Giggle snorted her amusement.

"All of them. The first one was--excuse the language--just an asshole. I helped her when she was young, like I'm helping you now! I even named her, and she liked me. Later on? She treated me like dirt, snubbed me once she had new allies and had grown. I became the stinky lady, to her--the one she didn't deign talk to." A pause, and a scowl. "She didn't deserve that name. It was too damn good for her. She drove a Gembound to his death--another cat. One that spawned a murderer, down the road--killed his father. Sort of an accident--sort of not." So far, so traitorous, though her explanation--as she shoved magic through the fungus--was admittedly a little bit rambling. She did not focus on the individuals she named, because she didn't hate Eythan. Not anymore. But the truth was still the truth. "She drove him to his death by stringing along two different Gembound who were in love with her--refusing to choose, toying with them until they fought, until many died." Bevy, and that little owl--Kerberos had gotten in the shit, over that one. Giggle did not, however, know much of the details. "Others came in to attack us, after we'd given them aid. And another took my lessons, then left when he thought he'd learned enough from me, with barely a word. One of them was the--language--bitch who pulled me into the Void, for no reason at all! We'd never even met!" she snapped, aggravated more than anything at the memory.

"Her and another one I met turned to some kind of sick magic, dark and empty, full of eyes. It made them mad, I think. Took their fur." Weird, but... true, so far as Giggle knew.

@Anubis

Anubis only really half listened. It seemed that his curious question had gotten the hyena to go on a whole tirade. Well, she certainly had a frustratingly long history with cats, but the thing that sparked Anubis's attention was "void". She had mentioned it off-hand before, but he had assumed that it was hyperbolic. Just a phrase of speaking. But the way she said it now made it seemed like there was a literal void somewhere that Giggle had, somehow, been pulled into.

He tilted his head. "Void? What is that?" A void that twisted magic, made you sick, gave you...eyes? And took your fur? He looked back at his own body and shuddered. He didn't really care much for appearances but he didn't want to lose his fur. He'd be cold without it. And naked.

He swallowed heavily. "What is this magic?"

@Giggle

Giggle hesitated--glanced up, eyed Anubis, and truly hesitated.

"I can show you," she answered, quietly. But it wasn't the sort of thing that came gently, not a whisper of a memory. The very essence of it was twined, for her, with terror.

She hesitated again. "Sit," she told him, and her sudden solemnity--her pace or two taken toward him--was the only real advance warning he would get. A moment later, and almost with reluctance, her mind pushed her magic surging for his. Images, memories, were inextricably interwoven with a deep, dreadful fear too primal to think past, and these, she tried to show him.

She was--he was--suspended in the nothing. It wasn't like a dark room: there was no air to breathe, no ground underfoot, indeed no gravity or up or down. No life, no echo to her (his) voice when she (he) screamed, almost no sound at all. Hours and days passed in those seconds: time in which she (he) could no longer be sure which sounds and sights were real, and which were false. The voice in her (his) head was foreign, real, someone talking here or there. Total sensory deprivation, rife with the utter terror of the lost--the fear is this forever? and the horror that it very well might be.

Nothing but the self, wasting away, physically and mentally. Reality torn to pieces, leaving shattered madness in its wake, all steeped in mindless, constant fear.

She withdrew. She left him to silence, to peace, the memories of the Void retracted from his head--and without a word Giggle turned away, going back to work.

@Anubis

He could see the hesitation in her and for a moment he wondered if he overstepped. Was this too much to ask of her? A place she didn't want to go to, to think about, to inflict on him, oh so much younger then her? His ears pointed back and he nodded, planting himself on the ground, pressing his front paws into the rock beneath, as if it were an anchor. He swallowed heavily and prepared himself as she stepped forward.

But nothing could have prepared him for what Giggle pressed into his mind. Eyes widened and went cloudy, ears pressed hard against his skull and his tail tucked from the pure fear that singed through every nerve. A short whimper escaped his throat, although he didn't hear it. He couldn't hear anything, he couldn't see. The darkness pressed in from all sides, suffocating, maddening. He struggled to escape but he couldn't feel his own body, couldn't make his muscles work. His magic flared in his panic, black frills sprouting from his skin, but it was no use. Nothing could protect him from this. Nothing could stop it. He was going to be here forever.

He thought his lungs were going to explode. He thought his heart would surely break from the fear and loneliness. Surely this was what Death felt like. The complete Nothing of forever, the end of all things. No afterlife, no revival, no nothing but dark empty Void.

Yet he returned, as Giggle had, the darkness pulling back from his mind. For a moment, everything was blurry and he realized he was trembling, breath coming in pants. The inky black mushrooms were still covering him and he latched onto the feeling of protection. He was okay - he was alive.

For a few minutes, there was peace and quiet as Anubis processed what had happened to him - and to her - and then his voice croaked, quiet and...was that awe? "That is Death. Nothing. You died - yet here you are. Who did this to you? How did you return?"

