Had he fallen asleep?

It didn't feel like he had been asleep.

It felt like he had closed his eyes one moment, opened them another - and now he was bigger, older; moving like some kind of gargoyle revived from the stone of its make. Except, Phthalo wasn't stone, he was flesh, he was scale and.. he was hungry.

There was an exhaustive level of hunger to his belly. A grogginess from the lengthy pause between the then and the now.

Well, at least he wasn't dead. Unless he had died? Oh, that's too confusing.

The expanse of Polaris wasn't exactly the most familiar place to Phthalo. He'd hatched closer to the Spire, sure, but somewhere along the way had dissociated hard, or maybe fallen asleep, and he'd meandered off to a shadowy corner of the room. It didn't make sense to him, but that wasn't new either. His hunger pulsed through his body and Phthalo considered his options.

Stay here, wherever here was. That would mean the feverish distraction of his hunger might persist and if he wasn't careful, maybe he'd starve. He could go... somewhere. Maybe he should try to retrace his steps? The lizard's tongue flicked out, tasting the magicka that suffused the air, and looked longingly towards the Spire's silhouette. Its emanations, bright and blue and alluring, looked no different from the last time he'd witnessed them (granted now he was quite a distance from that dangerous obelisk).

First thing: he needed to eat. There were clusters of mushroom growths all over the room, some glowing with a similarly colorful aura. As he wove his way among one such cluster Phthalo's tongue flicked out a few more times, and then when he came upon a smaller mushroom (it held something of a plum tone to it) he reached out to grasp it with his little teeth, and once the mushroom head was cropped away, he swallowed it as any lizard might gulp down an egg.

It didn't taste great - but it was something.

Having eaten a few of the mushrooms, some of the lichen growing close-cropped to the soil, and even trying to masticate around a bit of gravel, Phthalo decided he was over trying to eat. His belly was mostly full and that would be enough, he reasoned. Besides that, nothing tasted all that great - it wasn't a satisfying experience in the slightest.

As he roamed further, hugging shadows of a ledge within Polaris-proper, he came to a lip of stone that terminated with a sheer drop. It wasn't a large gap by any means, or even really that high compared to the deeper segment below him, but Phthalo was pretty small and his depth perception did him no favors. It looked immense, that gap.

He couldn't very well go backwards though, could he? This particular patch of the cave floor was very dark, to the point that he could not tell the best path down except for that dangerous looking jump; so he focused and hoped his eyes would adjust to the dull light of the fungus around him, as if they hadn't already. He even drew his tongue out and across one eye, then the other, in case they merely needed a little cleaning.

The more he focused, the more he willed his eyes to adjust, the less and less faith Phthalo felt over his own agency. It wasn't working! It was still dark! But there were lights farther afield, so to speak - down in what he'd call a ravine, and across the gap. He tried again, and...

...gradually, almost imperceptible at first but then quite clearly, a thrilling sense of adrenaline built up within Phthalo - concentrated to his spine, somehow. A dull light began to spill from beneath his skin, there, too; ghostly, silver-pink almost, and he turned his head one way and then another, trying to get a good view of the back of his neck. His long figure was helpful for everything except that. Once frustrated, he gave a huff and flattened on to the stony floor in defeat.

Whatever that charged sensation was, it didn't help him at all!

Gathering all of his (now abundant) energy, Phthalo tucked his legs in close and did his best to leap from one section of stony ledge to the next, expecting to pancake on the other side as the best cast scenario - and while airborne for those split seconds the gembound felt true fear. Would he make it? Would he somehow slot himself between some of the cavernstone and be stuck with a belly full of weird mushrooms? Would he -- ...it didn't matter, in the end.

With a satisfying slap of his belly and the serpentine sag of his neck, he came in to contact with the lower shelf that was his intended target. He needed to trust himself! It was not so far after all.

This second ledge wrapped around a segment of the wall's interior, almost like a nautilus spiral, but it came to a blunt end pretty quickly and Phthalo was left to decide once again if he would jump, or climb, or simply go backwards. He turned his head to look back the way he had come, his body remaining forward-facing while his long neck and sideways vision assisted in this curious glance - and he made up his mind that he couldn't go back. It was simply not possible after that first jump.

