Maw didn't like how nonchalant Manna was about all of this. Her reasoning had nothing to do with what Maw's would have been, in her position. Namely: you harmed my child. Tahi-shei's lightning inevitably stems from you. Of course tried to kill someone with it, too. And like a selfish, unchanging monster—or maybe just a pathetic criminal—you feel bad about it even though you won't do anything to change. And now you never can, in a way that matters to the ones you hurt.' But as Maw tried to imagine those words coming out of Manna's mouth, the more the whole scenario sounded like a lunacy that could only ever be bred in the isolated walls of Maw's own mind. In other words, not real. Could never be real, not from Manna. Maw sighed.

It felt worse, somehow, to be lauded and sympathized with (and in such a mushy, sappy way) by the jaguar who had helped raise the pup whom Maw had electrocuted half to death. Did Manna have no preservation instinct for his children? Was Maw cruel to have thought that? The spiral continued from there—see? Proving it yourself. You haven't changed. And being bothered by it is just another self-aggrandizing—This, combined with the antsy-ness brought to Maw by her own stillness, and by that other affliction, caused Maw to look, perhaps, a bit more shaken than she felt.

It showed, apparently. From the corner of her eye, Maw could see Manna's concern (for her) somehow reaching new heights. Maw didn't even need to see it—it coated the air, suffocated her lungs, at this point. In the silence between Manna's last sentence and Maw's response, Maw's thoughts kept returning to how to make it stop. "Y-ou don'-t know tha-t fo-r sure. You're no-t my frie-nd."

Manna seemed unbothered by this comment. Her expression shifted to a placid grin. 'Maybe I should be. It seems like we're the closest thing to friends that we have left.' The smile dropped. 'Hm... that sounded kind of sad, didn't it?' Maw let him think about that in silence for a while while she pondered the rippling black water in front of her. And when he finally spoke again, Maw wished she hadn't given him the space.

'Maybe we should make more friends. Explore the caves together, see what's changed. In fact, I... I have a bit of a crazy favor to ask of you. But! I have some very compelling arguments for why you should help me.' The grin was back on, as Maw got to see now that she was staring at him with a serious glare. Prompted solely by Maw's willful silence, Manna continued:

'I was thinking of reviving some gemstones.' Maw's hackles began to bristle. She already didn't like where this was going. (If Manna wasn't careful, she was going to lose her, and she knew that.) 'Some way to bring life back into these caves for me. Children are talented at that—perhaps a little too talented. Perhaps you already know.' Maw did not know. And that was a massive, gaping wound in her chest that she hadn't told Manna about. 'They'll engage with the world, and force me to engage with it, too. I... had to move my den a while ago to allow more space for my son. I think he went to sleep. The den feels emptier now.' Although this did elicit a strange pang in Maw's chest, Maw still did not know what any of this had to do with her and thus her expression remained flat and neutral.

'I need your help with reviving a stone.' Ah. There it was. Maw's fur immediately stood on end, her muscles tensed, and she couldn't help the way her voice elevated, crackling all the while. "You don'-t know me! Y-ou don'-t kn-ow that m-y magi-c doesn'-t... do tha-t!" When Manna looked confused and somewhat startled by Maw's outburst, the cat did her best to settle down a little and explain. "I trie-d. Th-ey n-ever hatch-ed."

There it was again. That profound concern smudging the jaguar's facial features, the kind that tasted like bile shoved into Maw's mouth. 'None of them?' "N-one." Sorry to disappoint, Maw might've added with enough dripping sarcasm to cut the sadness out of Manna's eyes, but Maw didn't have the willpower.

There was one that Maw could remember. Someone else had asked her help. She'd never seen what had happened to that stone. But she wasn't going to mention that here. Manna had already proven herself to be the type to take an inch and run a mile with it.

