Bones crunched underneath the young calf's hooves, and a shivering dread edged along his spine. He was only out here because of Saga's softly spoken nudging to go out and explore, and he, for one, thought that his mother thought much more highly of the experience than he did. The world was dangerous and dark and scary, and he felt that, at any moment, the floor would open up under his feet and swallow him up to crash him on the cave floor of Monoceros like it had promised when he woke up.

So he walked carefully, his eyes on his feet, moving between long femurs and delicate finger bones, flinching when his back hoof felt a crunch that echoed in the quiet chamber. Heat rolled off of him in small waves, and small sparks lit the way, his only source of light.

Why oh why did Mama tell him to explore such a scary place? The firelight from the embers he gave off cast a dreadul illumination upon the sickly yellow gleam of bones, and he, at one point, had gazed into the empty eye sockets of a cow skull, and had skittered away on long coltish legs and hid from it for what seemed like an eternity in the timeless dark, his heart fluttering in his ribcage. He wanted to go back to his mother and sister and hide in their cool, damp fur - what was so wrong with that?


"Speech."

Slowly, slowly, he'd turned his head around the stone he hid behind, but the darkness loomed and swaddled anything more than a few feet away from him in darkness. The dread that he'd felt once he entered the room covered him like a cloak, and his warm russet fur stood up on end. He didn't want to be here, he wanted to leave, bolt, cover himself in the safety and cool affection his mother and sister gave him. The floor felt unsteady under his hooves, but there was nothing else to stand on but bones. A shiver ran up his spine and a pressure accumulated at the back of his neck, his muscles tense to do something.

One hoof tentatively edged over a thick tibia, longer than he thought most gems could have, wishing he could stand on something else to get off the ground like a child's game of 'lava floor'. He wanted to run back to the entrance, but the thought of crunching bones all the way there instead of the sharp ring of hooves on stone edged up his fear and nervousness to a pitch.

He whipped around at a voice that came out of nowhere, and his pupils shrank to a pinpoint at seeing a single eye wrapped in shadow peering at him next to a pile of skulls. He let out a blatant peal of fear, and the tense feeling released itself in a shower of sparks that bit into him and around him, and, mindless, he stumbled and ran.

(rip ogun, u were supposed to be cute and friendly, why u roll a 1)

"Speech."