backdated to a couple weeks back on Ravage's hatch date!

The chrysalis had steadily grown--far past what its mother had expected of it, really. Or rather, hoped. The child inside was obviously large, and the few times it stirred near to its hatching, its silhouette beneath the reddish Fire Agate shell was far larger than a fresh-born hyena had any right to be.

Which made sense, because the cub growing within was not really a hyena. The blood of Valkhounds, ranging from violent to idiotic, ran in its veins, and undoubtedly its mother held all sorts of concerns about which blood--so to speak--would be the greatest influence. About whether she were right in her assertions about good parenting being the key to a Gembound's growing personality. About lots of things, no doubt, exactly none of which concerned the growing pup.

To it, there were few things of interest. One was the increasingly tight confines of the gemstone womb-slash-sarcophagus nurturing-slash-imprisoning it. The other was the growing hunger in its belly. Faint, instinctive fear at being trapped, combined with impatience, hunger, and a mindless drive to be born, prompted the child to shove and kick at the ever-more-fragile, thinning stone.

Overlong forelimbs scraped futilely--but strong hind haunches gathered, kicked out... once, twice... and then shattered through. The hatching was clumsy: a tumble of fluids, a flop of nascent black-and-green color, smoke rising from burning paws.

A quiet, pained yelp, a blind snarl with eyes still closed at the searing sensation in its limbs.

Alive for two seconds, and Ravage had already decided that life sorta sucked. Or--at the very least--that it would need to bite back.

She had been fretting, of course. Fixated and debating, fighting her guilt at agreeing to give the other child up (for now, she told herself repeatedly and firmly), fighting her own damn doubt and her memories of the fates of half the depressed, stressed Bonebound.

Giggle was, however, damn determined to do her best. Omen had truly shone for her, an ironically black beacon of light in her mind whenever she'd really gotten down. But now--this was the time. She scrambled to her feet, vigil at last ending as the stone cracked and spilled forth fluids and child. She didn't even have to help, and there was no time to worry now, to think-

Motherly instinct (and experience) took over. She closed the gap to the ludicrously large child (seriously, this thing was almost as big as she was) and offered a few warm, cursory licks to its head. "There, now," she assured them kindly. "I'm Giggle. I'm your mom, and I'm going to take care of you, okay?"

Eyes cut to smoldering feet, and she cringed. Fire. The magic was so damn unstable, and already it was burning the poor kid. Sympathy surged and she reached for her magic, and-

-it all went wrong.

Not a good first impression, the hyena suddenly throwing herself back with a yelp, a strange twist coursing flames up her own four paws while healing and sharing precisely nothing. Oh, she had the burns now, but it had done jack shit to heal her cub, and her gritted jaws ground hard as she flailed in the same puddle Ravage had just hatched into.

There seemed to be a lot of pain and fire going on in this world.

Ravage rolled around for a moment, clumsy, wet, cold and burned all at once, struggling to open stuck-closed new eyes. Black-velvet lips wrinkled back, a child's thick little fangs bared at... well, at everything. It didn't know enough, yet, to gauge what might be worth snarling at, but everything certainly sucked.

As the cub stumbled, anything it touched was lashed out at. It was defensive. Life had already bitten it; clearly it needed to bite back to survive.

Teeth smacked against rock (ouch), its own hock and then--in a fluke of bad luck--Giggle's flank. A weak bite, but it did connect, and Ravage shook out its grip with a tiny ferocity born of instinct.

Adding insult to injury, the burn pain was joined suddenly by the sensation of small (but not small enough) teeth clenching in her fur, catching some flesh behind it. A snarling yelp of pain escaped her, more a subdued hiss than anything, and she rounded on the cub.

A blink, as she realized who was biting her, and why. It wasn't its fault; still blind, hurting, lashing out--she understood. She did. And her first job, then--beyond fucking up its hatching and initial healing--would be to calm it down. To reassure it.

Glancing absently back at the small (and slightly bleeding) wound inflicted on her side, she put on her best Mom Voice.

"That's enough. You're all right," but the pain showed through, and she almost sounded more petulant than confident. Giggle grimaced, and pressed on. "Just sit, a minute, okay kid? Nobody's gonna hurt you. That was your own magic."

The cub stumbled, ears perking toward the sound of a voice. It wasn't a particularly reassuring voice, but it was the first one it'd ever heard outside its own snarls; and as its eyes blinked open at last it beheld a creature who instinct immediately told it was family. It hesitated, then stumbled a step to one side to sit down, wincing.

