Her eyes were unfocused. They stared off at nothing as she rocked unsteadily onto her chest from where she'd laid on her side, and her gaze didn't even approach Wilder. It was drifted off to the black cat's right, looking past her, past Canis, past the caves even--trying to find something, anything, of all she'd just Seen.

It was a muddle of imagery and knowledge, packed too tightly to unravel just now. And she felt herself...

The old hyena hesitated, trying to focus on the feeling she now felt, the one that was sweeping in around her like a tide. She felt...

...cut adrift.

Unloosed. Unchained, in her own way, but--no, untethered was more accurate. She blinked, eyes focusing, and looked around her.

Canis felt somehow alien. Her home--her lifelong home--felt foreign to her. It was... wrong. No--she was wrong-? It was all wrong. She was in the wrong place--the wrong time. But I'm not, it's the right one. But how many have there been? How many are there--will there be? When are they-? When am I? It's one of them--one of all of them--which one? Nine. It's Nine. It's Nine. I'm in Nine. -That's right... right? She tried to think back to all she'd just seen, to try and make sense of it, to summarize it for her own mind. But when she reached, it was the chaotic tangle of billions of pieces of information all struggling to come to the surface. Too much to categorize, to pick through. It all thrust for her consciousness at once, a thousand new words and concepts battling for her mind. She fought, for a moment, to try and remember: Nine what? But words that seemed almost nonsensical battered at her, a feedback echo that could not quite bring with it the related knowledge. Nine-... Coil. Cycle. Recoil. Recycle. Coil. Coil. Cycle. Recoil- She winced, taking a short gasp--and her gaze fell suddenly on Wilder, quite by chance.

Realizing she wasn't alone was a shock and, blinking, Giggle belatedly realized that Wilder had spoken.

It felt like the cat was someone from a lifetime ago. A thousand lifetimes ago. With her new perspective, Giggle felt as though Wilder was... a distant, faint fragment of a memory. All of this felt that way. The caves, her entire lifetime, Giggle herself: the briefest blink of a flit among-... How many years has it been? It was meaningless, all of this. All of them. But--not, too, it was-

She struggled to bring herself around. No doubt to Wilder she'd look dazed, lost, unfocused still. But after a moment she grimaced and studied the cat, and fought to find her name. That name was dredged up, after a beat: tugged through the muck of a hundred wars and the lives and deaths of billions of others.

"...Wilder," she managed, and hesitated again. "I knew you." Her brow furrowed as she fought to reassert herself. "I know you," she corrected herself. Because Giggle lived here. She lived her life here.

So why did it feel like she was someone else, now? Like she had crossed the span of all time, seen all things; like this place was only a blip that she'd once visited?

It was Omen's presence reasserting itself that steadied her some. The bird had been there, as shocked and jolted as she by the imagery, but its simple mind was quite unable to comprehend these things and it'd been spared, somehow. Maybe Giggle's own subconscious had blocked it away somehow to save her, or maybe the bird had passed out, or-... she didn't know. But now Omen's mind was frightened and yet soothing as she flitted down, her feathered body pressing to the hyena's flank. Giggle looked down, startled, and nuzzled her and that act grounded her. Grounded her, and also made her feel suddenly fragile, like an ice spire that might any moment fracture and fall.

She wasn't sure that she wasn't.

She wasn't sure who she was.

@Wilder

She had been prepared for Giggle to be different - Hume's magic in such quantities changes those that touched it. But this was something much more severe then she anticipated. She frowned, tilting her head up as the hyena stumbled, dazed, grimacing. She needed to help. But...what could she do? She doubted that the little trick she'd done earlier would do anything to help this, and she feared what consequences there would be for both of them if she tried.

When the older gembound's eyes met her, she saw...unfamiliarity. No? No, she was looking at her like she knew her, but she was confused. Wilder wondered how much she had seen, how lost she felt now. Memories of the sky came to her, of the Vaa, the wild mountains and valleys and the sky. The sun and the planet and the sky. How little she'd felt in that moment, how lost. Who was she, in the vastness of everything?

