Nothing stirs in the blissful blackness. Nothing had stirred for quite some time. A consciousness was burgeoning on a half-light of awakening, lost somewhere between waking and sleeping. A sense of weightlessness in perfect, still, inky waters.

For a long time it lulled, inordinate amounts of time seemed to have passed.

Then, came a stirring, a single thought that caused ripples amongst the stillness. Ripples that felt as tidal waves during a time of so much quiet.

Dark.

Dark, was the single thought that blazed the through the calm. It was dark.

The second was, tight.

A tight squeeze of smooth, cool, walls containing something. It felt compelled to move its something, a sudden tension outside of where its thoughts arose from, but still attached. Meat, the consciousness provided helpfully. It was moving its meat. As the meat tensed and shifted, the cool walls squeezed tighter; then gave way. Which gave way to yet more sensations. A sound, crumbling. A muffled clatter. Air brushing against the part that had caused the break in the tightness.

A beat passed. The thing gave pause, as if holding its breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Nothing came. No shoe dropped. Just the gentle brush of crisp air against meat-- No, skin and hair.

Exhaling the breath was enough to have the rest of the walls crumble away. A squeal sounded as its stomach lurched, colours blurred through the darkness before being stolen away and the sensation of something hard again; but this time only on its side.

The ginger lump lay motionless in the tunnel, closer to the Polaris than the other branching exits, looking as if it was discarded from its slightly suspended chrysalis.

It took a few more beats before it leaned up.

Bright eyes took stock of the body, it peered at a pair of trotters, wriggling and stretching the limbs experimentally. Then further down at a soft and plump belly, pink and covered in a light dusting of reddish hair.

Hog, was the next thought to bubble to the surface. She was a hog. She was Hog.

With that, she rose to all four trotters, with an experimental sniff, she turned herself to the walls of the cave. Snuffling at the moss, the rocks, the few remains of crumbled chrysalis toddling slowly from one to the other on unstable legs.

A few days ago, Rei had a very similar experience.

He tumbled out of his chrysalis in a room full of reflections of himself-- soggy, covered in baby fluff, with a beak too big for his face. It'd been difficult to stumble out of there, the mirror-crystals made the tunnel seem much more maze-like than it actually was. But he eventually got out.

Since then, he'd taught himself a few things. His flight feathers had finally come in, though his flight was still shaky and uneven. He'd picked at a few mushrooms and insects, but he found that prey was much more filling, albeit harder to get. Usually he'd have to wait for another gembound to kill something, and then he'd come in after and peck off the scraps of meat.

Fish had seemed easier, until he fell into the crystal river in Polaris. Never again.

Now, he was wandering. He'd noticed early on that there were other tunnels extending out of Polaris, but he'd been fairly hesitant to do so after his last experience in Tunnel A. This one, though, seemed quite nice. It didn't have anything very reflective, and he could easily see the darkened entrance to some other area beyond it.

His talons took him forward a few feet before a low crunch sounded through the air, and he backed right off. The sound was recognizable to him, though-- he'd heard it himself when he'd hatched out of his chrysalis. Peeking around the edge of the tunnel's entrance, he saw some great ginger gembound wobbling around.

He'd never spoken to another gembound, but now, he supposed, was as good time as any.

He fluttered unevenly closer, his nails clicking against the cave floor. "You can eat that," Rei said slowly, indicating to the moss-- not the rocks. "But it's kind of gross."

Trotters scuffed against the slippery rocks as her legs seemed to have tried to make the decision to flee without any further input from her head.

Thankfully, on such wobblily legs, she made nothing more than a light scuffle -- and didn't make it further than a stride away.

Big, round, uncomprehending eyes blinked at the fellow gembound as the piglet turned. The first few syllables Hog had attempted to return came out as a few long and sharp syllables, as if her mouth was filled with cotton. Little more than garbled nonsense.

After clearing her throat, she tried again, eyeing the feathered gembound. Her eyes almost crossed as she moved closer to look at his large beak.