Family. The word was clear in its mind, and as it hesitated again--trying to figure out what to do now--this knowledge somehow sparked a new magic in it. Instead of fire that burned its paws, now came a flicker from its stone down through those same paws to a bone underfoot.

Visions swarmed to its mind, flickering with imagery, and the hybrid cub went silently still as it was lost to them for a moment.

Panic, pain, family—Ravage was not alone in feeling these things, and all at once too. That tumultuous mix swallowed the pup whole like a whirlpool, and it was instantly at the depths of the vision:

"No! No, Navea, you musn't!" cried a voice, and the shape of a quadruped blurred into the vision before becoming clear: it was wolf-life in shape and size, furred with six legs and a long tail, and it was pleading with another creature. Before it was a similarly sized hound, though this one had four legs and two tails, and six eyes looking back at its partner with tearful courage.

"Yes, I must. I'm sorry... They will find you otherwise. I will do it." Though its voice was firm, it wavered through the tightness of its throat; its eyes glanced to the smaller creatures behind the wolfish one, three of them, each a mix of the first two. "We are good at hiding, aren't we?"

"Yes," one spoke up, but the others cowered and mewled.

"Navea," pleaded the wolf again, its body trembling against the children. "Please. We can relocate, we can—"

"That's enough, June. This will buy you plenty of time. Perhaps you could try for the refuge?" Navea's voice was becoming resolved and it could feel that resolve in its heart, and in its stone, its core: this had to be done.

"Come out, come out, little mouse," slithered a voice, its deep tone carrying across the bones like dense thunder. The hidden creatures all paused, their breath held, and then Navea gave them a final smile.

"No," whispered the wolf as Navea leaned in for a nuzzle, turning to give its children each a nose-nudge of their own.

"Quietly now," Navea cooed, its attention turning back to its partner. "We've been so foolish, haven't we, June?" With that it turned and made a point of scrambling loudly atop the bones. It was built for speed. This... this it could do. It could only hope its partner and their little ones would make it to the garden they'd heard so much about. Yes. Navea could picture it, its paradise-like colors, its grass underpaw, its fresh waters absent of decay and filth... yes. They would make it. They would—

Oh. In a flash of scalding realization, Navea looked down to see its stone cleaved in half. It had tumbled forward, half of its body left far behind; it lifted its head to look but found itself tired and... yes... tired...

A vision-... No sooner than they'd hatched, and already the pup was steeped in magic, lost in images it couldn't understand. Ravage had no context, no reference, bar that brief concept of relationship and family--but the rest-? The sudden flood of strange creatures to its mind, the anguish in a voice, the names, the pleading and the rumbling words of a predator, the love and pain and fear and death-

Ravage cried out, cowering back and pressing paws before its eyes, clumsily swiping at its own muzzle. It tried to squeak out words of its own. "No," but it was clearly no protest against Giggle. Instead, fear drove it back, and its muzzle raised, glowing eyes sweeping the cave, the ceiling, now that they were open.

It paused.

They're gone. The strangers, the voices.

It looked at once to Giggle--the one who seemed to be no threat, who came with some sense at least of familiarity. "What... was that?" Ravage managed, a child's squeaking rasp.

Surely she would know. Surely she had seen it-?

...Shit. Two minutes old, and this kid was already full of trauma. She didn't know what was going on--whether this was more magic, or some form of madness linked to the blood of Vargas's brood--but she could recognize a formative moment when she saw it. All else aside, she had the experience of a mother.

Sooty paws swept her forward, and her head dipped down, a nuzzle aimed for the fur of the child's flank, and then its own black muzzle. Her tongue lapped out to offer a few reassuring licks, just shy of a cat-bath, as she slid down to lie before it. "You're safe," was the first thing she said, a reiteration with warm confidence behind the words.

Giggle hesitated before attempting her magic. It was a bit of an invasion of privacy, but this cub had no privacy yet to speak of. More than that, however, she knew that her power wasn't up to its previous level--and a backfire, here, could prove devastating. The lost look on Ravage's face, however, strengthened her resolve, and a moment later she was pressing forward (oh so carefully, so delicately-) with her mind.