As he looked for the next spot to launch towards, he saw something that piqued his curiosity. It wasn't so much an object that drew his eye, or anything alive or moving, but the glowing of a few specific fungi. It looked familiar, somehow. The sense of deja-vu washed over Phthalo to the effect that his worries melted away. How could he know this place? He hadn't been many places at all; but he saw the particular shape of the wall here, and the dull emanations of the mushrooms growing in close bundles, and had a memory spike through his mind of a very large a very friendly lizard.

"Big... lizard... was friend." He murmured to himself as he contemplated this moment.

Beneath where he now perched was the cluster of mushrooms, having grown quite a lot taller since last he'd seen them (back when he had hatched, he had to reason). They might make for a good landing pad. It was with less trepidation that Phthalo skittered backwards along the shelf so he could have a proper running start, and then he pealed down the stone ledge and jumped...

This time he was airborne for a lot less time. He felt his tail clip the end of the ledge, and was stunned by how much that hurt! The momentum of that sent Phthalo in to a slight roll and he thought he was about to somersault in the air, missing the mushroom pile; but it wasn't quite enough of a pivot to cause that much upset. He landed squarely among the mushrooms and was reaching with his arms and legs, trying to grip with his claws, and found that the mushroom caps were extremely pliable. If he had known this would be such a persnickety line of action he would've reconsidered all of his exploring!

Alas, he did make it. One of the mushrooms took his arrival with a puff of spores and the weight of the lizard sent it crunching down, as if to bestow Phthalo upon the cavern floor without any further protest. As he skittered from the crumbling mushroom he sought refuge among the shadows and hastily made his way farther, no longer relying on the higher vantage point of his climbing because it had been so difficult, and so fraught with danger to his little body.

Further along from here (maybe only a five minute trek for Phthalo, so not that far at all to anyone else) he had that deja-vu feeling again. It was like he was in a dream; like he had been here before, but never before, at the same time. Something of a mix between recognition and having forgotten. The spire gleamed distantly, and he knew that was his goal as soon as he set his eyes upon it.

There was, as Phthalo set forth on the ground, a sudden flash of brownish-red ahead and to his left. It moved too fast to pinpoint with the eye: there-and-gone, vanished off behind other rocks. It had only been a few inches long, and--should the reptile taste the air--it smelled of small rodent.

Nothing enormously interesting, unless he were very hungry--except a moment later, hidden down amongst a cluster of rocks, came a strange clinking sound.

@Phthalo

He remembered the glow of the Spire being a very bright blue, or maybe shifting purples; something cold and borderline white-hot. When a flash of color caught in the corner of his eye Phthalo froze for a split-second, blinking and arching tall with his long neck - and flicked his tongue as an instinctive response.

The air tasted sharp, like urine; not that Phthalo would know that specifically, only that it was a little foul and a little musty, and not really alluring. His belly gave a little pop! as if excited. If nothing else the lizard would be intriguerd enough to hunt down the shape, to study it and make sense of his environment.

The skittering of his own claws across the worn stone floor indicated he was on the move, and as he did so he took advantage of the terrain as clefts, or ascensions, or paths became available - hoping to outrun the thing as he sought to catch up to it. If successful, he'd reach out and try to grab the creature wholly with his wedge-shaped face - to swallow it whole!

Gone; hidden, escaped down amongst the cluster of stones, in a tunnel between them that formed a little den. The "clink" had gone silent, now, but the hole into which the Red Mouse had vanished smelled... odd, to Phthalo's tongue.

Of metal, among other things. How strange.

@Phthalo

The creature had escaped from his view, which hadn't taken much effort on it's part really. The taste in the air now was strange... It was mineral, he thought, but not familiar, but also not bad. His belly rumbled even more raucously in response to the taste.

Shaking off his failure, Phthalo launched in to another run with the intent to find a hole to shove himself inside of. Hopefully the same crevice that the creature had vanished in to as well - given that the path was so clearly marked, and readily available to his hungry tongue. He thusly launched himself against the stone escarpment and scrambled against the wall as he sought -- he wasn't sure, something though.