Mossie senses magic, alright.


She senses her own, constant and everpresent, something she's never been aware of until now, until she feels it burning in her stone and her body and her everything, her everywhere, and it's such a horrifying sensation to Know, like how she can suddenly feel the folds of her skin sticking together and touching each other and---

Mossie howls, dunking her face in the river, and the feeling slowly subsides.

She glares at Polaris, the twinkling crystals shining as merrily as they always do.

Motherfuckers.

She'll show them. She's not giving up. She'll keep going till she drops fucking dead.

Once again, the magic Mossie senses is not worth pursuing. Probably some tiny chipped opal from a Lesser that can barely considered a gemstone.

There's lots to wonder about when it comes to gemstones. Do the different types mean anything? Stone locations? If Lesser stones and lost stones presumably had previous lives...did her stone have a previous life, or multiple?

Has anyone studied this?

She'll have to get on that, once she goes to the Shadow. But first order of business: rocks.

Mossie can tell her grip on reality is fraying.

She doesn't see Him out of the corner of her eye anymore, but every time she closes her eyes, even momentarily, she can hear the clop clop clop of little hooves on hard stone, coming closer.

She wonders what he'll do when he finds her.

Mossie cannot deal with all this nonsense. So exercising her Very Healthy Coping mechanisms, she stalks a dust moth.


even this mundane thing becomes momentous, as all the moths flit up far too high, bouncing languidly out of reach. She has to climb another tall crystal and launch herself with a clumsy leap. She bats it out of the air, but she falls with it, and for the second time in as many hours (or is it days?) she finds herself sprawled flat against the ground, wheezing with pain.

Mossie lays there for a long time. She lays down with every part of her radiating a dull ache, an escape from reality caught wriggling frantically on her claws till its wingbeats finally still.

She's too tired to kill it. She's too tired to move. Too tired to Anything. She fights back the approaching sleep with all she has, but she's too drained to get up from a more sleep-prone position, and the fight is inevitably lost.

She closes her eyes once more. This time, mercifully, Mossie does not dream.

Of course, all good things must come to an end.

Mossie blinks awake with a loud, expressive groan, shaking herself as she stretches.

Have to find the right stone, or die trying.

With a groan, she picked up her Dust Moth, licking the wings clean before chewing the body as well, trying to get every last scrap. If she has to keep going, there's no way she's continuing sober.

But she still doesn't quite feel ready. And when she sees another bouncing languidly in the air, tempting, it feels like a sign.

She stalks over, bouncing and managing to catch it in her mouth in one leap. She crunches it down with a satisfied grin, before turning to the ever eternal search for Rocks.

The tingly sense of utter failure is no less horrifying the second time, but it's more unreal.


Mossie, for a moment, leaves her body. She sees herself deconstructed, taken apart into a pile of skin and bone and brains and blood, stitched together with only the mycelium keeping her whole.

As soon as she comes back to her body, she vomits, bile and bits of wing forcing its way up her throat. She screams acidly, before flattening her ears.

She'll try again.

The light, tingly gemstone magic she senses this time is almost an insult.

Unlike the others, she takes the time to hunt down this one.

It's a little peridot, lying on the banks of the Crystal River. Tiny. Pathetic. Unworthy. She can feel it pulsing, in her brain, in her muscles, in her head, where her brain is currently trying to melt out of her fucking ears.


She grabs it and smashes it flat against the stony riverbank again, and again, and again, until it shatters into little pieces.

She watches the green float down to the bottom of the river. Then she tries again.

The magic she senses this time is strong. Not quite good enough for her theoretical child, but good enough to keep.

Mossie knows she's only got one more spell in her. She's gotta make it count. Maybe she could enlist help.

The gemstone is somewhere in the river. She dives, kicking strongly, and for a moment she's not in Polaris at all, but sitting at the bottom of a waterfall in Pisces, the helium slowly draining out of her.

She screams, the air rushing out in a great gush of bubbles, and barely has time to grab the stone and paddle back to the surface before passing out.

She wakes up a short while later, and she's ready to go out with a bang.

15th time's the charm.

---

gm note for future ref: this stone was used in this post

So.

Her last spell, and. Well. It's not good enough.

It's right next to her though, that's gotta count for something. She picks it up, adding to the collection.

She stuffs it into her fur, before formulating an expert plan.

She'll keep searching Polaris, but this time while doing so she is going to discover every single hallucinogen in these fucking caves and take them all at once. Maybe she'll discover the secrets of the universe or some shit.

It'll keep things interesting.

And so she leaves, pretending she still cannot hear ghostly hooves behind her.

[exit mossie