The boy dropped down to a crouch and leaned in close to analyze the stone. The glasses on his face were a strange new feeling, but Bartos simply scrunched and wriggled his nose to adjust them slightly. The magnifying effect of the spectacles was a little more difficult to get use to, and he had to blink and focus, moving his eyes slowly such that he could take in all the details. He scooted close to the rock and looked over its dull surface - it lacked the sheen of most other rocks, but maybe that was just due to age. He really didn't know. The stone itself had a soft pink colour to it, he imagined would look a lot nicer if the gem was polished. Still, even the dusty pink looked nice.

He wanted it. There was no other way to describe the overwhelming desire to possess the stone and bring it back to his den. He liked looking at it, examining its crusty white facets; he didn't want anybody else to own it, so it would be his. The cat pawed at it and dislodged it from its resting place, fiddling with it before finally being able to wrap his teeth around one of its points. Then he pulled his head back, only to discover an unprecedented strain on his neck - boy, this thing was heavy!

Ultimately the cat had ended up dragging the chunk of stone along as opposed to carrying it. It was a lot easier, and he wasn't so worried about scuffing the shiny pink surfaces of the stone because it was only the bottom of the stone, the joint from where all the points branched out; if he set up the stone to sit on the joint, then he wouldn't be able to see the scuffs anyways. Bartos pulled and hauled the heavy stone away, eventually returning to the stairs and dropping down onto them from beneath the rows of seats. The stone clattered onto the rock step, and Bartos looked around - the sound echoed distantly through the room, but otherwise, everything was still. His wide eyes like satellites twisted and drank in all the sound they could before he decided that he was safe to carry on.

Bartos grabbed the stone again and pulled it up the steps, stopping occasionally to pant and rest his muscles. It was quite the work out, but before long he reached the top, where down the hall the bear had been resting earlier. He peeked over, only to find that she was gone. She must have left after Bartos decided she was boring. That was too bad - he would have loved to show her the rock, even if she was a little dumb. The cat shrugged it off and continued to drag his stone away, humming and quite pleased with his new find. It would be a rather arduous journey, taking the stone back to the cliffside, but he was confident he could do it!

The sound of the gem dragging on the rocks echoed through the hall, across the forum and into the broken city as the cat left the ring of seats and entered the streets that stretched all around it. He would have to stop here and take a break - his neck and back were already starting to ache. So, Bartos dragged the stone over to a little cranny in the buildings, settling it in the corner of some ruins before hopping up onto the low, crumbled wall. There he laid and stretched along its length, reaching his paws far out in front of him and curling his tail by his side. The cat parted his jaws in a wide yawn, too; he hadn't realized how tired he was until he actually managed to find some place to rest. Here, he could keep an eye on anything happening in the street around him, but he could also monitor the gleaming pink gemstone he had found.

Bartos smacked his lips and smiled, satisfied. He nestled his chin down on his paws and closed his eyes, wide ears still listening and alert while he slowly drifted off to sleep. It didn't take long for slumber to grab a hold of him and wrench him into a deep, dark place far away from the safety of Orion. A place where the ceiling didn't glimmer with the reflection of light on crystals - there was no ceiling, not that he could see. It was inky black. The sides were too, and the floor; everything around him was inky. There were no details he could discern from the world that had engulfed him, and for a while he simply existed.

Then the dream started. He could never remember how the dream started, how it transitioned from unconscious blackness into images and memories and imagination - all melded into a scene crafted both of his willpower and drifting mind. Only that it just suddenly was.

He was walking, where - it looked like the cliffside. It was familiar like the cliffside, yes, because his den was just around the corner, and he could remember passing by a curious landmark in the rocks that he recognized. Only the marking was several feet closer to the corner, almost right on it. He thought it was strange, but he didn't dwell on it. He rounded the corner and there he found his den, and he went to check on his collection of rocks, no more than a few shards of deep blue benitoite and other metamorphic rocks he'd found scattered on the floor. He looked, but there was nothing, and a panic spawned inside of him. Where had they gone? He cried out and searched, running along the edge of the wall and peering into every crack he could find, turning over rocks, gazing down the edge of the cliff, but to no avail. Only when he returned to their usual hiding place had they suddenly returned, but this time in great abundance and in awe he analyzed the pile before him.

There were shards of a chrysalis but they were light blue, not dark. Large chunks of pink rock, and flecks of green scattered on the floor like big dust. There were ambiguous forms of glistening white that reminded him of the gleaming ceiling above. He couldn't find the shards he usually kept ferreted away, and the more he looked, the more and more strange rocks popped up just out of the corner of his eye. They all manifested there with no reason, other than the assumption that they had always been there as part of his collection. They were collecting dust, and some of them were chipped and cracked. How could he have let his hoard fall into such disarray?!