And yet, despite having given her no inch, Manna was not dissuaded. 'That's strange, but in this case, it is ultimately alright. This one doesn't need to hatch either. But if I tried to revive it myself, it may never get even a chance to live again. Its magic is weak, and so is mine, and I know yours is strong. And—yes, from what you've told me, I understand that this will not inspire confidence in the idea. There's already enough people who look after your power with nefarious intentions. But I'm not going to. I can't tell you that you've changed and expect you to believe me without providing evidence.' Manna was jumping to provide her arguments before Maw had the chance to fire back or leave, and perhaps he was right to do so.

But as soon as she did leave an opening, Maw would flatly demand: "Wh-at if I kill i-t?"

'I won't let you.' Manna fired back with alarming preparedness. (Fluid grace, Manna would have preferred it called—but this isn't his narrative right now.) Maw still wasn't convinced in the slightest. The solution couldn't be that easy. Manna had just said her magic was weak, so what did she have to contend with Maw's storms and squalls? Her monsoons?

As if the jaguar could read her mind, she answered: 'I can't fight you, and I wouldn't anyway. But I do know this: you never actually killed Comet. And in your state, I doubt you'd try something like that again.' Maw was being underestimated. It made her grimace pretty severely. Underestimation didn't even mean much to Maw anymore, but it certainly wasn't helping Manna's argument to do so. 'Additionally, from what you've implied, it seems that the very thought of using your element to kill an innocent bothers you. That harming Comet bothered you. That you connected the two—perhaps maladaptively—in your head. After all, you didn't keep going after her. You were best friends with her stepfather and you stayed pretty far away from her at all times.' Manna got her there.

'I may have too much confidence in my judge of character, but I never took you for a bad person, Maw. Perhaps a person who needed guidance, and more patience than you were willing to give. But from what I understood of the situation, you were very smart, and trying to be kinder. Still trying, even now. If you were all that you seem to think you are, you would have struck me at least once or twice by now. And I don't think you have the patience to lie to people about your nature.' It felt strange to be read so openly, so easily, by a jaguar that Maw had hardly known who'd barely even seen her face. Part of her felt bad she never payed as much attention to Manna in turn, and another part of her reacted to how much Manna had apparently been paying attention to her that whole time. What was the reaction? The feelings felt? Well,

'You don't have to raise the child with me, if it does hatch. You're more than welcome to. If you think you may hurt them and you need a safety net, I know Fornax very well and I have ideas for where to keep them and you. Separated or together. I only need you to promise that you'll help me keep them alive. Both before and after revival.'

Maw was running out of ways to turn her down. Inside, it felt like her heart was bleeding. Dying to try again, to say yes. She hated this truth, but she missed when life had meaning. She missed seeing someone else's smile, hearing someone else's words. Her mind leapt to imagining the happy memories she could have made with the children she'd tried to have, had they hatched. But she had to shut that down. This was not a decision to be made impulsively.

"I-f I d-o, b-ut mi-ne doesn'-t ha-tch, d-o I st-ill nee-d to hel-p?"

The jaguar smiled. 'If I could get you to? Yes. They would still be a sibling to their waking family. Their sibling egg. We could paint a face on it and...' Maw did not look or feel amused. '...sorry.'

After a little more discussion of the specifics of this plan, Maw pulled away from their discussion with a final request. "Ca-n I th-ink abou-t it?"

Manna smiled at her. 'Of course. I'd like you to make this decision with as much confidence as you can get. Though I do fear that, in your condition, you may overthink it or bail on me. So I would appreciate if we could set a time limit, and you could agree to extend your visit to Fornax. I have some potential domiciles I could show you. To stay in, for now.' Maw considered and then nodded in agreement. They decided on three days. Not nearly as much as Maw would have wanted, but if it could've been up to Maw alone, she would have wanted a hundred cycles. Maybe a thousand. Manna was trying hard to convince her to be more adventurous than that, and Maw was going along with it almost out of sympathy for her.

"I-s i-t oka-y if I don'-t do i-t? A-t the e-nd." Manna's smile never dropped. It only softened, along with his eyes, into something else. Something smoky and dark, something that made Maw's tail twitch a little. "I'm surprised that you're being as cooperative as you are. It suggests to me all the more that I am making the right decision."

