ORIGIN

For a long time, the white stag-lion had wandered the cave without much aim. He lived a pleasant but aimless life, enjoying the forests of Eridanus and the mock-starlight of Orion with contentment. But that had represented a terminus: the end of his journey, in a sense. Without trying anything new, he'd come to rather a halt in his life.

This realization--and a little wanderlust--had sent his cloven hooves toward Polaris today. He had expected to take in the sights: the Spire, the river, perhaps the generator whirring away in the water. He hadn't expected the quiet cry of a child so close by.

Ears cupped forward and he hastened towards the voice--a shaky one, unsure. The scent of chrysalis struck his nostrils a moment later. A new hatch, he realized, and slowed himself a little, steps more careful now. He didn't want to frighten whoever it was, after all.

He came in sight of her after cresting a little ridge of stone. She was small--black, fuzzy; a predator, by looks, and one that reminded him of a friend of his father's that he'd seen only once or twice, in passing. He lowered his head a little, gentle-mannered, his pale eyes trained on the young one's face as he came closer. "Hello," he called to her, tufted tail flicking at his hocks. "My name is Arsu. Do you need help?"

It was a kindly question, and a soft-spoken one; it was a check of her ability to speak--the level of the language she might hold (for children varied widely, he knew)--as much as a genuine query.

Arsu came to a stop a few feet away, so as not to frighten the cub. He tried to bring forth a little light, something to make him perhaps less intimidating (if even he was) and provide some illumination, but nothing came; he pushed that thought aside for later, and set his focus back on the little leopard.

She could speak, then; and her pitiful question, the string of her name and 'where am I,' tugged at his heart. He felt deep sympathy at once, and tried not to grimace in sympathy. "Hello, Kira. We are in a cave called Polaris." He said this slowly, gently; her next question also stung. For when she said "something to eat," he at once thought of plants; he had even half-turned toward the tunnels of Eridanus with the thought of showing her where to graze when he remembered she looked rather like a cat.

A carnivore..?

Ahh, he wasn't--the best one to teach her such things, how to hunt and so forth, but he buckled down to it as best he could. Head tipped down, and magicka coalesced; from it, a small (and magical) fruit formed beneath his snout. Long and yellow, but not as big as it could have been, it split neatly--peel from fruit--when he picked at it with cloven hooves. "Do you know what you want to eat? Different creatures eat different foods. I eat plants, but you might eat meat," he explained, slowly, gently. "But you can eat this, for now. It is a snack, and it's magical, so anyone can eat it. You'll glow a little, but it won't last long."

He nudged the inner fruit of the banana toward the child. Being magical, it offered nutrition to carnivores as well, but he knew it wouldn't keep her sated for very long. "After that, you may need to hunt--if you eat meat. You will have to find the little things--the mice and birds--to kill them, and eat them," and this flickered sadness through his heart. Why did so many of them need to kill, to survive-? "But never kill anything that can speak. You can find the mice and birds and things almost anywhere," he added, and decided against overwhelming her for now with lists of the things that might be too dangerous to hunt.

He watched her, his faint uneasiness growing--she definitely was a carnivore, then. "Meat," she'd latched onto, onto the word and it seemed the idea, a grin across her feline face. But he was relieved, too, that she was eating, and he hastened to correct his accidental misinformation. "Ahh--no, that isn't meat. It's a fruit, but it's magical. Most creatures who eat meat wouldn't want to eat fruit, too."

He hoped he was making sense.

"Right, yes; if it speaks, you shouldn't eat it," he confirmed, gently. "If you aren't certain, you could try and ask. But you will find, I think, that most of the creatures that cannot speak have similar looks to them. The rats and the mice will become recognizable to you, and later, perhaps-" (and here, Arsu swallowed down his discomfort) "the deer." Granted, he was himself half large predator, but hunting and consuming meat had never really come to him.

Ahh, this--this was awkward. Her request left him fidgeting from one hoof to the next. He could hardly tell her no, but-...

"Oh, I could--ahh--teach you the basics-? But I do not eat meat. It might be best to find a mentor--a teacher, that is--who does. I could... show you how to find what you need to catch, I suppose?" he suggested, and lifted his gaze to glance around Polaris.

He was looking for any likely-looking nooks or crannies; his nostrils flared, too, for any odor of rodent, of mice or rat. Eventually he set off, angling toward a gap between two boulders. It looked like the right sort of place to find small prey, but would it house any at all--or would it be empty? He glanced back to ensure the cub was following him, and then he stepped over to the crack. Neck was lowered, nostrils worked, but he smelled nothing, here: it was stale, likely empty. "I don't smell them, here," he told her, and turned away again. Ears flicked this way and that as he looked around.