She saw, in brief glimpses, the memories upon which the cub dwelt--fresh but confused, disordered by a youthful mind unable to comprehend them. Still, her eyes snapped down to the bones, and she at once understood what had happened. "Ahhh," she breathed, wincing gently, and moved to pull the oversized cub gently toward her by the scruff. "You saw the memories in the bones. It's nothing to fear. You are only just born; we live, and then we fade again. Those bones belong to those who came before, and what you saw likely happened a very long time ago," she added, trying to reassure it. "I will teach you. You are one of us--of the Bonebound, who care for and speak with the bones. They seem to have chosen you," she added, dull surprise rising in her at the realization.

Her explanation was slow, cautious. She didn't know how much the cub might understand. And, speaking of which, she couldn't keep thinking of it as a cub, nameless; an experiment, a trial. "Do you know your name, yet, cub?" she asked, still warmly gentle.

The cub hesitated, cowering down again. And, instinct driving it toward comfort, it abruptly scooted for Giggle--head low, ears back and haunches nearly to the ground. Singed paws ached, and it trembled--cold and wet--as it tried to comprehend everything she'd just said.

It didn't. It couldn't. Even with the arcane magic sending meaning with her words, much of it was wholly incomprehensible to a frightened child's mind. It understood... very little. It grasped that these were the memories of those who were now gone. It heard 'Bonebound' though it didn't understand it--and... "Name?" it was a soft question, a mindless repetition at first, but then Ravage thought.

Giggle. Navea. June. Those were all names. Could it simply adopt one of those as its own-? Could it decide, too, to be Navea? No, the cub decided. That didn't sound quite right.

It tried to reach through memory but there was so little to draw from--and instead a word came to it, like an echo of a forgotten thought. "Ravage," it said softly. It didn't really understand what it meant, but from the bank of words it seemed to have been granted at hatching, this one sounded good, at least.

"Name... Ravage," it explained softly, cowed into fear by this traumatic first few minutes of life. And as it burrowed into the hyena's flank, more of a sense of self blossomed in it. 'It' was a 'he,' Ravage suddenly knew, though in a tentative sort of way. Giggle could be trusted. The world was scary.

All of these things were new lessons, and Ravage looked up at Giggle. He wanted to talk to her more, but he couldn't find the words--or even the questions. He just knew that he felt isolated and afraid. "Scared," he managed at last, very quietly.

The one saving grace in all of this was that this kid wasn't Giggle's first rodeo, nor even her second or her third. She'd raised her share of kids--both her own, and lovingly adopted--and she knew how to recover from setbacks such as these.

Not only that, but it might have even been for the best. A Valkhound busting out of its shell larger than her and full of confidence in immediate success might have been much harder to wrangle than a kid relying on his mother for comfort after immediate pain and fear. It was a grim thought, and she'd rather have dealt with gently disciplining and teaching a happy child (she wasn't the manipulative sort, not for things like this, not for family). But she noted the silver lining nonetheless, as sad a silver as it was.

So for a moment she set about reinforcing this bond--but far more importantly, comforting her child. Pity stirred her deeply. "Well, it's nice to meet you, Ravage. I'm glad you're here, and you don't need to be scared," she reassured gently. All the while she set about grooming him--licking clean the goop that had stained his hatchling fur. It was in this way that she immediately and unfortunately learned that the kid had Vargas's spikes: for now, just tiny pointed quills of glow-tipped black interspersed throughout his fur. She grimaced and turned her tongue the other way, washing with the grain. Ouch. It'd just been a pinprick, so she didn't make a noise. No need to upset this poor pup any further.

"We'll get you something to eat--you'll feel better after that," she continued. Then she paused in grooming, a thought hitting her. "Do you know what food you might like? Meat? Bugs, fruit? Grass?" The words were gentle queries as she went back to cleaning the cub, but it'd occurred to her that she had no idea what Vargas's diet was. She assumed meat. It'd be a strange cosmic joke if the hulking predator were in fact a grazing monster. The thought of him engaged in the drudgery of slowly picking his way over the field pulled a half-suppressed snort of amusement from her. That's not nice, though. He's Ravage's--grandfather? She'd have to be polite about the Forge when talking to this one.

Although-... not a good start, with those visions, Giggle suddenly realized. Those were 'rebels.' That might even have been Vargas hunting those Gembounds. She hadn't been sure, from the voice. Too distorted by strange memory. But it was the same sort, anyway--those who 'upheld the nest.' Would that influence Ravage, going forward-?