Try, try again, as they say! 'Who says that?' Not me, but maybe you could!

In fact, maybe you SHOULD!!

The special sight came back, in full force! Would ya look at that. No, no seriously, look at that. There's a thing! Yet another thing for the thing pile. The thing collection. The thing gallery. The stuff hoard. 'Are you done?' Yes. Maybe.

The cosa-ssembly. 'That was so terrible.' I know.

MOVING ON!

Now Kaimana's energy was running significantly low, she felt she should focus on regular ol' stuff hunting again. No special sight needed (although it was a VERY useful tool that she would certainly be saving for later searches). She'd pad off in a NEW direction now -- sniff around, see what she could see!

She could see pretty alright, it seemed! Kaimana would continue for just a little longer, but soon her paws were going to start wearing out too and she knew it. She'd just been... traveling everywhere, it seemed! Collecting and greeting and meeting! It was a life she enjoyed living. She wondered if whoever came from that stone had enjoyed or would enjoyed a life of a similar ilk...

Her eyes would keep scanning the terrain as her mind began delving deeper into thought at last. Because you know, what are moving feet without a little sole? Terrible joke. Not even really a joke. Don't read this, dangit!

Kaimana didn't want to force anything onto whoever came from that stone. She... she'd never in her life wanted to make anyone feel like they had to stay with her. It felt selfish and nasty, the kind of person she could be if she decided to be just a little less careful of others feelings. She knew she could guilt trip others into staying with her, flaunt her loneliness for pity. Or, she could lure them in with the equivalent of 'tour traps' and keep them for as long as she could keep their minds entertained with her, like some kind of siren. Like some kind of monster!

But Kaimana knew better than that. She knew that, while sometimes the loneliness hurt, really hurt, that kind of abusive manipulation wasn't just unnecessarily. It was the opposite of a cure. It would be like pouring salt in her wounds and calling it 'a new kind of medicine'.

Love is best when it is sincere. And Kaimana knew this.

As her mechanical paw steps slowed and her searching grew less eager, Kaimana would begin to talk out loud, to no one in particular.

"If they come out and they decide they would like to live a life apart from me, I will gladly offer them the option to leave." 'Free of charge?' "Of course!" The words plucked a sour note in her heart, drew moisture from her tongue, but she knew, deep down, that they came from a place of goodness. Of kindness. That they were true and honest, even though they brought up painful thoughts. "Being family to me... I want that to be their choice. They had a life before I found their stone. If they... remember that, at all... or, or if I could tell them about that life-- if I could know, and then tell them, maybe they will want to go back to that. Does that make sense? I won't hold them to me." Her eyes crossed the horizon one way, then the other. Her paws began to ache.

"It could've been anyone who brought life back to their stone. It being me was the luck of the draw. I won't put their whole life in the paws of luck. It will be their life to hold again. They should have control of it." Her monologuing didn't entirely make sense aloud. It was all... incomplete thought. It was just expression. Catharsis. It all made sense on the inside. That's where it mattered.

She kept looking.

With a deep breath, Kaimana would say her final words before forcing herself back out of her head. "I don't even know them, and I want them to be happy. I don't know what that is. I don't know what it's called. I will follow that feeling regardless." She would close her eyes. Consider the possibilities. Bite back the pain of the potential.

And draw herself back to the world.

Kaimana realized she'd foraged a handsome bounty. A quiet, closed smile she shared with nothing but air and sea. Another deep breath, the scent of the room filling her lungs before being expelled with a soft push. A sure push. She hoped whoever she was to meet in the coming days, they would, at the very least, be able to benefit from her efforts. That they would thrive in the presence of love. It didn't-- no, it didn't have to be hers. But she wasn't going to deny that... she wanted it to be. She wished it. She hoped it. She was ready to swallow it all and let whatever was to be, be.

'It's time to go home.' "You're right."

Collecting as much as she could, with several trips to and fro, the jaguar brought all her loot to her den.

- exit -

((+1 bone, +1 crab corpse, +1 pearl oyster, +4 shell fragments, & +many magic stones to Inventory))

Among the stones that feel slightly weaker, containing Fledgling-level magicka, Kaimaina finds the following. The first, a rare Petoskey Stone, is part coral, part rock: a brown-grey stone, worn smooth and dappled by honeycomb lines in a creamy white. This chunk is quite large, nearly eight inches across, and may be hard to carry. The second, an Ankerite, was a multi-pronged little crystal in smooth translucent yellowish-peach. The third is a shining, softly-white Moonstone, delicate and thin. The fourth is a rather ugly yellow Londonite, almost sulfurous in appearance: cloudy, lemon-hued and streaked with thin strands of white, almost like fruit pulp. It is, like the Petoskey, a hefty stone: some six inches in diameter. The fifth stone is unlike a gemstone. It appears, instead, like bubbling meat: like a lumpy pink organ, glossy and left to rot. This is a Kidney Ore Hematite. The sixth is a beautifully-layered Muscovite, a mica-like stone: creamy white and pink-brown. The seventh is a Pallasite, amber-yellow mottled with translucent brown. The eighth, and last, is a brightly-glittering, powder-blue Diamond.

Among the Pupil-level gemstones, Kaimana finds a strangely square, orange crystal; it rather looks like a candy, if Kaimana had ever seen candy, but is in fact Stolzite. The final gemstone is a beautiful, color-shifting Alexandrite: a dim blue-green in the brighter cave-lights, but a deep pink in fire- or magical light.

Lastly, the object Kaimana uncovered, half-buried in Fornax' sands, was... unusual. A tangle of bones, it was a fish perhaps a foot long, maybe a foot and a half... but it was a tall fish, and a third of its length was jaw. This jaw was massive, hinged, and full of long, needle-sharp teeth. Even in death it appeared to be savage, and its anglerfish-esque appearance was wholly dissimilar to the other fish of Origin Cave. A strange protrusion atop its head had dessicated into a tangle of bone and cartilage, and at its tip was a small ball of dried tissue. How strange.

The random item found was rolled for by request.

@Kaimana