"You have a big nose," she finally managed, mostly comprehensible. It seemed a 'filter' wasn't something this gembound was created with, but she said it with so much awe; it was hard to mistake for an insult. Nor was conversational skill particularly high on her list of talents.

Without waiting further, she turned to the nearest clump of moss and gingerly plucked a piece from the rocks with her front teeth...

... Her face immediately scrunches up as if she'd bitten into something bitter.

"Eurgh! Why is it bad?" Hog complained, loudly around her tongue as she stuck it out. Letting the nasty half-chewed moss and drool mixture slide off her tongue and splat onto the rocky floor.

Rei waited for the hog to speak with fairly rapt attention, and found himself somewhat disappointed. There was a strange, uncomfortable little feeling in his gut as she pointed out his nose. He was aware it was too big: he'd seen it from all angles. He lifted a scaly foot to the grooves of his beak, half-scratching at it.

He wasn't sure how to respond. "Okay," was what he went with, with the hope that they'd move right along from it.

And move along they did, it seemed. The bird watched her pick up some moss, tentatively putting his foot back down-- though when she spat it out, he started again and fluttered a good foot or so into the air before landing back away from the pile of swine-slobber.

"I don't know," he said, shrugging the curve of his wings like shoulders. "Anything that's green tastes gross. This was an exact science, of course: all green things were yucky.

Little black nails click-clacked against the smooth floor of the tunnel as he turned, looking up and down the short expanse of tunnel N. Eventually, he hopped forward a few feet, wings unfurling to grant him some air as he hopped up onto a bracket of dull orange-red polypores, tapping at the mushrooms with his beak. "These are good," Rei announced matter-of-factly. "It'll make your tummy stop hurting. The green stuff will, too, but this is better. It's not bad."

Hog follows with an unwavering focus as Rei speaks. Brows furrowed as if concentrating solely on committing everything the gembound was saying completely to memory; a difficult task for someone a few minutes old.

Green was yucky, but edible. Orange was good for tummy ache and tasty. She wasn't entirely sure what a tummy ache was yet, perhaps that was something that happened to other gembounds.

She toddled over to the mushrooms -- side stepping the spat out moss mush -- and pressed her nose into them. Snuffling at the base and then the cap, she concludes, "it smells tastier too."

"You know everything!" Hog breathes, all starry-eyed, pulling her snout away from the polypores. "What's the tastiest?" She adds after a beat, after all this gembound knew everything! Absolutely everything. He'd been right about the green moss, so surely, he had to know everything in the entire world. That was simply a fact!

This gembound, with dark feathers, large beak and tappy feet. This one, was undeniably, completely and utterly the coolest ever. She'd only ever met one but, she had never been more certain in anything ever, in her entire few minutes of existence.

The idea made her restless, shuffling on her trotters restlessly as the idea took root. There was a bubbly feeling that made the back of her head feel pleasantly tingly, and her limbs feel full of energy.

Excitement, her consciousness offered, you're excited.

"The tastiest?" Rei echoed thoughtfully. He'd only awakened a few days ago-- he hadn't quite developed a favourite yet. He knew what filled him up, the most, though. "Crawly things. Sometimes bigger things come by and they leave the meat. You have to eat it before it turns to goo, though." That was particularly nasty. Worse than moss.

His head swung, looking up and down the tunnel. If anyone had hunted recently, the body had already turned to oil and vanished. Still, there were other tasty things to find around here.

He hopped up onto a rock and bent one way and then the other, looking around the rocks and the edge of where the wall met the floor. He spotted a thick, black beetle lazily crawling up the wall and snapped his head out, gripping it in his beak and crunching it until it stopped moving.

The beetle fell in front of Hog's trotters with a little plap, and Rei fluffed up his feathers proudly. "There's no big things to eat, so these are good right now, he said.

Hog's felt her stomach lurch at the sight of the bug spat at her trotters. It wasn't the same feeling as she'd felt with the moss, but similar enough to know there was something she didn't like about this bug. Her subconscious reasoned that she hasn't even tried the snack yet, and that she was very hungry.

