The sodden Champion of Hydra was not looking so much like a Champion at all, today. It was still some hours before dawn, and the storm in Eridanus was raging. The rain was absolutely torrential: a near-deafening constant roar of water, punctuated only with cracks of thunder. The flashes of lightning that came before were the only thing to illuminate the darkness, made harder to see through by the sheets of rain and the roiling mist.

He'd carefully-hidden the three gemstones--along with a number of others two which he had not yet given life. But these three--he'd come back, after awakening from his chrysalis. Hydra had been hot, hellish, but Shango had already nearly forgotten it--or, rather, he wasn't thinking about it. He had a new scorpion tail, which was nice to have, and a new title of which he was proud (though it seemed meaningless so far--nobody's come up to offer him Free Champion Food or anything like that). Life itself had remained the same. Prowl, hunt, lounge around on tree branches, sun himself, call rain when he was bored. He was half-convinced he'd accidentally brought about this storm himself: he'd created some rain, and then it just... hadn't let up. It had gotten worse, and worse, and now it was just roaring all the time.

Sometimes, he roared back.

And though he loved the storms, his priority now were the stones to which he'd given life. He suspected they might hatch. He'd rushed back with the fear that they'd washed away, but he'd found them swollen with growing Gembound within, too heavy for only the rain to take from him. The ones he'd hidden away were still buried, though now with mud, and he'd given up digging those up to check on them in favor of lying wet-cat-miserable on those three that had grown.

One was a shining blue aquamarine, for which he held high hopes. He couldn't say why, but he'd been drawn to this one from the first, protective of it more than the rest. Then there was a beautiful peridot, whose color reminded him of his eyes, and a natural pink pearl. The pearl was the largest, heavy and too large for him to move even if he'd wanted to. He had no idea what might come out, but he laid close to them nonetheless. He had no idea, either, if his warmth got through to them, but he hoped it did. He had kept half-eaten rats lying nearby for when the children hatched (not even considering that they might be herbivorous) but he kept getting hungry and eating them, so there were only a couple waiting.

Shango pushed up, moving off of the peridot to the pearl. He was taking it in shifts to warm them, hoping that they'd stay that way. Because damn, for high summer, it was sure cold and wet out here.

When the pearl shifted beneath him, Shango at once moved. He turned, eyes widening, to see a soft pink-white thing emerging from the stone. Excitement thrilled through him, his ears coming up, his tail lashing lightly; watching with quiet chirps and purrs as the first of the children emerged. He touched his nose to Ivory's as she reached for him.

"Child," he told her, excited--and then the peridot nearby, too, was shattering. He shifted away, turning to face that one, his excited noises only increasing. Forgotten was the storm above: now what was important was this family, new and his own. He didn't feel what a parent might--no real responsibility, or authority, though the protectiveness was somewhat there. Instead it was like being granted sudden siblings: excitement, joy at what might be. Like having new friends!

He reached his nose for this new creature's, too; she looked like him, he was startled to see. His birdlike talons carefully plucked away stray shards of peridot, trying to help her out. Excited, he danced between them, from one to the other. One was large: pale, bulky, shining. The other looked like him, like storms and jungle and spots. "Ivory," he murmured at the first, dancing briefly around her. She was ivory, after all; it wasn't a very creative name. She was the off-white, creamy color of bones and tusks, and she had horns, and little jutting canines like he did. And the other--"Shiiiiida," he chirruped. "Stoooorm. I'm Shango. Storm." After a moment he got ahold of himself, managing an actual sentence.

"Welcome. You are Ivory. You are Shida. We are family."

Shango watched the two children, a sort of blank, confused awe overtaking him. He wasn't sure how life could just spring up, like this--even if he did logically know, even if he'd deliberately done it himself. There was just something so strange about it. Magic could create storms, yes--but life itself..?

He paced quickly over, curling his larger, warm form around both children, lying down and gazing up into the rain.

"That is a storm. Rain--the water falling. The thunder--" and here he interrupted himself to make a poor imitation, with his mouth, of crashing lightning--"And fog." His tail flicked slightly, the curved scorpion point and its surrounding scalefeathers lightly twitching toward the sky as he thought. He looked at them both, rapt, then up into the storm, then back to the two children.

"You are storm! I am storm." He paused, and considered making a demonstration of this. But his magicka flickered to other means, and he had another idea, instead. "We make storms, with magic. Or other things, with magic. Here," he added, as a banana simply appeared before him. This he split in half with a twist of his jaws and a pin of his birdlike forelimbs. He tossed one half to land just before Ivory, and the other, Shida.

"That is magic. Good to eat. And it makes you shiny," he added, proud of all of this: of his children, of his having made them, of how smart they obviously were.

Well, at least the children seemed healthy. Both were eating; one was already learning of magic and storms!--sort of!--and one was asking for more food.

Good!

Shango declared himself, then and there, a successful father. (Shango also had very little idea of what successful parenting looked like.)

Another banana, though this one smaller, popped out of thin air. He carefully split this with his claws, but it was uneven; he gave the larger portion to Shida, since she'd been the one to ask for more.

"Shida," he said simply, as he pushed that to her, and "Ivory," to the other. He then lay close to Shida, peering up in the rain, extending out one scalefeathered wing to cover each child. He did this absently, lying catlike, one paw folded against his chest with his tail twitching its end far behind him. He certainly looked majestic--as Shida undoubtedly would, some day. Ivory... he wasn't so sure. A glance over the fatter, paler pup--pup? Cub? Kitten?--told him that it'd likely be a large but heavy beast, very unlike him.

Is this one even mine..? he wondered, but there were similarities there, too.

He shrugged.

The hybrid stared back up into the rain for a moment, wondering what to do next. Certainly he was now a successful father, but he wanted the children to be prepared for life in the caves. He didn't care if they stayed with him; he'd have gladly accepted their company, or just as easily accepted their departure. He himself had never had a parent. But he'd offer them what he could, while they were still here, at least.

"The caves are big," he began again, trying to explain what he knew. "Life is--finding food. Without being food. Other things--usually larger things--eat smaller things. If you are eaten, you die." With this wisdom imparted, he paused, laboriously thinking over what else he knew.

It was not, unfortunately, all that much.

"There are caves with water. Caves with forest--this one, and one with swamp. There is a hot cave. And a cold tunnel. And a cave full of bones. The caves are all large." Another long pause. His mind worked, the gears almost visibly turning. Never let it be said that Shango was among the brightest in the caves. "A hot cave, with lots of sand. Past the bone-cave. Don't go there. Things kill you, there, and then you are dead. Which means not alive. Back to sleep, forever." A twitch of his tail. "Maybe you eat plants. Maybe you eat little things. Don't eat things that can talk. Only rats. Mice. The deer that don't speak." This was a generally unspoken rule, but he didn't want his kids getting into trouble early on. Some had to learn this the hard way, he knew.

He then lay there, wings still sheltering the children as best he could, pondering what else he ought to teach them.