in which Shango, who would be a terrible parent, attempts to give life to stones found here.

This was where Shango had hatched--a small, lone hybrid of uncertain parentage... or, rather, one known-but-absent father and a tangle of strange, long-dead creatures making up his stone-giver's gift. Here he had grown and learned and hunted, with no one to guide him, at home and happily feral and fierce in Eridanus' storm-wracked jungles. To him, he had come from the storm itself, and he begat storms in his wake.

This time, though, he intended to create something else entirely.

His hunt for gemstones, a quest given by the Masked Merchant in Canis, had led to Shango finding a good number of gems--many of which were too weak to serve as payment. One of them, too--a strong one, in fact--he'd become immediately and inexplicably attached to. His intention, then, was to return to the place of his hatching, and to try and bring these stones back to life... or at least a few of them.

Quietly he searched among the leaves and ferns until he found a very hidden little niche, one high on a steep hill, a place he could only reach by scrambling and half-flying up a dirt cliff where a bank beneath had crumbled away. He sat here, then, resting and spending some time looking around. When nothing came, when he heard nothing but birdsong and scented nothing but distant deer and wet earth for a time, he began to set down the gemstones.

First he leaned down, opening his mouth--and a good number of rocks simply spilled from his jaws, tumbling out over the ground. ...His ability to carry things was, after all, limited. Still, a number of other rocks fell from his taloned forelimbs as he opened them.

Then he set them into a small pile, and carefully separated them by their power. There was only one that was very powerful--a striated Tiger's Eye Agate, which would go to the Merchant as payment. Of the rest, a good number were simply strong, the blue-green Aquamarine among them. This one he pulled to the side, along with the weakest of the stones. He didn't want to create weak Gembound, of course, but he was quite confident in what he thought of of his own extreme power. (It wasn't.) Therefore, he didn't worry too much about the strength of the gems themselves; it was just that most of the strong ones would need to be payment.

He curled up on these, hiding them wholly beneath his scale-feathered, leopard-spotted body, and then he slept. He'd need to rest, for a time--he felt this instinctively--before giving this a shot.

When Shango awoke, it was to the soft patter of rain among the leaves. He listened, for a time, quiet and at peace, atop his remote dirt-bank, and his small pile of gemstones. The light had shifted toward night, a dim blue-black that filled the forest. It seemed mysterious, somehow, the cool evening wind whispering through the leaves, the shadows pooling in the darker places beneath the trees. It wasn't quite the equivalent of "sunset," not yet, but it was close, and it was pleasantly empty.

Eventually, as the last of the warmth and light faded from the cave--leaving Shango with the iridescent gray-blue coat, his leopard colors muted by it--he stood, stretched, and yawned. At last, then, he turned his attention to the stones beneath him.

The Aquamarine would come first. He didn't know why, but when he'd initially set out for Polaris and for his stone hunt, he'd fully expected to find a blue-green, ocean-hued rock. And the very first one he'd found was just that. Somehow, it felt like it belonged with him, or that he'd been fated, somehow, to find it. He wasn't about to just hand this one away.

Carefully, he pulled it away from the rest, and then quietly lay down, peering down with a catlike, quizzical expression at the gemstone as it lay between his front bird-taloned feet.

...How do I do this?
Shango realized, quite abruptly, that although he vaguely knew how the stones-and-the-Gembound worked, he didn't know how to... do it. Puzzled, he peered down, his whiskers flicking as he wrinkled his muzzle about in thought. Long, saber-like canines glinted as he swiped a tongue absently over them.

What if he just... reversed the magic he used to find them? Instead of reaching out to look for them, he could just reach out to... give to them. He hesitated, thinking this over, but he knew no better way--and so he tried, reaching his magic out in what he imagined were little tendrils, trying to push some measure of his very essence into the stone that lay before him.

Shango stared down, intently--then closed his eyes as he felt it work. His magicka flowed out of him, and into the stone, and he felt the thrum of life within it swell and grow, taking on a new energy of its own... one born both of its own remnants, and of his own spark.

Satisfied, he pulled back and away, and covered this stone with the thinnest scattering of dirt. It would take root quickly, and grow.

He moved, then, back to the others, eyeing them over. The spell had taken something out of him... and he wasn't certain, but he felt, truly and deeply, that he'd not be able to repeat it indefinitely. He wouldn't be able to simply rest and do the rest--he could tell. It wasn't the sort of drain to simply be replenished by a rest. He'd have to choose which of the other stones to gift life to.

He liked the Peridots. Something about their green-yellow hue drew him. They were bright, an unusual color like sunlight through leaves, yet darker by a shade, and they appealed to him. The pearls, too, had a nice shimmer to them, though perhaps more organic and gentle than he liked. The black opal wasn't as interesting--it was pretty, yes, but it wasn't him. He didn't like its chaotic darkness, though the hematite--simpler, and shinier--that, he liked.

He decided to do one each of the pearl and the peridot, and failing that, he'd try the hematite.

Shango took the raw chunk first, the green-yellow a rough, duller color than the sparkling, brighter one. He liked them both, but he'd found this one first, so this one was the one he'd try, for now. He took this one a few paces away from the Aquamarine, and lay with this one, too, between his forelimbs, his wings folded across his back as he peered down at it.

With this one, too, he felt life flowing easily into it as soon as he opened himself to it. Easy, Shango thought to himself, absently--and pleased.

He waited until he felt that the transfer of life and magic were done, until this tone, too, pulsed with its own life force. Then he buried this one under another thin scattering of dirt, after eyeing it with satisfaction for a moment. That's two.
Quiet, thoughtful, he turned and moved back to the pile to pick his third.

Shango took his time, deliberating and recovering. For several long moments, he stood looking over the remaining stones. He felt... drained, and in no rush to jump to a decision.

There were two pearls--there was little to choose between them, and they were so similar in both appearance and in power that he wondered if they might once have been brethren. Both were a little lopsided, raw, and depending on how the light hit them, they were pale pink or peach or--in this dimmer, evening glow--almost white.

He wasn't even sure which one he'd found first, really. He picked one (the first he'd found, unbeknownst to him) and took it to a third point, settling down to try and bring it Life.

This one, too, took without issue. Shango felt the last trickles of his magicka draining away, or at least the last... life or whatever it was he was imparting to these stones, and he knew that he'd be unable to do a fourth. Quietly he lay there, feeling strangely exhausted, but strangely content, staring at the third little stone.

Once he felt well enough to, he stood, carefully scattering dirt over this third one. He then, carefully, buried the rest of the weaker stones nearby--perhaps, some other day, he could try and bring those back to life, as well. There was no point, anyway, in carrying them all--not when they'd not be useful as payment to the Merchant. He'd bring only the strong, and then he'd return here, once he had his reward, to watch over his new little nest.

Shango clawed at a few dead leaves, casting them over the ground to hide the stones even more carefully--both the living, and the dormant.

Then he carefully picked up those stones that remained--the strongest of them--and departed, for now, making his way through the twilit forest back toward the tunnel and Canis beyond.

exit Shango