Those two thoughts warred very openly on her features as she reached, then recoiled a twitch, then continued reaching again. All hesitation and little else.

"There are big things?" She ventured before finally closing her eyes and trying the offered snack...

...To which her eyes light up with surprise as she swallows it rather than spitting it back out. Despite her reservations, Rei had once again been correct; therefore making him the cleverest gembound ever. This fellow gembound could truly do no wrong in her eyes. She bet he knew all the secrets of this new place.

Hog let out a pitched hum of appreciation, admittedly put on in lieu of speaking and potentially dropping her tasty little treat!

@Rei

His shoulders lifted loosely into a shrug again. "Bigger than you and me," he reasoned. Rei's head turned again, a quick glance up and down the tunnel. He'd seen big, aggressive beasts on four legs coming in and out of the tunnels before, but it seemed as though they weren't here for now. "The biggest ones eat the smaller ones, but leave the ones me-and-you-sized alone."

He didn't quite know the etiquette of 'don't hunt anything that speaks,' but honestly, he'd probably figure it out eventually.

Not quite enjoying the size difference between them regardless, Rei fluttered back on top of his rock so that he was roughly a head or so above Hog. Not enough to survey the tunnel in its entirely, but enough that some instinctual prey-fear had been silenced for now. His beak clicked thoughtfully. "Do you have a name?" He asked. "I think mine is Rei."

He knew some things. He didn't know how he knew them, but he did. His name was Rei, he was a bird, and this thing was some kind of pig. She also seemed quite friendly, and he was fairly certain he liked her.

A friend. That's what that word was.

He pointed his beak towards Polaris, the pale blue light of The Spire spilling against the cave mouth. "That place is bigger," the bird said. "There might be big tasty stuff if your stomach feels empty."

@Hog

Hog found herself, unable to look directly at Rei as he moved onto rock. She found her neck wouldn't allow her to tilt her head directly upwards to make eye contact. So, instead she settled for staring directly ahead at the rock.

It seemed like Hog lacked some of the survival instincts Rei had, she certainly felt no issue with limiting her vision to a close inspection of the rock face.

"Are.." she trailed off for a moment. She hadn't considered that there would be more like herself and Rei, or that what she just ate could've been just like her. Rei was nice however, she reasoned, he wouldn't make her eat something that was just like her. Instead of dwelling further she brightly announces, "I'm Hog!"

Unable to see where Rei is pointing, she chooses a random direction, turning her head first further into Tunnel N. Then, turning to look into the mouth of the Polaris; maybe Rei had been speaking about the one that looked different.

"It doesn't feel empty. It feels gurgly, and tense." She chews thoughtfully on the idea for a moment before meekly asking, "is it scary in the big place?"

@Rei

Rei did consider asking why Hog wasn't looking up at him, though some dim part of him did tell him it might be considered rude. He sure wouldn't have liked if she'd asked him why he didn't have four legs, or why his face was so big, so in the interest of staying friends, he just let her stare at the rock. She seemed happy.

His beak followed her looking down the tunnel, and then up towards Polaris. "No," he replied-- but he quickly changed his tune after a beat. "Most of it isn't." Maybe it was worth warning her?

"There's a river," he said. "It's really deep. You can fall in and get swept up and it's sort of scary. But you can just not fall in." Simple enough. His nails tapped thoughtfully on the rock. "There are big... things," he said "They wander. They're really big. They don't talk or anything, so you just have to avoid them."

What else? "And you don't touch the big blue thing," Rei nodded. "It zaps you."

All avoidable. Nothing to be scared of if you could do that, right?

"It feels kind of nice in there, actually," he said, wings fluttering as he invited himself to sit on Hog's back, trotting up to sit on her skull. His nails were dull from spending so much time on the floor, so they didn't prick much into her skin. "Like... when you get excited. You feel buzzy," he explained.

@Hog