Before sight, there was sound. The pulsing of life, thrumming in the veins of the beast inside the chrysalis. The footsteps of lumbering creatures, passing time and time again, unaware of the life growing in the uppermost crags of the tunnel. Its earliest memories were sounds. Sounds were comfort and familiarity.





This feeling of touch was not. The yearning for breath, the will to open its eyes and face the light. These sensations overcame it, forcing its body to lurch, its claws to pierce the walls of its sanctuary and send it tumbling down, down, down the walls of the tunnel until it lay still on the floor of the cavern. Its neck flared- Once, twice, until its breathing was steady and its heart had regained its rhythm.





Periwinkle eyes slid open, slitted pupils widening in the brilliant glow that the creature would come to know as Pegasus. It was unnervingly quiet. No sounds to comfort the beast.

It sidled through the edges of the tunnel, spindly fingers and claws reaching into cracks and crevices of the stone that composed its surroundings. Occasionally, beasts would walk by and it would crouch into the corner, as if to hide, although it was both too big and too bright to properly avoid detection, but the passersby didn't seem to care.

But then there was one that didn't walk through. It noticed it at the sound of shattering gemstone and looked up from its search. Eyes trained on a purple thing - that was really special, a lot of purple things came from that dark cave ahead. But then it noticed that it hadn't come from the dark cave, nor was it making to return.

Huh. Druid immediately abandoned its meaningless task and skuttled forward, long and thin limbs carrying it swiftly and close to the ground, stopping a number of yards away from the creature. Its eyes were wide as it looked at the thing, nose twitching with its sudden, intense interest. "You are awake and you are purple. And yet you don't go back to the dark nest of monsters. Aren't you with them?"

@Excalibur

Quiet may have been an overstatement. In its daze from its birth and subsequent fall, it had failed to notice the long creature slinking in the shadowed crevices of the tunnel. Its vision had cleared in the time it took for the creature to speak, and it now admired the pale thing with awe. Despite never being taught the meaning of the words the other thing spoke, the young gembound seemed, to some extent, comprehend them.





"Purple?" It managed to choke out, parroting the stranger. It pushed itself up onto all four of its claws, taking a toddling step closer, tail- it had yet to notice it had one of those- dragging the floor behind it. "Purple?" it repeated, more confident in its voice this time, still not grasping the meaning of the question it had been asked.

@Druid

Druid blinked. Oh, how cute! A real actual baby!! It had never had the privilege of being able to actually interact with a freshly hatched gembound before, so it found itself growing excited, leaning in far too close and curling its head around the sides of the valkhound to get a good look at it. "Purple, yes, purple!!" One spindly finger reached forward and tapped lightly with a claw against the purple of its scales. "Purple is a color. You are purple." And black, too, but no need to complicate the poor thing.

It took the opportunity, as well, to properly look at one of the purple monster-beasts that it had never gotten a good look at before. Graceful snake-like movements carried it around the thing, eyes and nose getting a good, thorough look at it as the spines on its shoulders rattled with excitement. It was glad, now, that it had crept down this path. What a treat!

"You are purple and I am gray." It slunk back around to the front of the creature, the entire inspection taking no more then around 20 seconds. It spread out a gray forelimb for the creature to look at. "Do you know other colors? Or must I teach you?"

@Excalibur

It stiffened at the sudden closeness for a second, before stomping its forelegs in a way that, to it, was playful. “Purple.” It said again, almost wistfully, this time peering down at its own claws like it was just grasping what a “purple” was. It was purple. A rather pretty shade of it too- Not that it knew anything about being pretty.





It stilled in the short inspection save for its excited jittering, somehow forgetting its earlier fear of hatching, and the rather nasty fall it took. “Gray.” The creature parroted the long, gray thing. Gembounds were some fast learning things, let me tell ya.

@Druid

Okay, maybe the whole baby thing was going to wear on Druid quickly. It had taught the kid its first two colors, sure, but what, was it going to go through the entire rainbow? It wasn't a parent, nor was it interested in being one. But maybe, since the kid was really feeling all sorts of new, it wouldn't mind if it messed with it a bit.

It would never notice, of course. Kids don't notice anything.

But its attempts to subtly push some not very friendly bacteria up the kid's sinuses unfortunately failed, as the magic refused to call to its aid. It looked put off for a moment, but then continued talking as if nothing had happened.

"Yes, yes, gray! And this is green," It opened a wing and pointed towards the tip, where the gray became a light seafoam color. "Now...can you point to another color? Something that's not purple, gray, or green?"

@Excalibur