She had spent-... some time, here.

Hours?

A day? More?

She didn't know. She'd woken then slept, dozing, and eventually had stood and tottered about, lost in the pitch dark. Her magic had come to her then, for the first time, and she'd wreathed herself in the faintest silver glow. It hadn't been much--it had barely been anything at all. But it had let her see the wall just before she walked into it, and spared further pain to her little nose.

Shadow did not know this world, nor the rules of it. She didn't know what to expect, or do. She only knew the dark, now, and its dust, and a gnawing at her belly and dryness of her tongue.

When Bacchus came, she didn't hear him, or see him. Her light had by then gone out, and his padding was quiet enough... and there was no light to frame him. Only his voice startled her. And then, the smell: the tang of blood that spoke to that grumbling in her stomach and promised to ease it.

She hastened for that smell with clumsy steps, ears pricking up, silver eyes now wide. "Food," she parroted softly, and bit for the soft, furred flesh of it.

It took her a moment to learn to eat. To tear a bite weakly away, her puppy's jaws and muscles pathetic in comparison to even a rabbit's muscled body. And then she was lapping thirstily at blood, blinking as she sought a word to put to what she needed. "Thirsty," she managed, and looked up hopefully, blindly, toward Bacchus. He had brought her here--made her safe, he said--and now had brought her food. Could he help her further? Would he?

She had no reason to think he wouldn't, and every hope that he would.

She tipped her runt's head to one side, listening. The part of the wolf cub that--in better company, or even alone--might have begun to find her strength, her courage, now instead shrank away in the face of her guardian and protector.

He knew how to help, and how to provide. He would care for her. She didn't need to risk herself, then; she could trust him, follow him, and he would teach.

She chose, in her utter lack of experience, to do so. Her blind, silver blink up at him was just that: trusting. But a name-...

Shadow looked around, seeing nothing in the absence of any light. There were only a few things she knew. Gemstone chrysalis, and choking. Dust and darkness. So far, the darkness was the only good of those things, if one did not count her adoptive father himself. It seemed to shroud, to protect, to hide away the potentially bad things... if there were any, and instinct shied from that question.

"Shadow?" she offered at last, looking back to him. It was tentatively spoken, a little broken--only her third or fourth word, if that--and she hoped it was a good choice.

She waited, to see if he'd approve, even as she quietly dipped a head in deference to her own hunger, nibbling at her meal.

She listened, large ears swivelling, and her head came up after a moment. She seemed to think, blinking, her tongue lashing at the blood on her muzzle, though the only thing visible in the dark were those silver irises.

She'd not seen the garden, yet. She wasn't sure what one was. The distant voidlight had been glimpsed but she'd remained dutifully in the darkness, where she'd been put. So-... that begged the question: "What is... 'garden?'" Her words were halting, unsure. And instinctively, as she fumbled with language, she recognized that her question wouldn't give her the right answer. She struggled to find the word. "Where?" she blurted, at length.

There--that was right.

So there was water... and plants, that would hurt.

She made a note of this, not fully understanding most of it, but struggling to commit it at least to memory. As she looked down toward her meal again, she remembered the faint magic she'd drawn up, before. It was frustrating, at least a little, trying to find the food with nose alone. She tried to call that magic back up again, and it came in a silver glimmer that wreathed her body. It provided just enough light for her to see the meal beneath her, and she went back to it with a puppy's singleminded intensity.