ORIGIN - {HATCHING} Class Is Now In Session

SCHOLAR

In a tunnel between a cave of stars and a cave of howling winds, full of treasures and delights; here lies a gemstone; with hues of a soothing blue (or was it a brilliant red; a paradox shifting in the light, depending on what way you looked at it.)
But this gemstone was not just a ordinary gemstone. For inside it laid a creature that was steadily growing, preparing to enter this unforgiving world.

And now was its time.

The first bubbles of consciousness flitted through the creature's mind as eyes snapped open.
'Dark.'
'Wet.'
The fluid that once gave them life and kept them held fast was now not-warm (not-warm...lukewarm...they could remember it being hot...remember...reh-mehm-bur?)
The comforting darkness and walls that kept it stable were now too stifling, too enclosing. A barrier against its back. A barrier against its paws.
'Out.' A thought quickly went past the creature's mind.
The creature began to push.
'I...out.'
There was a sharp cracking sound as the alexandrite chrysalis began to fray. Their thoughts became more frantic as the cracking became more notable, they were almost out, almost free-
'I want out.'
'I want out!'

The crystalline womb burst forth a small white kitten, landing ungracefully on the ground, their fur sticky with amniotic fluid as they fought for its first breaths of air, spitting out fluid that was quickly replaced with soft gasps when the air managed to win.
They were awake. They were alive. Kitten blue eyes darted around the tunnel, absorbing so many new things...They saw the neutral colours of the rocks...They felt the smoothness of the floor under their paws. They felt the brush of air against their self. Which brought with it, another new feeling.

'C-Cold.' A word - their mind helpfully responded. A word that came from them. This was them? This voice was theirs? 'Cold.' Yes. Yes, this voice was theirs.
Words had so many meanings, so many ways to say them and so many of them to use.
But for now, this one word summarized their feeling right now. And so they repeated it, in differing tones, as if to test the waters. 'Cold?...Cold...Cold!'
What they were at this very moment.
And that was the fact this kitten was quite cold. And slimy.

Mm. She's behind.

Her work—her chaos—is not a thing that comes quickly. She is slow, careful, cunning; her siblings' work is a beautiful thing of their own, of course, the way they burn and swipe and ruin... but isn't it so much sweeter to plan it all out beforehand? A kind of strangely measured chaos; the wonderment of stacking up all the dominoes simply to knock them down.

But—as slow-acting as her chaos may be, she does have a schedule. An agenda to keep to, so to speak, and she's behind.

So she's intending to simply cut through the tunnel (hurried hoofbeats echoing on stone, unsynchronized) and leave it behind her.

But then—she hears it. A sound she has not heard for a long, long time, in the cycles since her birth: a distinct, sharp, crack! The breaking of a chrysalis. The sound of new life.

Oh, she just has to see this.

A little voice (what a sweet, tiny little thing! so easily breakable) resounds down the tunnel as she approaches; a mewing cold! cold! cold!

Many things Tsetse is, but cold she is not. Chaos burns through her veins, oil dripping intermittently from her maw (ah, she needs to stabilize soon; that will come later, however), constant fever making her skin hot to the touch and slick with sweat.

She can banish the cold. And she does so with something approximating a grin stretching across her face and a sweeping rattle of her tail; careful not to accidentally step upon the newborn, (so tiny, so tiny, could break her with a hoof) she lays herself upon the stone, using that same tail to sweep her against her side.

"Warm," she intones with a hiss of her vents, for once forgoing the usual grand vocabulary that marks her words in favor of something more... simple. Easier for a child to understand.

@Scholar

SCHOLAR

And, as quick as the cold was, there was another feeling to replace that - another thing to notice - the rattling of something sweeping them towards something new, something different, something...
Warm. The new voice spoke; the something was another someone - cold was replaced by this...warm. This someone was warm. Warm felt good, and the kitten would let out a soft purr from their throat.
'Warm,' they parroted back, in the same way they spoke cold just moments before; with differing tones. 'Warm!...warm?...warm.' A realization entered their mind, prompting a quiet response, spoken aloud.'I am...now warm. You are warm...too.'
A observation now noted to the world as they spoke a question, pausing at points as if to collect their thoughts, voice tinged with curiosity. 'What else...is warm?'

OOC Notes: i have no idea if i am writing this well; sorry for the shorter response!
@Tsetse

Oh! It... it vibrates. The little hatchling vibrates, as if its throat was full of something reverberating, thrumming.

Tsetse has never met a cat before... the little thing is so new. So soft. So immediately trusting; there is no fear in the little one's eyes, only a great curiosity.

Curiosity is good. Curiosity is what drives him to pick apart and destroy and dissect, some days. He'll always have a proclivity towards chaos, but the driving emotions vary, and curiosity is one of the many.

He's uncertain as to what to do with such a hatchling. Surely something one so little cannot fend for itself? But—what use is there for taking care of the mewling thing? Feeding it and taking care of it and making sure it does not wander off does not further chaos. It is not destruction. Quite the opposite, at that.

Still, it is... it is interesting. Perhaps he will entertain it, for a time.

"Many things are warm," he tells them. "Anything can be warm, if you heat it up." Like fevered rats writhing in their holes, confined to their burrows, frothing at the mouth; like fire untouched by chaos, purely elemental in its destruction. Like the feather-down of little birds just before they are ripped apart—

—like the tiny, tiny form of a kitten, curled up at his side.

How interesting. How interesting, indeed.

@Scholar
OOC: dw about it, you're doing great!!

The tunnel connecting their new home to the star-ceiling room was interesting. Fascinating, even! The carvings were unlike what they had seen in other tunnels- great monsters carved into the stone near the ceiling, ominously staring down at whoever travels through. But, as interesting as it was, as far as Assistant was concerned, it was of low priority. The carvings were pretty, but they didn't do anything. Unlike the big machine in Polaris's river, or the swirling windstorm in Monoceros.

Cries of 'cold! cold! cold!' bring them back to their own hatching. Those had been their own first words too, right?

They spotted a tiny white kitten- so much like themself, and yet seemingly opposite. A tiny puffball to rival their sleek fur, bright blue eyes opposing their luminous yellow ones. But that wasn't really what caught their attention. What caught their attention was the gigantic.. creature. All spines and eyes and twisted maw and extra legs.

Like the younger kitten, there is a great curiosity, but unlike the young kitten, they have learned fear. To a degree, anyways. As naive as Assistant can be, when met with a gigantic not-quite-horse, surrounded by a cloak of black flies, they meet it with a little bit of suspicion. But the hatchling themself is unharmed- in fact, the not-horse is curled up around them. So it can't be that bad, right?

"Um- Hello?" They'd call as they neared the strange pair. "What brings you two here?" Directed more so at the not-horse than the kitten- they didn't have much choice in where they decided to hatch, after all. Their voice was muffled, somewhat, by the stone, but it also caused an odd echoing quality. Ghost-like, almost, even more so when combined with their appearance. The large hunk of black stone obscuring half of their face- everything below the eyes.

@Scholar