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The juvenile Great Horned Owl shuffled quietly along the stone. One step. Another step. His talons clicked on the rock very softly, and he listened to the faintest of echoes that came back to him.

He was blind, his green gem eyes open only a slit, blankly unseeing. The beauty of the gleaming quartz-streaked walls and starry ceiling were lost on him. But he could hear the soft brush of air across the rock, the quiet hiss as a pinch or two of sand fell and scattered. It didn't let him see, far from it--he had no echolocation or any such nonsense, and he was far too young to use his experience with sound to fully guide him. But it did tell him that he was in a vast, open space; it did tell him that there was more open space uphill from where he was. His curiosity and a sort of empty sense of purpose drew him onward.

He wasn't hungry; he'd managed to eat a grand total of one little vole since his hatching (a hapless creature he'd almost literally stumbled across, managing to clumsily pin it by sound alone), but for now, that had been enough. Since then he had made his way out of Tunnel J and into Orion, blindly oblivious to the crystal-studded draconic carving that had leered overhead.

Dark found the ground sloping up, and up, and he grew weary. He needed to rest--and he could sense that there was something up ahead, something thick, that might provide shelter. It was probably an alcove of sorts, a little cave, and the lone little groundbound owl fledgling listened for awhile--and heard nothing threatening--before making his way up the slope.

He hit a ledge, and gave a soft squeak and a hiss, clicking his beak as he hop-scrambled up it. His flightless wings flapped to aid him, and he tumbled onto the platform of Orion's great stone throne. He kept moving until, quite by chance, he blundered into it.

He hesitated, and lifted one feathered foot, gently resting his talons on the throne's base, quite near to the seat.

A vague sense of sound swept past him, like a gust of wind carrying a voice that he could not quite make out. There was something else, too--a thing he could almost see, but not quite. He didn't really understand vision; to him, a blind creature, the things that Hindsight showed him could not be explained--as they were echoes of a sense he had never known.

In any case, they seemed to pose no threat, and so the blind ball of feathers curled up against the throne to rest, his green gem eyes slipping closed.

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Dark had been asleep, indeed, but with a sense of hearing that could detect a mouse moving a hundred yards away, it was little surprise that the wolf's approach halfway stirred him from his sleep. Still, it was awhile before he came fully to, stretching little taloned feet and splitting his hooked black beak in a yawn.

Green gem eyes opened and blinked owlishly around, and then Dark turned to stare directly toward Majesty. The realization hit with the thought:

Something is breathing.

Dark froze. Fear briefly gripped him as he wondered, in a vague way, whether he was being hunted. Slowly he drew his wings toward himself, fluffing out his feathers reactively and pulling in his feet. He leaned back against the throne's base, tufted ears flattening back, and instinctively sent out a frightened thought toward the breathing stranger--without the slightest awareness of what, exactly, he was doing. It felt natural, to him, like walking or eating. That said, it was a magic he had never used before--and thus it was shifting, shivering, not so much a vocal question as a whisper to Majesty's mind, and not even in words--as the owl knew few.

Instead, it was the faintest caress of thought, a touch of fear and questioning, tentative friendliness. If translated, it would have been a telepathic, frightened whisper something like:

"Are you friend, or enemy?"

The owl then lay there, staring blindly toward the breathing-creature, waiting. Hopefully he was about to meet a new friend, rather than the end of his life.

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The wolf's words were gentle enough, or at least his tone was. And he didn't draw closer, as Dark would have instinctively expected from a predator out for blood--instead there was a loud rustling sound, like fur ruffling and scraping over rock.

It put him in mind of the fox creature who, upon his hatching, had tried to use cruel magics on him--which had backfired, and sent the animal into a seizure. Of course, the blind owl had had no idea that the animal was a fox, that the magic had been harsh, or even that the rustling had been a seizure. But he'd known that the animal was in some distress, and now this one, too, was doing it.

Was it his own proximity? Did he make furred creatures fall upon the ground and writhe in pain? He blinked large gem eyes and shuffled blindly backwards, bumping the throne and fumbling up and into the seat. He didn't look like a king, though--just a lost, half-white-fluffed, blind fledgling bird.

He squeaked, worried, clicking his beak, softly speaking the only word he knew to associate with "friend." "...Bevy?" Dark then focused, trying to remember words, their meanings--how could he ask if this creature was all right? His open emotional state and worry triggered a surge of magic, or rather opened him to the spiritual memories of the throne beneath, though he didn't realize it at first.

Instead of grasping hidden truths, however, the little owl's juvenile mind was flooded with crashes of incomprehensible sound and visions--sights--that he could not even grasp. He shrieked and leapt from the throne, hurtling toward Majesty as if running for cover, trembling and crying out piteously as he reached the wolf. His mind still reeling, he tried to curl up to the canine, hissing blindly back at the throne, terrified.

All thoughts of the wolf potentially eating him were driven from his mind by the mad surge of magic. Instead, Majesty was suddenly a safe haven--something large, something, perhaps, with teeth and fangs that could keep the evils of the angry rock-chair at bay.

Dark took a deep breath, and like a frightened infant who knows only one word, cried out again.

"BEVYYYY!" he wailed, though his little-bird friend was likely nowhere near.

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The blind owl trembled, wide gem eyes staring about at nothing. At the sound of Bevy's voice, he at least sprang from the poor befuddled wolf toward Bevy, apparently trying to cuddle her, too--though she'd likely pull away, due to her feathers. He didn't know that, though.

All he knew was that he was like a frightened child, as near to sobbing as an owl could get, trying to forget the horrid clashing and flashing that had filled his mind to breaking. Creatures so young weren't meant to be blind, to see only nightmares--and on touching things, at that. Dark had felt shockingly alone, lost, and afraid. He still did--though the presence of the other fuzzy-creature had calmed him. And Bevy--now he felt, at least, like things might be under control. Bevy could--no, would--protect him. Dark clung close to her, feathers still ruffled straight out, still trembling.

"NOISES-Bevy! THINGS-Bevy! Scaaaaaaared!" He twisted his head, sitting on the stone, to stare vaguely in the direction of the throne again--though he was a little off--oblivious to the effect he'd had on poor Majesty.

The owl took a shuddering breath, and then more quietly, and still while facing the throne, nearly whispered--"Baaaaad..."

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