Before Bartos could busy himself cleaning them, there was a shadow passing by just behind him. He noticed it and whirled around, only to see that a giant, buck-toothed cave rat had grabbed one in his jaws and scampered away with it. "Hey, wait!" He called out, but his voice sounded like it was drowned out against the atmosphere of the dream; thick and hazy, distant; it left him with the feeling of helplessness that he'd never known before.

Before he knew it, he was running, his paws churning beneath him in an attempt to chase after the thief. He couldn't really see the thief as they ran across the ledge, but every time he rounded a corner or jumped onto another path, he caught just a fleeting glimpse of the rat with the stone in their jaws. The kitten sunk his brow in a frown and tried to run faster, faster, but he must have tried too hard and suddenly he wasn't moving at all. It didn't matter with how much strength he tried to pull his limbs, he just couldn't run fast enough and his paws felt like they were made of lead. "Nooooo!" He wailed into the abyss. "Give it baaaack!"

There was fear simmering deep inside of him. A panic and anxiety that bubbled up from his core - what if he never saw that stone again? But it was so pretty, the prettiest one of them all! It was a deep smoky silver with flecks of white in it, and it was translucent, probably the stone in the best condition of them all! He desperately didn't want to lose it, and he pushed and struggled, and got no where - then suddenly he wrenched his limb free, as if he'd finally managed to jerk it out of a pit of quicksand. He had to shake the laziness from his limbs before running off again, but as he followed the path of the ledge, it only led him to another cave where all the Gembounds he'd met before sat around and chatted quietly to one another.

The cat was shell-shocked when he suddenly burst into the social gathering, and they all looked at him for a few moments, his wide blue eyes meeting theirs. "Ah, sorry!" He apologized, but he was frozen and again he couldn't move. Except the Gembounds gathered; the bear, and Kerby, and other strangers he'd spotted in passing, all smiled and nodded and welcomed him in. They were immersed in a conversation about something, and Bartos sheepishly scooted into the group, listening. Kerby's middle head was telling them all about a spell that he had lost, as if the knowledge was a tangible object. The bear nodded and the others deliberated amongst themselves, suggesting places that it could be, but Kerberos' middle head kept disagreeing. The other heads were silent and unmoving, hanging limp at his sides.

It was unsettling. His logical mind knew that they were merely dream-forged dummies and nothing they said would make sense, but his dream self was entirely caught off guard, as if shoved into a realm completely alien to him. He couldn't understand anything they were talking about and when he suggested something, they all looked at him like he'd gone mad. He was just about to get up and leave when something else had caught his attention.

Gleaming white. There it was, the smoky gem that had been stolen, laying in a pile of dirt across the room. It was directly in front of him, and he'd have to pass through the chatting group to reach it. How it got there, he didn't know, but the cat was definitely going to get it back! He felt himself moving forward, looking up at Kerberos and the others as he passed them; they had entered a stunned silence at his apparently strange behavior, but it didn't matter now that he'd found the stone, and he was sure they'd understand. He advanced on it and it grew nearer, it was entering his grasp, the light catching its edges and glowing and it was absolutely the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, and he reached forward to finally take it for himself-

The silence broke with the loud clattering of metal on the floor.

Bartos damn near jumped out of his skin as the sound severed the silence and echoed up into the stagnant air. His small body jolted and he snapped his head up, wide eyes staring out in the direction from which it had come. His chest rapidly rose and fell as breaths exchanged in his lungs, and the electric feel of shock ran through his veins until he reminded himself that he was safe, untouched for now. But the concern remained that something out there had moved, dislodging another object and knocking it down to the ground. Bartos narrowed his eyes and surveyed the buildings, but in the diffused light of the lamps, he couldn't see anything move. So, the kitten merely ushered forward a small sigh and began to lower his head, before a memory suddenly came to life in the back of his mind.

The smoky gem.

Excited, he glanced down at the treasure he had collected earlier, expecting there to be the silver smoky gem - it wasn't. The sight of the dusty pink crystal had reminded him that the smoky gem existed only in his dream. Bartos frowned and jumped down from the wall, circling around his prize. How long had he been asleep for? It was hard to tell, but it didn't matter. He felt a lot more rested anyways. Bartos grabbed a hold of the stone again and jerked it away, anxious to finally return to his den where he would be safe and sound for sure.

exit Bartos