Manna showed Maw a few places where she could stay to think, and Maw left the encounter with a veritable mound of free fish to eat and a strange knot in her gut. She didn't really know how to feel. To feel grateful, or guilty—was she being impulsive, or finally wise—? It was hard to tell. And she would try to puzzle it out, to tease apart the knot of emotions welled up inside of her. When she finally felt ready to decide, she still wouldn't have it all puzzled out.

- three days later; in the present -

It would be a full two days before Manna would hear from Maw again. She'd go check on her, as Maw had explicitly allowed, once in the morning and once at night. She's there, each time, waiting for Manna's arrival. Manna doesn't know what she's doing for all the time in the middle, but given how the cat hardly makes conversation with her, and the way her brow is almost always furrowed or her eyes lost in thought, Manna wouldn't be surprised if most of what Maw was doing was just thinking.

The third day, something must have changed. Maw wants to hunt with her. Or, stand on water's edge while Manna hunts. Maw catches a bird with her, without using her magic. It's hard, but they manage. Maw doesn't speak much, but she listens when Manna yaps, when Manna reminisces. Manna's happy to yap. It's been such a long time.

At night, they sit down, and Maw finally looks him in the eyes for longer than 3 nanoseconds. She won't touch the fish much. Maybe she doesn't like it? It is most of what Fornax has to offer—

'I wan-t to do i-t.'

Manna starts, but he's the queen of self-soothing those initial nerves. "Right now?"

'Ma-ybe... —Yes. Be-fore I cha-nge m-y mi-nd.'

Manna tries to contain her excitement as she pads over to the stones, mouth still chewing her food. She didn't. know how capricious Maw's mind could be. She couldn't take any chances.

She pulled out three gemstones. "I got these from two Gembounds I'd never seen before," Manna started, and almost continued, before Maw motioned for her to stop. 'Tel-l aft-er.' Maw looked at the three stones, then back to Manna expectantly. "This one." Manna gently pushed the stone towards Maw. It was a rather interestingly textured andulite, glimmering with a magic painfully feint.

Maw stares wearily at the stone for a moment, then glances at the remaining two. 'Th-e oth-ers?'

"Those are here just in the case that your magic, by some miracle, doesn't go through. Different from if it never hatches. There's an element of chance to all of these revivals. If you successfully revive this one or the next, I won't ask you to revive the remaining." With that cleared up, Maw huffs a small breath and continues her unreadable staring at the first gemstone Manna had given her.

(OOC clarification: the Andulite mentioned in this post is a Ripclaw lesser's stone, which Manna acquired from Audland off screen.)

At she sat there staring, the eternal war threatened to rage on through the barricades Maw had build up in her mind. She couldn't let it get through. She had to focus now. All of her life, in all of its length—she needed to impart at least some of that onto at least one of the stones in front of her. One piece of her infinity—and she had to try to make it a good one. Into the andulite. Focus. Focus.

Magic welled within her chrysoberyl, and then, like a spark, it- it... fizzled out. Maw looked to Manna, the panic quickly reaching for her chartreuse eyes, but all she was met with was Manna's placating calm gaze, fallen warmly on the stone that now drained of all the magic within. "It's okay. It lived a full life. There's another. This one next."

The jaguar slid the next one over, and Maw tried not to stare so hard at the andulite. Things like these failed sometimes. It's just what they did. It had to be okay to expect Maw to push through, to keep trying, didn't it? Maybe it didn't look like much to Manna, but in Maw's head and her heart felt like a trapeze duo doing flips over a flaming net.

Still, Maw had to remain focused. Pressure rolled within her, building from one end to another. Don't think too much. You're thinking too hard. Remember to think positively. Or maybe that doesn't matter? You shouldn't be thinking at all. You—And then it just rolled right out of her.

She blinked. The stone began to glow. Manna smiled.

