... apparently not. Her magic flickered, but no vision came this time. Well, maybe it was time to take a break anyway. She looked at the bayldonite, considering. The visions she had seen so far were of land creatures, so she probably shouldn't leave it by the river's edge, where it might be swallowed up by the current or buried beneath silt again. What an indignity that would be, for a living gem to be washed away and tumbled about like a common river pebble! Or to be compressed beneath sediment once again, for who knew how many cycles!

Perhaps she could take it back to Polaris. Magic gathered there, energizing all who passed through the room, and crackled with particular intensity around the Spire. If the gem rested there for long enough, maybe it would absorb some of that surrounding energy, and be able to live once more. Or she could attempt to find one of the caves she had seen in her vision, and take it there that it might rest in its former home. But who knew how far those were- ? And she didn't even have a good way to carry it, anyway. She could take it in her mouth - but what disrespect that would be, to have your soul bathed in alligator saliva! And it was so small she thought she might accidentally swallow, or bite it.

Thinking hard, Cocytus willed her magic into the ground, instead. A small cluster of mushrooms sprang from the substrate, and she carefully took one in her claws and dug out the stem, leaving a shallow space in the middle. Cocytus placed the bayldonite crystal inside this hollow, then crawled on shore and took a broad leaf with her when she came back.

Cocytus hesitated before covering the bayldonite's mushroom-hole with the leaf, touching the tip of her claw to the gem in an attempt for one last vision, another fleeting snippet of the lives it had been. But again, nothing came, and she thought perhaps that the gem wanted rest and privacy now - or perhaps it was she who need to rest after using the same spell multiple times.

So she sandwiched the gem between the mushroom-hollow and the leaf, and carefully took it in her mouth now that it was protected from her sacrilegious saliva. She would take it along the river-tunnels to Polaris, where it could rest with dignity beneath the Spire - and maybe, one day, be gifted with a body to live once more.

- exit