@Giggle

Giggle glanced back, sharply, and shook her head. "It wasn't death. My body was still-..." But she couldn't describe it, not properly. She still didn't fully understand. "Omen. My familiar, through whose eyes I now see--one of the Callers, the one-eyed birds. She can go in and out of it. See in and out of it. She came to me, and found someone, and brought them to my body--still alive! But laid away in one of the alcoves in the rock wall. I was starving, skin and bone. But it wasn't where my mind was. And before you ask! Or wonder," and her glance, dark-eyed, was keen.

"It was not just in my mind. There were a dozen of us here when the cave went black. It took us later, too--in Orion--but we broke out, then. We fought. But I wasn't dead."

She'd have called Omen back, shown her to the jackal, but the bird was currently keeping careful watch on Canis from above. Her circling was giving Giggle a constant feed of where those Praetors were, and where the white gunk was.

Speaking of which: the hyena glanced about, and found the last bit of white fuzz still lurking. A brief flicker of magic shoved it away to wither and die on bare rock, and she glanced back at Anubis again. "Sorry about that. I should've given you more warning, maybe--or not the full experience! But now you know what cats will do."

@Anubis

Anubis was struggling with belief at the moment. If that was not death then what on earth was it? Perhaps her mind had been cast there, to the Void, to the nothing beyond life, but then how did a bird manage to go between? Were they somehow transcendent of life? Were they travelers between the light and dark?

But that couldn't be possible. Knowledge and questions whirled in his head. He needed to retreat and sort through things. He couldn't ask anymore or he would explode. He needed to research himself, in silence and solitude.

"I understand," he replied, although he distinctly did not. "Perhaps it is just a twisted magic, then. A trick or hoax, make you feel Death, experience it without dying. But I am sorry," he offered, suddenly, strangely. "That you had to endure that. I think I would have gone mad."

He shook his head. "No, it was fine. I am okay - I like to learn and experience is the greatest teacher, I think. But all your answers have been invaluable. Thank you." He waited, in case there was anything else Giggle had to say, but his words held a finality - he was ready to go for now.

@Giggle

She shook her head, a gentle certainty to her. "It was the void," she corrected, "not death. I've been put into it since," she added, "by another sort of magic. Just--removed, from here." Her eyes travelled up and around. "Placed somewhere--nowhere--where there's nothing." It wasn't a matter of being pedantic--but she never wanted to mislead someone, to misinform them. And on that note, she turned to eye Anubis, head tilted, her stare intense. "Another correction!" and black lips peeled back into a thick-toothed grin. "I did go mad." She considered elaborating, for a moment.

Explaining how, even now, sometimes she had a hard time discerning her thoughts from reality. How when things got truly, deeply stressful, she approached that breaking point to nearly snap. How her words had been impossible to control--how she'd gone from eloquent to gibbering, and fought still to sound at least coherent.

She didn't. It was... too much, too much to explain, too much to lay out and detail and slow Anubis down with. Even with her burdens, she could tell that he was trying to close off this conversation--and the strange spike of loneliness that speared her then, she pushed away. "You're welcome, anyway." Her voice, though always rough and masculine, came softer now, that maternal touch returning. "Come back any time. And be careful, Anubis. Canis--as long as this white crap's all around--it isn't safe."

Giggle could take turns with Omen for keeping watch and sleeping. Anubis-? He'd be all alone.

@Anubis

Anubis's ears twitched with faint surprise when lips curled back and she pronounced herself mad. She didn't seem to be unstable but, perhaps, that trauma lay beneath the surface. He still had much to learn about the machinations of others' minds.

He dipped his head, truly grateful for the time she'd given him and for her help with the fungus. "I will," was his simple response to both, although he added on - "I'll be around. If I learn anything interesting, I'll be sure to let you know." And it was, perhaps, a sign of Anubis's gratitude for Giggle answering all his questions and for giving him the time of day that he offered this. Perhaps even a gesture of affection for her that he would promise his knowledge shared without anything in return.

He dipped his head again, a quiet farewell, before he turned and trotted off into Canis, headed back towards his cave, head almost spilling over with information and ideas for new experiments to try.

*exit

@Giggle

She gave him a single nod. "Take care," she said, because really, she'd already wished him well and said goodbye.

She'd have had, then, that typical spike of loneliness--that faint ache of grief at his departure, at being left alone again. But the faint warmth along her mental link reminded her she was not alone, not really. Kerberos was still with her, in some sense, and as she realized this that warmth bloomed. Gratitude, and simple joy, flickered back up and did not leave her cold.

"Well-... back to work, I guess," she muttered to herself, and surprised herself by humming as she turned her magic back on the fungus. It was a tuneless thing, rough and meandering, but... she was happy, for the most part.

Neat.

exit Giggle