In all previous child rearing attempts, something like this had indeed occurred. And yet, Maw was still startled and amazed by how little it felt to impart some piece of infinity upon the beating magic heart of a whole nother organism. She supposed a piece of infinity still left infinity behind—wait that was weird to think about. Now she was feeling a headache.

She looked at Manna, having no words of her own to give. Fortunately, the chatty jaguar did have something in reply. 'You did it. Congratulations, Maw.' With his tail, he swept away the dead gemstone and the one Maw hadn't had the chance to revive. 'I suppose I'll be taking the first back to its provider. A large, blue man with a large tail and a larger attitude. Possibly the fuzziest I've ever seen. The last, I'll be keeping with the other stones I've been meaning to give away. Did you know, I wanted to provide... something like a market, for lost stones. But I didn't want to give them away to anyone for just the right price. I'm not gifted in magic the way you are, but I do have a little spell that lets me see a memory from the stone's previous life. It's not always clear on what the original creature was or did in its past, but I'd planned on using that to vet any takers. Anyways,'

Manna padded to a dark crevice of her den and struggled to get out two rocks. Maw almost offered to assist her, but when she saw what one of them was, her eyes went wide. It was big, and she recognized its unnatural gleam. She almost opened her mouth to warn Manna not to touch it, but by then it was too late.

"I guess it's my turn, now," the piscine jaguar finished through her ever-present grin. The joy welling in her heart felt a little bit like what we'd call Christmas. She didn't intend on telling Maw this, because she knew it would result in the other cat turning away immediately, but Manna herself wasn't fully convinced that every stone Maw revived was bound to never hatch. And now, Manna had the chance to test that theory and prove it to them both. And if it was such that Maw's magic was peculiar like that, at least Manna could be with her every step of the way.

The large, oily stone felt like some kind of malicious tar had solidified into a rather threatening gemstone. Manna could feel whatever foul magic was inside it reaching out to him through the touch. It wouldn't normally be her pick, but a deal was a deal, and if Manna was going to be raising more monsters it would be better not to do it alone this time. Soh-ling only wanted to be a curious observer, but Manna hadn't told them either that that role lined up quite nicely with a regular weird uncle. And now, if push came to shove, she had a lightning gun to make Soh-ling comply with more hands-on forms of assistance.

What a strange little 'family' Manna was pulling together.

You could call it a turtle laying its eggs in a crocodile's nest. It wasn't what Manna had intended to do, but it's where she seemed to be ending up. Except in this case, it was even more symbiotic, because everyone stood to gain something, whether they knew it yet or not.

Manna wasn't too worried about the two stones she had to revive. As she focused her frail magic on them, she thought about where they had come from. This corrupted stone, for instance, had come from a sort of dark dealing with that aforementioned Soh-ling, a menace in Fornax that blighted the fish. Surely if Manna told it not to blight the food of its experiment, everyone in Manna's little corner of Fornax would delight in the sudden plethora of food.

Her magic reached out, and the oilstone's immense magic nearly ate Manna's up in turn. It was a little startling, just how fiercely it latched onto what little she had to provide.

Beyond that, though, Manna was excited to meet who lived within these stones. Even if valkhounds were supposed to be scary, Manna didn't have enough experience with them to be truly afraid. It wasn't all about the ulterior motive, or the beneficial trade. Even if the person in this oilstone wasn't what Manna was expecting, she was fully willing to give raising them a try. Or perhaps, given valkhound nature, they'd be of a sort that preferred to raise itself?

Next up was the boleite. An interesting tale behind this one as well. Some multicolored multi-headed creature that Manna had run into one day, carrying it around, unsure with what to do with it. He had seemed anxious, and even though she had offered to see its past for him, he had declined and asked her to keep it. He never did say why, but he seemed in a hurry to leave.

Perhaps in her pondering, Manna had been too distracted. Her magic barely flickered out to reach the stone, but much like in those movies for children, one emotional tear brought forth a wellspring of magical force. The cube of boleite took Manna's little sparkle and used it to pulse back to life.

