Before sight, there was sound. The pulsing of life, thrumming in the veins of the beast inside the chrysalis. The footsteps of lumbering creatures, passing time and time again, unaware of the life growing in the uppermost crags of the tunnel. Its earliest memories were sounds. Sounds were comfort and familiarity.





This feeling of touch was not. The yearning for breath, the will to open its eyes and face the light. These sensations overcame it, forcing its body to lurch, its claws to pierce the walls of its sanctuary and send it tumbling down, down, down the walls of the tunnel until it lay still on the floor of the cavern. Its neck flared- Once, twice, until its breathing was steady and its heart had regained its rhythm.





Periwinkle eyes slid open, slitted pupils widening in the brilliant glow that the creature would come to know as Pegasus. It was unnervingly quiet. No sounds to comfort the beast.

Quiet may have been an overstatement. In its daze from its birth and subsequent fall, it had failed to notice the long creature slinking in the shadowed crevices of the tunnel. Its vision had cleared in the time it took for the creature to speak, and it now admired the pale thing with awe. Despite never being taught the meaning of the words the other thing spoke, the young gembound seemed, to some extent, comprehend them.





"Purple?" It managed to choke out, parroting the stranger. It pushed itself up onto all four of its claws, taking a toddling step closer, tail- it had yet to notice it had one of those- dragging the floor behind it. "Purple?" it repeated, more confident in its voice this time, still not grasping the meaning of the question it had been asked.

It stiffened at the sudden closeness for a second, before stomping its forelegs in a way that, to it, was playful. “Purple.” It said again, almost wistfully, this time peering down at its own claws like it was just grasping what a “purple” was. It was purple. A rather pretty shade of it too- Not that it knew anything about being pretty.





It stilled in the short inspection save for its excited jittering, somehow forgetting its earlier fear of hatching, and the rather nasty fall it took. “Gray.” The creature parroted the long, gray thing. Gembounds were some fast learning things, let me tell ya.