It was there that Madhukar finally started to figure out was meditation was. Somehow, with her mind set adrift and her body equal parts warm and cold, Madhukar entered a state almost like sleep. She was thinking, quite actively, but every other part of her felt like it was turned off in some way. To the outside world, now a dark void in Madhukar's eyes, the felinoid might as well have been dreaming.
Her mind came back to the mushrooms. She was in a state of calm... what better time to think about them, right?
With mushrooms always came Tahi-shei. "The Fungal Prince". Gosh, what a name. Madhukar had a name too, did she ever tell him? Voidclaw. But that one came from a good decision. His was an extension of a bad one that he said he wouldn't go through with.
He betrayed her. Then, she had betrayed him right back. It should've felt even, like balance, or really more like vengeance, but instead it just felt like cold, deadly hypocrisy. Madhukar had threatened him with lightning then, even after literally striking him down with it before. Which had helped him, back then, in this awful, brutal way. You have to say it like it is. Madhukar had struck down her friend and then threatened to strike him down again, and then she had left him. And Tahi-shei had killed somebody. Killed somebody for real. No coming back. It almost felt like neither of them had issues with "flaunting their power", but Madhukar knew that was wrong. Tahi-shei had been desperate for forgiveness, desperate remorse in his eyes, and then desperate fear. He had told them, actually talked to them. And before then, at the Hunt, he had chosen to watch, cause no harm, while Madhukar had chosen to...
WHY did James just FORGIVE him like it was NOTHING, as if COLD-BLOODED MURDER was NOTHING, and yet he can't even LOOK at you without BOILING IN HIS RAGE-- WHEN DID TAHI-SHEI KILL THAT PERSON ANYWAYS, WAS IT BEFORE THE HUNT? WAS HE REALLY HOLDING IT TOGETHER EVEN BACK THEN, THAT SLY-- and what about YOU, MADHUKAR? JAMES CHOSE TO PROTECT THOSE IN NEED, TAHI-SHEI CHOSE YOU STAY OUT OF IT, AND YOU CHOSE TO SEEK OUT MURDER FOR POWER, AND YET YOU HATE THE POWER YOU GOT AND YOU COULDN'T EVEN SUCCEED AT GETTING THAT QUARRY CAUGHT---
The thoughts she'd been running from, the monsters chewing at her walls, finally allowed in. What had she been thinking about? Mushrooms. Of course it was the mushrooms that let them in. The mushrooms had always been informative for Madhukar. They taught her how to control her lightning. They taught her more about Sunny. They were friends with Tahi-shei, who taught her...
Oh, how she'd missed him all these cycles. His eyes and his care. She had even begun to miss James-- Suddenly nothing. Radio silence from the angry mob. Madhukar longed to see him again. And Sniffles. She had to be honest about Sniffles. She had been longing to see Sniffles again ever since she left. Some days it would randomly hit her. She hadn't spent much time with Sniffles, and yet th... they had been one of the first to care, for absolutely no reason at all. Madhukar, as a kitten, had read it as Sniffles being a control freak over things they didn't even really know or care for, like her. And yet, even as a kitten, she'd been curious to know why truth. Why had they been so sad when she had left? What was the point of that?
She felt colder every day without Tahi-shei or Sunny. She wanted to see Kitty again. How was that one doing? How much had they grown? And Tema, Madhukar had barely seen Tema around except at Tahi-shei's lesson, so clearly the Voidcrawlers were still out and about... and Carja, she'd seen Carja around with a bipedal creature such as herself. Who was that guy? And still nothing from the monsters. They've all gone quiet. They are all listening. Doug. Oh, Doug... Last time she had seen them, they had been here. Right here, in Pegasus. Looking absolutely awful. And they had run. Madhukar hadn't even returned to check on them...
The life she had run from. She thought she was running from monsters. The only monsters where the ones she made in her mind, and now even they seemed to want to go back to this life. The yearning in her fuzzy lump of a chest pulled every heart string as far as it would go. It felt like she was about to snap. And what was snapping? Madhukar had broken down plenty of times, that was part of how she ran away. Make a monster to run from. But snapping? Snapping felt like running towards something. Snapping felt like taking a page out of Doug's book. Going home.
A flood of good memories unraveled and the final wave left Madhukar standing at the shore with a pearl in hand. Glittering and gleaming. A mushroom pearl. She could melt into this grass below and become the dirt. Not even the cold would be enough. What did mushrooms want? Growth. So did Madhukar.
Beside her corpse upon the ground sprouted a little cluster of white caps. Madhukar always remembered those. They reminded her of Tahi-shei. She wanted to go back home.
Think "Speak"