Giggle was picking her way from the water pools up toward her bone pile when she heard a tiny, tiny clicking sound.

Her head tilted, and she crept forward more quietly, a bit tensed. What was that noise? She crested a thin ridge of rock and saw, some distance away, a tiny ball of black fluff crouched at a bone, pecking at it rather miserably, or so it seemed. Then it was clambering onto the bone, and looking around.

Giggle blinked, and straightened up. Was this some child of Aza'zel's? Had he left it here without telling her? The hyena glanced briefly around the room, but saw nothing else out of the ordinary. She could assume, then--for now, at least--that the baby bird was not bait for some sort of trap.

Eyeing it, she paced slowly over, pausing nearby and peering down. She noticed that it had one white talon, dark eyes and a whole lot of fuzziness. Wondering what in bones' name it was doing here, she spoke.

"Who are you, then, little one?"

Giggle wasn't an adult herself--not by a long shot--but still, the tiny crow could have probably sat on one of her paws. She sniffed a bit closer--it smelled of other places, not of bones, not yet--and sat back again, awaiting a response.

I wonder if it's useful. I wonder if it's been sent here? It likes bones, at least--that's something.

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Roll the bones.

Giggle flinched, jerking her head back with a grimace as the tiny black fluff screeched at her. How could something so tiny be so loud?! Had she been this loud when she'd been hatched? Is that why Aza'zel had found her?

"...The Bone King called me Giggle. That's my name." She was still young, yet, but her own voice was husky and deeper--and much, much quieter. "You don't need to be so loud, Eve. Are you here for a reason?"

Please don't let this thing be as irritating as the Too-Cute...

The memory of the sickeningly saccharine adorable perky Fennec Fox made Giggle grimace again, her stomach turning. Eugh, just thinking of it made her sick. Hopefully this... Eve-fluff, would be less disgusting.

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Roll the bones.

Giggle stared as the bird spoke. And then--and in a fashion that was clearly not AT the bird directly, not mocking, but at some situational humor that wasn't immediately clear--she reared back her head, opened thick-fanged jaws and burst into cackling laughter. For awhile her chittering giggles rang through the cave, and then she looked down to grin at Eve.

"Yes, food. Come on," she said, at length.

The thing's worse than I was. Or... maybe not. Hrmph.

She was remembering her own hatching--the first word out of her own mouth had probably been FOOD, or something like it, and upon meeting her first other Gembound, that was precisely what she had begun saying. FOOD? FOOD? With a soft snort at the memory, the still-fluffy spotted hyena picked her way down the slope, back toward the stagnant pools of water.

Partway down she glanced back up, turning slightly, to see if the little black ball was following her. The slope was gentle, the rock dry and relatively even, so hopefully the thing wouldn't somehow fall or hurt itself somehow. Not that Giggle was enormously worried about the well-being of some stranger, but this was a newborn, by looks, and she held no malice toward it. Not yet, at least, she thought wryly.

From down below, by the stagnant water, the faint odor of carrion carried up.


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Roll the bones.

Satisfied that the baby blackfluff was following her, Giggle turned and padded down to the shallow divots in the rock where water pooled. Here, at one little honeycomb of flat stone ridges that wound between several of them, where a few broad-leafed, low-set ferns spread their feathered fronds over a flat patch of slightly-muddy earth, Giggle had left a bloodied ribcage with a few scraps of meat still hanging on.

She didn't eat at her bonepile; no, that was for bleached bones, old bones, dry bones. That was a sacred place. This--this had just been her dinner, that's all. She stepped delicately over the still-red flesh, which hung with strands of skin and sinew, and turned to regard the little black bird. Her voice came quiet, and confident.

"Eat, then," was all she said.

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Roll the bones.

Giggle slowly cocked her head to one side, staring blankly at Eve as she spoke.

Why... live with bones? What kind of stupid question is that?

But she didn't say this aloud. Instead she just blinked her dark eyes, shook her head, and sighed.

"What do you mean, why live with bones? Bones are best. Big bones, small bones, meat, dry, white, yellow. They smell like food. The bones speak to me. I can see through them. This whole cave is bones, bones, bones. I was born in bones."

Giggle sat, regarding the tiny bird with faint amusement.

"Whose are you? Where did you come from? Why are you here? ...Are you still hungry?"

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Roll the bones.