"Let's try and find some, first. I'd describe the smell but-... I'm not sure you'd be able to understand," he added, hoping it didn't sound too condescending. It was just that Kira likely had no frame of reference, really. "Just--because you've never smelled much before, I mean. You check that way, and I'll check over here, all right, Kira? If you smell something strange, let me know, and I'll show you what to do next." A nod of pale nose in one direction, then the other, and he set off: a slow, hoof-clicking pace carrying him to another gap in the rock.

He hadn't expected it to be that easy, of course; and now he paced along more like lion than stag, head lowered toward the ground and steps carefully silent. One ear flicked back at the child's call--she hadn't found anything, either--but he stayed quiet, at first, so as not to scare any mice he might be drawing near to.

It only took a moment, though. His body lit again in his light glow, soft white and shining; and as he stepped near another set of boulders, he caught the flash of eye-shine within.

"Here," he called, relieved. "There's mice, I think, under these ledges. It's too small for me to get into, but you might fit," he added, studying the space with a critical eye. He tried not to think about the actual mice, to feel bad for them, but that was hard.

"To eat one, you have to catch it, first, and kill it... It's a little sad, but that's how it is. You can grab it and shake it, or bite it hard on the head or neck, and that should do it. Just-... Don't eat it until it's dead. Until it's stopped moving," he clarified. Not only for mercy's sake, but because trying to eat something that could still bite your throat on the way down seemed like a bad idea.

Arsu stepped aside, using his light to dimly illuminate the space for Kira: from here on out, this was her show.

He was relieved (and a little saddened) to hear the crunch of teeth on bone. It meant that the cub would eat; it meant that a smaller creature had died.

But her slipping behind a rock--he wondered if that were some predator's instinct to hide its food, or consideration for his feelings. If the latter, he noted, it was a very good sign of the cub's sense of empathy; he'd known many (and most children, he thought) who wouldn't have thought twice.

"You did do it," he praised, quietly, warmly. He wasn't used to raising or teaching children, exactly, but he found himself pleased by her enthusiasm, and the rest came easily enough. "I saw. You did well." He glanced down in amusement--picking up one hoof, then the other, then setting them both back down--as Kira raced around and then rubbed against them.

Arsu's laugh at this was quiet, but warm--but her question had him wondering. What else would she need to learn-? "Well," he began, carefully--thoughtfully--"There's a few things, if you don't mind listening to me ramble, for a moment?"

He gave her a friendly glance, then took a few steps away, looking around. His head dipped down to a small patch of actual earth (most of Polaris was rock; but that was so terrible for lying on) and he used his teeth to pull out a few of the grass seeds he'd deliberately had embedded in the fur of one shoulder. These he scattered, and after a brief flourish of magic, they had a small patch of sprouting grass to lie on.

"There--that's better than rock," he said, glancing back to Kira. He curled up at one end, lowering knees and hocks to lie in the sprouts. "First, I'd say... be careful what you hunt. Never," he repeated carefully, "things that can speak--those are like you and I, even if they're small and look like food." Eating sentient things was generally frowned upon. "But there's also the cave rats--they're big, almost as big as you are, but they might smell or sound like those mice, at first. You've got to be careful, because they could hurt you," he explained. A group of Pitch Rats, he knew, wouldn't think twice about stripping a leopard cub to the bone--they were happy to eat the meat of hapless would-be predators, themselves.

"Then there's magic. Most of us have magic--but it comes in different forms. We can maybe make light, or water, or fire. Or grow plants, or move things with our minds," he added, thinking of both his parents as he spoke. "You should know that not everyone in the caves are friendly. Some are out for themselves, and they'll cheat or hurt other Gembounds--that's us--to get there. And last..."

Arsu considered. This was a heck of a long crash-course, and he didn't want to overwhelm the cub but nor did he want to leave her unprepared. "Each cave is different. You'll find it fun to explore, but it can take hours or days to get between them and you never know what you'll find, so make sure you're fed, watered and well-rested before you travel. Some caves are full of snow, others fields and meadows and flowers and trees... Others are all rock, like this place. Some are full of water. And of all those, some are more dangerous than others. The snowy one it's easy to get lost in. The sandy one--the really hot desert? Don't go there--it's called Hydra and it's very dangerous."

Gembounds die there, he thought, but didn't say--the concept of "death" was maybe a little heavy to be teaching an hour-old cub.

"So-... careful what you hunt. Careful about strangers, and careful where you travel, I guess." Arsu paused, pensive--was he being too negative? Was this enough? "Um--do you have any questions? Anything you'd like to know?"

Pale eyes shifted, regarding Kira with faint concern. He hoped he was doing right by her--even if they'd only just met. Even--no, especially--if they ever met again. Arsu'd never been responsible for setting someone up with a good start in life, but-... Kira seemed like she had a good head on her shoulders, at least.

He hoped that she'd do well.