She had her bags fastened securely to her cervine half. She'd double, triple and quadruple checked the contents-- dried herbs in one, and in the other were rations and a ragged waterskin her father had given to her. Not a lot, but enough to make it to Cepheus with a few stops along the way to rest. Vivilene had spent the last few days re-working her legs to build up the strength and resting to collect enough energy to go home. She stretched one last time, re-fastened the shimmering shawl around her chest, and--

Crack.

The hybrid nearly jumped out of her skin. She cleared a few feet in the air but landed neatly on her hooves, scraping hesitantly against the cave floor as her tail lashed uncertainly behind her. She wasn't unfamiliar with the sounds of Orion by now-- semi-regularly, large chunks of quartz would break off the ceiling and shatter on the ground. This was no regular piece of quartz.

There weren't many people in Orion. At least, there weren't many people that were... exactly capable of taking care of someone who had just broken out of their chrysalis and was breathing their first gulps of air. For the record, Vivilene didn't count herself among them. Children, like most things, made her anxious.

... but she was fairly prepared with food and water.

She could risk it. Go a little hungry, go a little thirsty for the benefit of someone else. She began stepping cautiously into the forum, scanning rows of buildings with wide, moonlit eyes until she came across a small, wet, wobbling thing. I wonder if I looked like that, the thought passed her by as she bowed her upper-half into the crumpled doorway.

"Hi," she whispered. Her voice was soft and smooth like silk, but barely-there. A little croaky with disuse. She still needed practice with speaking verbally. "Ahh... here."

Padded hands drove into her saddlebag and produced a fist-sized, fuzzy fruit-- yellow-orange blushed deeper pink. A 'pench,' Vivilene thought it was called. She couldn't quite remember what her father had called it. She offered it out to the foal in a careful hand, lips taut. "It's... ahh, food. You eat it."

A beat. "With your mouth," Vivilene added.

"Food," Vivilene echoed, smiling. "It's a pench."

She didn't seem to mind too much as the foal's teeth snagged her fingers-- for the most part, the inside of them were padded in thick, dark callouses. The outsides were a little more sensitive, but it wasn't like the baby teeth were particularly sharp or damaging. Yet.

The foal was snuffling, and Vivilene went looking through her bag again. "I don't have a lot more," she murmured. "It's hard to find fruit here. Ahh... here," she offered a handful of small, scarlet berries. Vivilene wasn't sure what they were called, but they were nice and sweet.

"I'm Vivilene," she said. "Do you know what your name is yet?"

"Oh!" Vivilene said, smiling-- but she wasn't very sure why. That was, all in all, kind of a terrible name to have. Filth was something you buried and didn't think about-- it was something you washed away. It was something people didn't like, but Vivilene didn't quite have the guts nor heart to really say anything about it. A part of her wanted to suggest new, nicer names-- Pebble, or maybe Ebony, but instead she just nodded and smiled.

It seemed... happy, at least, with Filth. "Okay."

She was definitely far and away, not cut out for this. Attikias would have been good for taking Filth in and giving it a nicer name and making sure it grew up happy, but Attikias and the rest of her family were rooms and rooms away. It was a lot of travelling for something that was just born a few minutes ago-- and Vivilene couldn't exactly... leave it here. It wouldn't be right.

She wondered if Pride was still in Orion. "Do you have a family?" She asked Filth in the meantime. "Ahh... a dad, or a mom. Siblings. You... might have heard them?" She'd heard Attikias milling around when she was in the chrysalis, for days before she broke out of there. Vivilene went with the gentle assumption that parents simply lingered very close to their childrens' chrysalises before they hatched.

That seemed like the responsible thing to do, at least.

"Are you called Filth because you were in the dirt?" Vivilene asked softly-- though it was an absolute apparition of a question, despite it being quietly earnest.

She lifted her hands out in front of her and towards Filth to make sure it didn't fall over too heavily; only once or twice did she try to guide Filth to proper balance by shifting its flank one way or the other. She knew the legs were difficult to handle, especially in the begining. At least theirs seemed considerably sturdier than hers.

Ahh-- her family. Where to start? There were a lot more words about them than Vivilene could ever handle. "I have a family. Ahh... it's good," she said softly. "I can show you them, I think, if you want?"

Filth bumped into a wall and, gently, Vivilene guided it into open space. "I have a big family. It's... ahh, it's a lot, sometimes, but it's nice." Some Gembound just didn't have families: she knew this. The Caves were a strange place to be in, but it did seem sad that some had to go it alone.

And, speaking of-- "My, ahh... my grandfather, Pride, might be near," she said softly, like it were a secret. "He might have more food."

Now that Vivilene thought about it, she wasn't really sure where her name came from, either.

Attikias and her siblings had been calling her Vivilene for as long as she could remember, but the name had to have come from somewhere, hadn't it? Her sister, Hunter, had told her his name. Vivilene told him hers, but she couldn't remember where it came from. It wasn't Attikias: that much she was certain of.

Maybe names, like most things, were just magic.

"That's okay," Vivilene said at last. "I don't remember where my name came from either." And then-- because Vivilene had already forgotten if she'd said it or not --"My name's Vivilene."

At Filth's question, Vivilene looked down at herself. Being purple was also something she hadn't quite thought about before, either-- but she was very purple, sure. "Oh, ahh... no, Pride is white," she said. "But, ahh.. he's nice. He's... he's kind and gentle, ahh... he looks a little like you, but white."

She placed a gentle hand on Filth's hide, leading it out into the open forum. She called out-- barely. "P-Pride?" The way the forum was set up to reverberate noise helped, at least, carry her words further than they might have achieved otherwise. "Are you here?"