Perhaps Wilder was one of the very few that really understood Giggle's plight, even if she did not fully know what the hyena was experiencing herself. So, with that in mind, she offered her mind forward - not to probe into her memories, not to give her any of hers, but offer something like a helping hand to hold onto while she set herself back down to the ground. And, indeed, although she tried not to peer too far, she felt the confusion, the vastness of knowledge, and how lost Giggle was within it. So she stayed there, giving her time, and an open offer - I am here. You know me. She remembered what Giggle had said about Dovefeather, how she had been nice. So Wilder stepped forward, hoping she was not averse to touch, and began to purr. She offered touch, a brush against her front legs and, if she allowed it, Wilder would sit right on her paws and purr as loud and as deep as she could.

@Giggle

The link was not... unwelcome.

But it-... Giggle tried to focus, to understand what she was feeling; and Wilder, should she so wish, would be privy to it all.

She took a moment, cat crawling--purring--into her "lap" of upright forepaws--to think.

Sometimes, when she'd had a bad day, Giggle would simply go to sleep. Waking the next morning often seemed to put a bracing distance between her and whatever had bothered her, so it was easier to handle, as though it'd cleared her mind.

Grief was easier, over time. The pain never faded, but it passed.

Passions--short-term interests--muted as the weeks went by.

This... was something like that. It was like, in the blink of an eye, this--all of this: Giggle, Wilder, the caves themselves--had become a distant memory. But... they hadn't. She was here; she belonged here and now and she knew that. But it was hard to reconcile that with the distance she now felt. As though "now" were some time long ago; as if Canis was someplace she barely remembered. The backdrop of so much time, of so many lives and so much birth, death, and war, had shrunken Giggle's world to a pinprick in a tapestry of other things.

Yes, it was also hard to focus on one thing amongst the chaos now churning through her mind: all of that information, even condensed, even packed away, was hard to sort through. But-...

She shook her head as if to clear it, and looked down at Wilder with a slightly furrowed brow. "Thank you," she said quietly. "For that, and-" (and her paw nudged slightly beneath her) "...this. I'm here. I know you, it's not-..."

She was silent for a moment, and Wilder would feel the odd sensation of no thought. Of that sense of being cut adrift on a sea of other things, a sea so vast, so dark and so deep that that tiny rowboat of Giggle's existence felt... forgettable.

"This feels so far away. Like so long ago. That doesn't-... Make sense. I was just here." Even her own words felt hollow, unimportant.

That was it. Unimportant. Just a speck, a grain on a beach. Not lost or overwhelmed, just...

...It was like she didn't care about any of this, anymore.

But she did--didn't she? That's what made it all worthwhile, what made life beautiful. The families and the relationships and the love and stories, threads that ran through that whole big tapestry, even if they were just individual threads.

She took a breath, and winced. "It's hard to think," she confessed, peering down again at Wilder with furrowed brow and empty eyes.

And then--pondering--"Is this what you feel like? That-... Madness?"

@Wilder

Wilder forced herself to be patient as Giggle came back to herself. It did not happen quickly. She did not pry deep into Giggle's mind, but the brief touch against her thoughts gave her some insight to what Giggle was experiencing. And...yes, she could understand why she was so distant and confused. A spark of guilt arose in her gut and threatened to light through her veins, but she quickly smothered it with a quick, She wanted this. She had warned her, given her plenty of time to step out of it or choose another wise. It was not her fault.

She looked up as Giggle at last looked down at her and spoke. She slowly got to her feet once she saw the Giggle was becoming more present and less...confused. She sat up next to her, close enough that the purring was still audible and she could lean in if she found that it helped. Wilder wasn't sure - she'd never dealt with anything like this before and she strained to find a way to help. She just wasn't sure how.

"I understand," she mumured, and she did. "I can't imagine to what scale you are experiencing it - being thrust into something way beyond your depths, and then everything doesn't feel real." Her eyes slid closed. "I went to the surface once, and when I returned I couldn't keep my head on straight for a while. Nothing felt real, or important. But life settles back into its normalcy." Pink eyes blinked open again, a wisp of cosmic gold curling back and disappearing into their depths. "It will get easier." Hopefully.

Wilder shook her head. "No, mine is...different. I think it may be different for everyone that has been touched by...this." She remembered the fungus surrounding them, the ever-looming threat that Mother was listening, and quickly changed her speech a little bit. But after what had just happened, it barely felt important.

