Jim's thickly-furred ears flicked with distaste, and a scowl twisted his catlike face. Oh, dear. What in the world was going on here? This... this perfectly good jungle had been absolutely desecrated. Who was responsible for this place--? Who would let their home fall into such a pathetic state?

Jim tsked. He wasn't even a cycle old, and even HE knew not to let the place he lived in descend so far! Didn't the denizens of this jungle know that their lives depended on their environment, and they should take care of it? Sighing, he wrinkled his snout at a large clump of white fungus hanging between fur fronds. Ugh. It was disgusting!

Wasn't anyone around? Who made this mess?! Someone had to clean it up! He had to tell someone about it! As if it was possible whoever lived here didn't know already. Well, maybe baby Jim could be the one to give them the wake-up call they needed and tell them about just how bad their living situation was getting. He'd give them a good, long lecture on how they needed to take responsibility and fix it!

His magic flared out, looking for Gembounds nearby. Hey-- there were two, right there! Jim stalked in that direction, fur bristling with sheer indignation, ready to give them a piece of his mind.

fox credit - dash huang on flickr

What he found, though, was not very helpful. Jim pushed through a tangle of fungus-covered vines to find... a giant fire opal egg? He scowled at it with confusion, his face twisting into a very unpleasant expression. And a little cluster of smoky quartz next to it. Hey, there was a little mouse inside that quartz!

"Hey-- hey!" The mouse didn't respond. It just squeaked, kind of miserably. Now that Jim thought about it, it looked a lot like the Red Mouse he ate for dinner yesterday. And the day before that. And many, many other days before that. He'd never seen one with such an inconveniently placed gem before, though. Could it even move?

"What's going on here?" he demanded, addressing his question to the mouse whose sapience was still dubious. "What--" he lifted a paw and rapped the fire opal egg-- "what's this supposed to be? Do you live here? What's that egg for? You do realize your place is absolutely trashed, right? How could you let it get this bad?"

Despite Jim's outburst of scathing disapproval, the smoky quartz-encased mouse only squeaked. Fine. Just a normal Red Mouse, then. "Well--" It was kind of pathetic. Jim kind of felt bad for it. Even though he regularly ate mice just like it, no creature deserved to be trapped like this, probably starving and unable to move anywhere with only a giant gemstone for company. Ugh, how irresponsible of whoever lived here it was to just LEAVE this mouse unattended like that! Jim glanced around, and considered.

Stealing was wrong, of course. But to be honest, whoever owned this mouse and this giant rock kind of deserved it. He wasn't sure that they even lived here anymore. Maybe they'd just abandoned this place. Maybe that's how it had fallen into such ruin. Well, Jim didn't stand for abandoning living creatures like that! Or a perfectly good home that still needed to be taken care of!

He peered down at the mouse. It had probably been a pet of some kind, right? That dropped his opinion of the previous inhabitant of this place even lower. Abandoning pets! Disgusting! He decided that maybe he should take this mouse, then. He didn't care about the rock next to it that much. (He had no idea it was a chrysalis. It didn't occur to him that Gembound could just be inside rocks sometimes. He thought that his magic just happened to pick up big rocks as well as living things with rocks on them sometimes.) It wasn't stealing. Finders keepers, after all. If they weren't taking responsibility for their belongings, it didn't really belong to them anyway.

He'd never kept a pet before, though. Jim frowned. He wouldn't want to be an irresponsible pet owner, and he was a little hungry, so maybe... he should just put the poor thing out of its misery and eat it? It might be a little hard to get it out of the quartz, though. Oh well. He wouldn't waste food just because of a little difficulty!

Jim proceeded to stick his snout right at the mouse trapped in the quartz and try to get a good angle to pry it out and eat it.

fox credit - dash huang on flickr

The mouse was stuck in there--well and truly stuck.

It squealed in terror, but it couldn't escape--it was attached completely to the stone. Likely fused there. The smoky quartz was its stone.

Tiny heart hammered in its chest, and it scrabbled and nipped frantically at the big head coming at it... but Twitches could not escape.

@Jim

?????

Why couldn't he get this red mouse out of the smoky quartz? Jim had never encountered a problem like this in his (very short, thus far) life. Was it really stuck in there? ... Maybe the mouse wasn't someone's pet after all. Maybe they'd caught it, tried to get it out of the rock, and given up, and then just left and went somewhere else. This certainly fit with Jim's impression of Eridanus's residents so far. That did seem like the kind of thing someone who let the room they lived in fall into such a sorry state would do.

gulugulugulu

...

Well, he was really hungry! And if no one else wanted to eat this mouse, Jim would still take it! If he couldn't pry it out, he could just... pretend the smoky quartz was a really small bowl to eat out of? Without further hesitation, the fox kit stuck his snout in and attempted to eat Twitches the Immortal. Hopefully, without making a big mess. Heaven knew Eridanus was messy enough as it was.

fox credit - dash huang on flickr

Content Warning
This post contains potentially sensitive material:

gore

death

Twitches... screamed. A horrific, sharp, keening squeal, the last sound it would ever make.

Perhaps, in some ways, it was a mercy; the little critter had been trapped there for oh-so-long, suffering, immune to the poisons tested on it yet not immune to their agonies.

There was a spray of blood. A crunch of tiny bones. And then--gurgling into nothing--silence. Twitches tasted like a mouse. There was nothing unusual there.

