ORIGIN

The mist rolling across the damp, leaf-littered floor of Cetus almost concealed the black and white stone nestled safely between the gnarled roots of a dying tree. It would be easy to glance over the area and see nothing but broken branches, brown leaves, and patches of shadowy, murky water here and there. Camouflage, for now, was what was keeping it safe from predators, although this was unknown to the child within.

In a moment, its life began. Where there was once nothing, only an empty body grown within a hard, stone shell, there was suddenly something. A spark, a flame - a new life. Another candle among the roaring flames that were the rest of the caves. With this little life came a rushing of consciousness, but not, initially, intelligence. In a moment, survivalist instincts kicked in and the creature assessed her situation. She could see nothing but some patches of light in front of her where (although she didn't realize) the light outside was able to push through the whites of the stone. She could feel, but her body had grown so used to the position she had been grown in, it was only with the smallest test of movement did she realize that she was curled in a ball. With that realization came a second. Something was keeping her in this position.

She had only been alive for around ten seconds when panic set in. She couldn't move. She tried to breathe in and only sucked in fluid. Her eyes bulged with sudden terror and she began thrashing against the walls of the chrysalis. She was stuck, enclosed, encaged, trapped, perhaps in the belly of some beast to drown, to die. Had she only been given life so she could experience the bitter taste of death too soon?

But her wild thrashing had an effect. There was a loud loud as cracks began to chip away at the gem's exterior. With this new opening, the fluid began to drain out, pooling over the ground and seeping into the already soaked earth just beyond. She didn't notice, however, and continued moving, causing the gemstone to shiver and shake, until she realized that she was no longer drowning. But a quick breath in told her she wasn't safe. She could barely breathe in her gemstone prison.

But there was hope. There had been change. And this third realization was her second spark. She was no longer a candleflame, but a proper fire, mind roaring with intelligence and cognizance, and the first ideas of her life began to calculate carefully in her mind. She stopped struggling and began focusing on the crack that was directly in front of her. They had appeared and the fluid had drained. Perhaps she could make it wider and escape her cage.

Fingers splayed, she rested her paws against the shell above the crack and began to push, back pressing against the opposite side of the chrysalis. It didn't budge. She pressed harder, but the gem didn't give. She was running out of time. She began to push more forcefully and suddenly against the crack, slamming her paws against the stone until she heard more cracking noises and knew that she was doing it right this time. One more hit and suddenly she felt the stone give way and her paw was escaping into the world outside.

Immediately, she pulled her paw back and stuck out her pointed noise, breathing in her first breath of fresh air. Perhaps not...fresh air, as the taste of the swamp was insepperable, but to her it was the purest breathe and she allowed herself a moment to enjoy it.

But then she calmed and pulled herself back in - she had found a way to escape, yes, but now she needed to consider her options. She didn't know what the world was like out there. She didn't know if she was safe. No, of course I'm not safe. Nothing is safe. I hatched to die. It was a bleak outlook to suddenly take, perhaps, but it gave her a strange sort of comfort. She had one simple task - survive. That was all. If she could focus on that, then she could move forward.

For now, however, she needed to figure out if the area was safe enough to come fully out of her prison (that now almost seemed like a sanctuary). Slowly and carefully, she peeled back bits of the broken chrysalis, enough that she was able to peak out her head and begin to scan the environment.

The young 'possum froze at the wet sound of steps through the mud. An ear twitched as she tried to make out what kind of creature it was, but she didn't have the kind of experience necessary to pinpoint an animal's species by the sound of their walk. She didn't even know if she'd be able to recognize a predator on sight. She should leave. She should run. Find a tree, climb, and escape. But the amount of sensory information she was struggling to process was slowing her down and she hesitated too long to even pull her head back into the chrysalis before the creature appeared.

It was there. It could probably see her. She didn't know what it was, if it was a potential predator or not, but she wasn't going to take the chance of trusting, only for it to swallow her up. It didn't occur to her that the spindly legs and graceful body would be well built for running and escaping, that the slender head and thick nose was best for grazing and would likely not have a carnivore's fangs, nor that the creature's feet were free of claws or even toes, like hers, only that it was much larger then her and, if it grew aggressive, she most likely didn't stand a chance.

She pulled her head back into the gem sharply, breaking off more bits of the shell and ignoring the sharp scratch as one dug into her cheek. Her lips curled up and her mouth opened in a quiet hiss, revealing the many rows of teeth that would definitely be put to use if the creature got too close.

It was coming closer. Would it eat her? Smash her cage? Her eyes flicked to the....whatever those things it was walking on were called. They looked strong and hard and she had no doubt they could crush her easily. She jerked back, hiss growing louder. She was scared, very scared. She didn't know, she wasn't sure, she didn't trust this creature and the weird sounds it was making, so she fell back on basic survival instincts. Display a threat until the creature backed off. If it didn't, play dead until it left her alone or she died.

But then it did neither of those things. It didn't attack, nor did it back off. It...sat. Right in the mud, right in front of her, and made noises. The hissing stopped, out of shock more then anything else, and she stared wide-eyed at the creature that was trying, she realized a second later, to communicate with her. Her mind began to move at a mile a second, trying to work out what it was trying to do, what it was trying to say...but she was totally lost. She'd been too lost in her own instincts to even try to work out anything that had been said to her.

Maybe there wasn't any particular meaning to it. Maybe it was just basic communication, of...friendliness maybe? That would be nice. It wasn't making itself look aggressive, but still it was large and it was close and making noise. (But if it were trying to eat her, wouldn't it have done so already?) So, in an attempt to communicate back to it, she decided to try it out for herself. It couldn't be too hard, right?

This time, when her mouth opened, instead of a hiss, a shrill voice came calling from the broken chrysalis. "AMA ABA GAGA NAMA MAMA BABA AGA!!" She wasn't quite sure what she was doing, but maybe if she made it loud, it would hear her better and somehow it would understand that she was just trying to communicate too.