, but she knew the basics. "Fruits," she said. "You can find them in Eridanus and there's all sorts. Apples and berries, mangoes watermelons. Plenty of nice things. They're usually good and there's so many of them you just remember what ones you like."

"Cooking meat is always a safe bet," Dip went on. "But usually, if it smells good and it's not too hard or too soft, it's probably food." This much would stop Shiloh from trying to eat rocks, at least.

"Your hair won't get as ruffled in other rooms," came the next answer. "You might even be able to let it down in Eridanus. It's not as windy there like it is in Monoceros." Which was full of tornados and dragons and fuck-knows-what else.

Maybe she should move.

Another sniff. "Explore," she corrected a little mildly, still trying to keep her rough voice as gentle as she could in the presence of a kid. "We can explore if you want to. There's a lot to see around here, a lot of people to meet. Some people are really good." And some are really fucking bad, she wanted to say with a short grimace, thinking of Azure and her family.

"Have you seen the tunnel yet, where all the lost things are?"

@Shiloh