Life is not meant to be easy. The universe does not care one way or another how a lifetime is spent; if you are a good person, a comparatively bad one, or indifferent. Life happens - and as it so happens, a new life has surfaced in one of the most volatile areas of the cave system. Nobody sees this chrysalis take root or form, but it rises out of a small mud flat as if rejected by the earth it came from. It bobs there, a round coffin of composite sardonyx, and is wedged against the fringe of bog.

Something shimmers inside of the chrysalis, although it would be hard for anyone to notice considering how soiled the exterior has become. Tiny claws rake across the interior surface and, thankfully, it is enough to cause a rippling fracture to form. The shell is thin across this chrysalis - perhaps a side effect of being so small a vessel - and with further pressure from inside it erupts in tiny square shards.

These scatter to the mud and sand, sink in to the narrow mire that inundates the area with precious water. Out of the resulting hole pops a bundle of gold fur: large triangles of soft wheat-gold connected to a petite face and pale nose. The juvenile's eyes look like they're too big for its head; if it survives it will grow in to its framework of bones, even out those proportions. It is tiny, regardless.

With a small hop the fox springs free of its shell, landing on a patch of grit with barely a sound. It shakes its shoulders - the motion carrying down the length of its body to its hips, then its tail, which briefly puffs. Those eyes widen as the newborn takes its first sight of the world.

-A bright world, a hot world, but one perfectly suited to one such as this. Though the Dead Marsh was home to toxic gas, to quicksand pits, to shaggy Eyehooks that waited for prey across the dead trees, the kit had had the luck to hatch away from all of that: on a small sandbank, where caution would easily keep him alive, for now.

But life was not easy, as evidenced by the gnarled black thing in the distance--like a tree, but with the lingering odor of pitch and fire, and bones scattered around its base. Whatever it was, it was foreboding, and the relative safety of the Crucible above--or the tunnel exit in the heat-shimmered distance--were likely better options.

For now, so long as the kit did nothing remarkably foolish or naive, he was safe.

@Methuselah

The first feeling he became aware of post-emergence was his hunger. His belly rumbled, startling him in to a staccato-step away from the discarded sardonyx. Luckily enough the little fox was designed for a sandy environment such as Hydra; his steps were fleeting and not very heavy across the surface of the terrain, and while he only went a few steps there wasn't much of a trail left behind him.

He tucked against the ground a moment later and sat there, practically swooning with a dull sense of vertigo as he adjusted to the whole being alive thing. He stared in to space, gradually focusing on the weird twisting black shapes in the distance. His gut told him not to stray far - a powerful instinct to hide overwhelmed him.

Yes, Methuselah, hide.

He began to sniff the ground and make his way along the sand bar, seeking out any shelter he could. Those dark and twisted trees did not look welcoming, nor did the equidistant shapes veeing further off in the quaking haze. The little one decided to descend the sand bank to lower ground if possible - and if it wasn't, he'd start to dig among the various scatterings of bone, eager to build his own little tunnel of solace. Perhaps if he waited long enough the heat would die down.

He worked at the burrow and managed to dig out enough of a divot for his little body, but not much more. It served him well for an hour or so. The heat continued to climb and by the second hour he was furiously digging once more - this time focusing all of his energy on reaching through the piles of bones and raking away sand, intent to reach whatever lingered beneath the surface.

If he was going to be successful it would take an act of god. That or more strength at the very least, and as he was a newly hatched creature in a particularly small body, Methuselah would need to utilize his magical acumen rather than his physical prowess to get anything done. He didn't know how to tap in to those skills yet, though. An unfortunate drawback of his nubile state.

So he continued to scratch at the sand, occasionally finding a chunk of rock and wiggling it loose, or a shard of bone, which he flipped out of the way; soon enough his hole was surrounded by a barricade of small bone pieces, casting sharply angled shadows across his gossamer golden coat.

After resting for about an hour, Methuselah began to feel antsy. More specifically he was hungry; without knowing much about the terrain or even himself as a creature, he did not know what to do about the feeling. Instinct told him to leave the fennec-deep pit he'd dug out and go on a hunt. He lifted himself free and scrambled to climb from the little pit, sniffing the air the entire time and wondering if there was anything around.

He could smell heat. Rather, the air had a coarse quality to it and an earthiness, nothing really out of place from an hour ago. If he squinted at the distant shapes beyond where he lingered the air shimmered, with those shapes appearing to dance if he looked too long upon them. The newly hatched gemling did not want to travel far from its burrow - or its chrysalis, which sat gathering dust a few meters away - so he was at a crossroads.

Once he had sniffed around long enough he began to feel quite hungry and very, very desperate. It did not take long after that for the newly hatched gembound to conjure the courage for a hunt. He wasn't even fully self-aware enough to realize that's what he started to do: prowling across the sand with his nose barely above ground-level, towards a pile of bones or a scattering of desiccated logs, withered and petrified.

He overturned some pieces with hasty grasps of his tiny teeth, or hooked his paws around small fragments and cast them aside, dragging a few larger ones out of his path; but nothing emerged from beneath the rubble. There was only sand, glittering and beautiful with all of its rich silicates, but sand that he could not eat.

In the end he would choose to sleep. He headed back to his makeshift napping place in the sand, carefully positioning each paw in the divot and then squishing himself down, nose tucked under a foreleg. When that wasn't comfortable he'd stand up and spin around, wedge his butt where his face had previously been, and try again, and again. Eventually he'd get it right, and the golden fuzz across his body quickly blended in to the sand around it. A slight breeze pulsed some grains across him but by then, Methuselah was fast asleep.

Exit.