A moment later, there was a curl of smoke, and a dark-cloaked figure appeared. He strode slowly forward, uncurling a clawed, hairy hand palm-up toward Jim. "A thief, I see," he crooned. Red pinprick eyes fixed upon the fox. "I'll take that."

A pause.

"A shame. Such a valuable enchanted item--destroyed, for nothing. Tell me, my little vulpine friend... Did you intend to pay for this?" The glint of white teeth flashed as lips curled into a sinister smile beneath the hood. "It was very valuable indeed."

Twitches the 'Immortal' is dead, and the enchanted item is now destroyed.

@Jim

The squeal, though unusually loud for such a tiny mouse, did not bother Jim as he wolfed down Twitches the Immortal. He licked his lips and dropped the now-empty smoky quartz to the ground, very satisfied with his meal.

Then-- Jim wrinkled his nose as black smoke curled from nowhere. Ugh, where did that come from? He probably shouldn't inhale too much; it was probably bad for him. The Collector's appearance, though sudden, was taken in stride. Just because Jim had never seen it before didn't mean it wasn't possible, after all. There was plenty of stuff in this cave that a cycle-old fox kit like himself hadn't seen before, and Jim wasn't about to go around being surprised at everything. That took far too much time and energy.

Instead, he fixed his tired-looking, golden eyes on the Collector, looking more like an exasperated boomer than any Gembound (Jimbound) his age had the right to be. This guy, whoever he was, was being blatantly unreasonable! And Jim would make sure he knew that!

"First of all," he began, sounding infinitely disappointed in this red-eyed devil, "You can't call me a thief. Finders keepers--everyone knows that. And it's not as if there's any indi- indica- any sign of the mouse being yours in the first place! If this place belongs to you, why don't you take care of it? Look at the state it's fallen into! White mold growing everywhere, everything in a state of disrepair, and nothing about it looks like any kind of respectable den at all! How's anybody supposed to know this place actually belongs to someone, instead of being just another abandoned patch of jungle, if you don't even take care of it? If a place or a thing belongs to you, you're supposed to act responsible for it. Ugh." Jim shook his head. He couldn't believe he had to explain this!

He took a deep breath. Yes, he was angry about how anyone could let this place become so dilapidated, but he decided that this guy deserved some sympathy, too. Even if it was partially his fault, losing something valuable was never fun. "Look," Jim said, trying to put on a 'gentle tone', "I know you're upset about losing your valuable.... enchanted mouse. But you've got to start taking better care of your stuff if you don't want to lose it. If you keep leaving stuff lying around like this, anyone can just walk in and take it! There's plenty of beasts around here who'd eat a free mouse they found. Hey- you know what? If you need some help, I can show you my den! You can take some inspiration for how to keep your home looking nice and occupied, if you want." He beamed up at the Collector, full of pride and helpfulness.

fox credit - dash huang on flickr

The Collector stood tall, silent and inscrutable, listening to Jim's rant. As the fox spoke of the place's state of disarray, his crimson pinprick eyes darted around the den, thoughtful, before finally drifting back to fix upon the fox. And when Jim had at last finished, he tilted his head and considered before replying, his voice a measured croon.

"You do so make an excellent point about the state of this place. Though there is a false assumption here... this was not my den. Indeed, perhaps the fault lies with the one to whom I had loaned poor little Twitches, there. -Tell me, did he scream when you ate him? He was always a little..." and here he gestured, vaguely, "...dramatic." A wave of a clawed hand, and the quartz geode lifted into the air, drifting slowly to the Collector's palm; fingers closed upon it, and it vanished entirely from sight. When the hand opened, there was no sign it had ever been there.

"The fault lies with the one who left Twitches without protection. How cruel," he murmured, staring unblinking at Jim. "Ahh, well. I will go and tell his family of his early demise. All those little baby mouselings," he added, and sighed softly. "I certainly appreciate your offer of a tour. But duties await. Should you ever require a little something to add to your--I am sure--well-kept domain, I am a tradesman always willing to trade. Simply come and seek The Collector, in Monoceros, and I will come."

He paused, about to depart, though he waited a beat as if to see if Jim would have anything more to say.

@Jim

"Oh! A loan?" So the dismal state of this place, and of Twitches when it had been alive, was not this person's fault, but someone else's responsibility... Jim shook his head sadly in a motion that didn't befit a cycle-old fox kit at all. "Hey, I'm sorry the other guy didn't take care of your stuff well. That really sucks." Agh, and now he felt bad about eating the mouse--even though it hadn't been his fault at all!

Jim gave himself a quick shake. Snap out of it! No use fretting about it now. The hooded Gembound was asking him a question--did it scream? Jim frowned a little. "Uh, yeah. It was so weird. Never heard a Red Mouse scream that loudly before--thought they could only make little squeaks."

As for the discussion about the little baby mouselings--Jim could only stare at the hooded figure blankly. Has he lost his mind? It was a mouse. But then--it had also been a special mouse, allegedly. Enchanted and valuable. It made sense for people who kept enchanted pets to get attached to them, right? Aw, poor Collector, losing his pet like that. "Well, I wouldn't want to distract you from any important duties. And--hey, I'm sorry you lost your mouse--Twitches. And that your friend didn't take care of your stuff," he offered sympathetically. "Good luck with your work, The Collector! --I'm Jim."

fox credit - dash huang on flickr

The Collector swept into a deep bow, his crooning "A pleasure to meet you, Jim," chicanery of the highest form. He stepped back, then, and vanished in a small puff of shadow, leaving the den to the fox.

@Jim