"I'm sorry." Ears twisted back, just a little. "Are you going to be okay? Do you need food or rest or anything? I'll help however I can. Just tell me what you need." She hoped she wasn't talking too fast, saying too much. Giggle was probably quite overwhelmed.

@Giggle

Giggle was silent again as she listened, her gaze alternating between staring almost emptily at Wilder and staring very emptily off into the distance. She showed no sign of whether the purring helped, or not. She didn't know if it did. She didn't even know how she felt, in that moment; she felt... empty, as though her eyes only reflected her heart just then.

Does it not feel real? she wondered, as Wilder spoke. It feels very real. Too real. So real that-... Again, that sense--that this was only a meaningless brief moment in one of a billion places--struck her. She tried to shake it away with a faint grimace. The idea that Wilder had gone to the surface struck her, too, the words penetrating past her thoughts. Five minutes ago that'd have shocked and intrigued her but now-? She thought almost indifferently back to what she'd seen above.

Tamulus, she suddenly remembered--and remembered him looking right at her. And-...

"Noctua," Giggle suddenly said, aloud. She squinted, brow furrowing, and peered down at Wilder. She ignored Wilder's just-spoken question--the cat had asked if Giggle would be okay. She couldn't answer that, because she didn't know; she felt fine. But this... this was more important, wasn't it?

"It was there, with--clouds, and a tall..." Giggle hesitated, trailing off. The thoughts, even now, were so hard to pull from the tangle of all she'd seen and... what was the name of this thing? She nearly gave up, for a moment, instead straining to simply show Wilder, but nothing came. Giggle suppressed a new (yet somehow distant) panic that her magic had been damaged, in some way, instead buckling down to try and explain it. "Storm clouds. A tall--building? Like the Palace. She--it? Said you'd find it, first-..." Black muzzle wrinkled back in another grimace as she tried to puzzle it all out. Had the building been speaking to her? Or something else? "I don't know if that word is the name of the building, but you're supposed to find it." Her affect was still flat, empty, but there was at least a little intensity to it now.

That being said, her mind was drifting back as though tugged by impossibly strong tides: she was plunging into clouds, into thunder, into War and Birth and Death, and she had to fight to claw her thoughts free.

She crouched, head buckled down as though straining at a burden, and exhaled heavily.

@Wilder

She was trying to keep herself from getting distressed at Giggle's complete disregard for her own state. Wilder couldn't blame her, though, with the burden of knowledge that had fallen on her shoulders. She was going to try something else, push in a different way, when Giggle uttered that word - Noctua.

She stared, frozen. "Noctua," she repeated. "I...know it. The owl constellations. She showed it to me at the end of my wish but...I don't know it beyond that. I have been looking for it." Her ears drooped a bit. "But I can't find it. Do you...know what it is?"

Wilder crouched, thoughtful for a moment. Had Hume mentioned her in Giggle's visions? Noctua...a palace? She had thought it was a constellation. But Giggle was talking in broken phrases and fragmented thoughts. So, for the time being, she pushed it aside. It wasn't what was important right now.

"Never mind, don't answer that." She picked herself off the ground and reached forward with her magic, approaching Giggle's mind like an embrace. Not prying deep into her thoughts or what she'd seen, but rather trying to fill her mind with nothing. Blank, peaceful, silence. A smother and a blanket over what was surely more then a moon's worth of knowledge. She couldn't block it out completely, but she could try to give her a reprieve.

"Giggle, listen," she murmured. "You can't work it all out right now, okay? I'm sure it's a lot. I don't want you to lose yourself in it."

@Giggle

There was so much, and there was nothing, and-

The nothing eclipsed the rest abruptly, Wilder's guidance taking hold. Giggle's gaze sharpened a little, and she looked at the cat, considering her words; then her black muzzle wrinkled back in an ugly hyena grin. "I'm all right," she assured, and seemed more herself, just then. Dark humor, tempered by far too much trauma into stubborn amusement. Yes, she'd seen the fabric of reality, but she was a little hungry, too, and she could feel rock beneath her paws, and Omen at the edges of her mind (and Wilder there, now, too) and that was all bracing enough to slowly anchor her in the here-and-now. Admittedly there was so much more now swirling at the edges, but with a shake of her head, Giggle dismissed it.

Or, tried to. She did her best, in any case.

