Kera's muzzle twisted with thought. Smoke... check. Fire... check. Dragon... not sure. Something had to have made the fire, though. "I couldn't tell you," she was eventually responding. "It felt like a long time. It smells like everything's normal out there, though, so it couldn't have been that bad."

The wolf shook her head absently-- no wounds. She'd spent enough time in her chrysalis to take a good mend from any wounds that she might have initially sustained, and aside from feeling a little cramped, it was nothing a good stretch wouldn't take care of.

Kera, after all, had some boasting to do. "Unless those lights have gone anywhere while I've been out," she said, nose pointing distantly, "I'm the reason they're on at all."

"The caves were pitch-black when I was born, so I turned the lights on. Made a weird amount of enemies about it, actually-- some of the others liked it for hunting and killing people, I guess, but it was pretty shit to do, uh, anything in the dark. Everybody seemed... just miserable about it."

"I try to make sure nobody fucks with it anymore. It's a bad state for everybody to be in, but, uh-- I haven't really been able to." Because she was stuck.

With a little scrape, she shuffled on the spot. "It was a really long time ago now, though. Things've probably changed." She'd have to find that Overseer she had the faintest memory of meeting, and find out if Blackberry had died at her trial.

Her muzzle crinkled again. "Who're the bigwigs?"

"Well," said Kera, eyes shifting to watch Thalia through the gap. "Somebody had tossed someone's stone into the generator-- it's this.. big sort of metal hole in Polaris, in the river. There's little things in it that move with the flow of the water, but when the stone got into it, the whole thing jammed. When we got it out the lights came back on, but-- I don't know. It seems like a delicate thing, you know? Anyone can just-- toss something down there and make everybody miserable again."

She paused, for a moment, as her forepaws went to the hole and she began scrambling and digging, easing her burly body out of the crevice bit-by-bit. "There was someone I met, when I was a kid-- when it was dark. I showed her how to make mushrooms that could glow and she was so... happy." A long scchhh of her haunches against stone, followed by the thump of her legs hitting the ground. Kera immediately bowed into a stretch, paws well out in front of her and spine scythe-shaped.

"I don't know how long they must have been out for," she said, rising again and shaking a good amount of dust off her coat. "--fuck me, thanks. But, uh, I don't know. I just never forgot how she reacted to seeing some light, you know?"

To Thalia's next question, however, Kera was shaking her head-- "I don't know what a palace is. Or a Cepheus." There were only really a handful of rooms, last Kera checked-- even Hydra she had only heard briefly in passing, and never saw even the tunnel in Canis.

Kera found herself more confused than offended by the touch; at first, she had written it off as the unusual feeling of getting used to fresh air on her fur until Thalia apologized. She was quick, however, to dismiss it-- especially since some completely ludicrous shit was coming out of the faun's mouth.

"Deathmatch?" The wolf snorted with surprise. "That sounds fucked up, who's idea was that?" She could hazard a guess -- there was no shortage of bloodthirsty gembound around the caves, but Kera still found herself dreading the answer.

She licked her muzzle quietly for a moment, looking around. "I hatched here. That was my den," she nodded to the rubble. "At least-- I think it was. It's sort of hard to... tell." Orion didn't look much like she remembered it, really-- but Kera had never really taken in the view very often. She only knew her den by its fungi on its walls, and they were long gone. "I had two kids here, but one never hatched."

It was probably also taken by the fire, she realised with a grimace, picking herself up and having a little sniff around the hollow buildings next door.

It was a slightly unnerving pause she offered in that time, Kera realised. "Uhh, I'm sure it's fine, though. Do you live here?"

Kera had a little sniff at the offered banana. Fruit wasn't usually her thing, but this was sweet and familiar. She lifted it carefully from Thalia's palm without showing too much teeth and craned her head away to go snapping at it hungrily. It was only after the inital bite that she did realise how hungry she was, and thirsty, too.

She was snuffling the remains of the peel when her fur began to twinkle like sunlight breaking through clouds.

"Nemean is a familiar name," she muttered. "The purple guy-- the Overseer?" He was the only purple guy who had an unreasonable amount of eyes that she could think of-- but Kera was suddenly unsure if this was... offensive, somehow. The third, however, she could not even visualize-- the only black shaggy thing that came to her mind would have been something akin to Blackberry's spawn, and to her knowledge, none with red horns.

Kera took a taste of the peel and spat it back out, finding it simultaneously too chewy and too tough for comfortable consumption. "I don't need shelter, I'm tough," she grinned over, good-naturedly. "I'm fucking starving, though-- do you want to share food?" She would have preferred to catch something, thinking of it-- the exercise and fresh blood in her mouth would feel great.

She finally left the banana peel and sat back on her haunches. She should see Rift in Eridanus, if they go there, and-- "Are the Seven still around here?" She asked, mentally formulating a list of people to catch up with: Rift, Pride and Blackberry seemed like the immediate priority for getting up to date with what's happened in the caves.