Manna smiled for a moment at Maw, then set to the work of spreading each stone so that each had its own space to grow. Manna wasn't sure what would happen if chrysalises got too close to each other, and with this crowd she wasn't willing to find out. Maw eventually moved out of her thoughtful crouch to help the jaguar.

Without another word, they both set to the task until it was suitably done. Then, Manna looked to Maw and said... nothing. Maw spoke first. 'A-ny-thi-ng el-se t-o be do-ne?'

"No, not that I can think of. We wait for the chrysalises to take root, and check on them every day. Or as often as you'd like, so long as you're still keeping to regular meal times."

Maw nodded and then, to Manna's surprise, had something to ask of her. 'Ca-n I... t-ell y-ou ab-out someth-ing?' Manna nodded without hesitation, her eyes trained on the little bipedal cat.

From there, Maw would fight through many coughing fits and wheezy grunts to get out a message to Maw that felt more like a story you'd tell over a campfire. Life, Hume, humans, and what it all meant to Maw. It was a lot to take in, but Manna was taking it in stride. He knew what she was saying had to have some truth to it, because the jaguar had never seen Maw so desperate to speak. And after the story was over, Maw warned her not to let Vargas know of any of it. "The frighteningly large, purple man?" Manna had asked, just to be clear and on the same page, to which Maw had pondered and then nodded. "Why?"

'See-m-ed l-i-ke h-e w-oul-d k-il-l i-f y-ou kn-e-w.' Cough, cough. With how hoarse her throat had become, Manna was considering terminating the conversation early, even if it left a lot of open questions. He was also trying to calculate the likelihood of Maw letting him rub his saliva on her throat if it was mixed with some plants in a salve.

"I see. And you fear he'll take interest in the black stone I've revived?" Maw nodded. "Then I'll do my best not to tell, and we'll piece together a solution for your compulsions later. Trust that I will do everything in my power to not let you or these children to come to harm."

With that, the day met its end, and Manna had managed to convince Maw to sleep in her den at least for the first night. In the morning, she'd be gone before Manna had awoken, but the jaguar would find evidence of life near the dinosaur's chrysalis. A little box and a figurine of some kind of bug that Manna had never seen before.

- exit -

~ end scene ~

-~ post credits ~-

(OOC: +1 Corruption to Manna for handling the corrupted oilstone.

To clarify, the oilstone was from this event (linked; see Soh-ling) and is a guaranteed give life. It was traded the Manna offscreen with Snail's permission via DMs.

The boleite is from this event (linked; see Khavur) and should also be a guaranteed give life on account of it being GM-designed. It was traded to Manna offscreen with permission from me via my self-telepathy.

So both of Manna's rolls are more ceremonial here than anything.

Maw's roll, however, is necessary because the Ripclaw and Squallfang stones are from here (linked; see Titivilus) and are confirmed to be Fledgeling level. They were given to Audland and then given from Audland to Manna in offscreen exchanges because I own all these characters. I actually own every character on origin, as it turns out [JOKE].)

(P.S.: also, Maw is donating her music box and her Cleaner toy to the Squallfang child. interestingly, these gifts were originally from Mother! i was planning on having her donate her special hat but i don't think it would fit the baby's head at either extreme of its life stages.)

Maw watches the jaguar go through both stones with a lot less anxiety than she had. It's almost comical. Honestly, if her nerves were any more at ease, she'd be able to admit that it was comical—no two ways about it. But Maw remained rattled.

Even though by their agreement Maw's contract was up, Manna still managed to wheedle Maw into staying one more night. It wasn't a very restful one for Maw. She'd paced, quite a ways, and by the end of it she'd decided to go through her stash that she'd brought part of to Fornax, for purposes she wouldn't want to disclose. She'd picked out two, one that was easy to part with and one that wasn't so much, and left them at the squallfang's chrysalis. Then, while she could still hear the soft snoring from Manna's side of the den, Maw made the long trek back to Pegasus.

- exit -