"I owe you one. Maybe more than one," she amended hoarsely. "You're right, it is a lot. A lot to pick through but... I'll need time, for that." Time, and maybe bones? She looked off toward her bone pit, thinking, but nowhere in these visions had she seen a hint of bones. She shook her head and looked back to Wilder. She'd been so fearful she'd find out that her fortune-telling was somehow false, but after all she'd seen it hardly seemed to matter, now. Going forward, in any case, she could use them to focus her thoughts, maybe--to meditate on the tangled chaos in her head, to try and sort the individual threads apart.

Well-... she'd see. "I'm trying to think too much," she admitted, with a sigh--and that was with Wilder's help. "To do too much at once. I need to rest, yeah. But I owe you one," she repeated, quiet, dark eyes earnest as they sought Wilder's face.

She'd been given a real vision, one of everything, and for what-? To pay back some vague perceived insult? Well, that had been paid back a hundredfold easily, and now she was in a little cat's debt. Somehow, for once, she found it hard to be annoyed at that.

@Wilder

She breathed a sigh of relief. It had worked. At least, for now. She could see the clarity return, in Giggle's eyes and in her voice. She kept the blanket going for a moment longer, but then the magic began to slip from her grasp and she slowly eased it away, hoping that the brief reprieve was what Giggle needed to return to her feet.

Wilder shook her head as she stepped back, giving Giggle back her personal space. "You don't owe me anything. It was a gift." A curious nudge in her mind made her pause. "Although...once you work out some of it I wouldn't say no to hearing what you've discovered. No rush, of course, but I also do wonder about many things." Ever since she'd seen the sky, she'd always wondered about...everything. Tamulus and Jupiter, who they were and who they are. The forces at work - Chaos and Order and Natural Order and Autonomy and...whatever else was there, because she couldn't imagine that being it.

"Take all the time you need. I'll be around, if you need to talk. I get it, to some degree. So I can be an ear if you need." She had seen Giggle glance towards the bones and gestured to them, now. "I'm sure they can help you parse through it. I came across kind of my own way of...fortune telling? So if you need a second opinion, or an outside perspective, I'll be in Andromeda. Or around." She shrugged and looked at Giggle, taking her in to see if there was anything else she could help with now, while she was here. Maybe getting food, or water, or helping her mentally, so she could rest.

@Giggle

The come-and-go, ebb-and-flow nature of the pressure on her mind was disorienting. As Wilder's presence receded she felt it rise in her thoughts again, pressing down--but now it was easier to recognize, to at least try to organize too.

She looked around, barely hearing at first. Her mind was on Canis. I have this one life--at least, I think I do--and I'm spending it here..?" The thought was one of dismay. All she'd seen, and she was wasting her life in a mold-choked, bare stone cairn..?

It took effort, real effort, to turn back and to focus on what Wilder was saying. She blinked a few times, suppressing a grimace, and managed a nod. Thoughts buzzed in her mind but she pushed them back, for now. "I will. Thank you," she managed, and then flicked an ear with another, more visible grimace. "I think I'll need time," she agreed, her emphasis indicating what she was realizing: that it'd take longer than she'd thought. "Andromeda," she parroted back after a beat, tone empty. She was absently repeating it, and it took a moment more to focus past a shuddering of new memories. "...I'll do that. If I need it, I mean. -If I can help with anything, I will be here--I think," she finished, squinting around.

Her mind wandered, again, for a moment. It flickered weakly over the conversation they'd just been having, and Giggle winced with focus, looking sharply back to Wilder.

This time, her magicka took--and the surge of relief she felt wasn't hidden; she didn't have a chance to. But she brushed it aside, brow furrowing as she struggled to focus on what she'd seen. It took great concentration to summon it back up, to dredge it forth past a thousand other images and to hold it there. And even then, it wavered, somewhat fragmented and confused... but she did her best.

...'But through the purple-tinted sky she saw the flash of an owl. WISDOM. It circled where she looked up to it from her PERSPECTIVE, circling through rolling clouds of shadow. NOCTUA. The image of a cathedral shifted within the clouds and was gone. DEATH. A gaping green maw billowed from the clouds and swallowed the owl whole.'

She passed this on, then let out a shuddering exhale and allowed the vision--and the link--to slip away. She didn't speak further, letting it speak for itself.

@Wilder