Moss had long grown over the chrysalis burrowed away in an old alcove of Tunnel N, where once, many many cycles ago, beasts had gathered to wage war on their apparent enemies. Where they had created a child, and then left her here to await their return that would never happen.

Oh, she had waited. She had remembered their faces. Their words, their harsh comforts, the blood splattering a wolf's muzzle. The scent of death and hatred and insanity that wound its way through a child's early psyche. She had stewed in it, and then was lost in it. And she knew nothing else but the embrace of sleep as her loneliness gave way to its own kind of insanity.

There wasn't particularly anything that stirred it now. There was no passerby, no old ghost come to wake her up. There was just a moment of blissful nothing and then the cruel wrench of consciousness that dragged her back to the world. Blue Moonstone cracked, the awakening energy of her magic shedding off the layer of moss and dew, and then the last moment of darkness gave way as she was ejected into the light.

Without a sound, the bird slid onto the springy ground of the tunnel, blinking in surprise. She wasn't used to being awake. It was a lot of light at once, a lot of visual input. But instinct said "its ok, because mom is near." Because surely, she would be. She had been told at a young age that she would always be there.

...right? Right?!

Her head looked to the side. No mother. No others. Other side. Nobody there. No nest, no remnants of food, no trace of anyone having been there in a long, long time.

Confusion gave way swiftly to terror. She was suddenly naked and alone under the lights - too bright! - with no soft feathers to protect her, no close family to keep her safe and warm, no...no ANYTHING.

A sob welled up in her throat as she scrambled back into the alcove, into the shards of her own chrysalis, soggy wings flopping about as she tried to curl back into it, wishing that it would grow around her again, that she could retreat into its embrace for anther decade. She quivered and trembled in the middle of the shards, trying to stop the quiet sobs escaping her, and failing.

@Azure

Azure was passing through toward Polaris when the sound reached her. Maybe it was just luck, or maybe serendipity, that it was her coming through her just now; but then, the caves were often quiet, these days. It said something about her long recovery that her mind wasn't on her family, on her past. When she heard the quiet sound of crying, she was only thinking about dyes, and gemstones--the things she was going to look for in Polaris.

Which was what made the shock of seeing iridescent black feathers, so like her own, so horribly intense. She froze, staring at what little she could see in the center of a blue stone--and her suddenly frozen brain could only think, ...Mom? She clamped that thought down, brutally, but the sudden trembling terror that ran through her--followed so closely by hatred, and confusion--chilled her through the feathers, to the bone.

Blackberry had never been mom to her, except in brief and yearning dreams and even those she had angrily shoved away upon waking. Blackberry killed my mom, she reminded herself.

And was this-...

She couldn't tell. Blue moonstone, Dumortierite--they were both blue rocks, in the end, dark chrysalis shards tucked into the shadows of this tunnel.

Azure took a breath. She was about to speak--trembling, now, herself--when she realized that the figure was too small. The voice... wasn't right.

She hesitated, and her gaze fell to the feathers--too similar, too familiar for coincidence--and she cleared her throat softly.

"Hello?" she tried, and could barely manage more than a whisper.

@Sylvanberry

She immediately noticed the approaching creature - of course she did, she was terrified and alert and as soon as even the smallest click of talons against stone reached her ears, her head snapped to the side. Immediately she saw the cheeks - white cheeks on black, mom MOM "Mom?" she squeaked but then instantly shrunk back as she saw...everything else.

Not mom. NOT MOM.

If it were even possible, she scooted closer to the wall, scared and confused. She didn't know this one. She didn't know them. She just knew her mom. And...did she know anyone else? She tried to remember, she tried so so hard. An image of someone....like it. Crown. White on black. But different, so different, it was different! This wasn't right.

Another sob shook its way out of her throat. This was a stranger. Not mom. She was scared. She didn't know what to do. Where was her mom, she needed her, she needed to know what to do!

She needed to say something. She needed to get it to back off, go away, leave her alone so she could keep waiting for her family to return. She couldn't do anything unless her mom said she could. Her mom would tell her what to do, right? "D-don't," she managed to gasp out, but when she breathed in again to continue, she hiccuped loudly, another sob. She couldn't. Couldn't do it.

@Azure

Holy fuck.

The stranger had had the same reaction. The horror, the... recognition, seeing the wrong face mirrored in her own. Azure hated that she'd been seen, even for a second, as Blackberry. And she wasn't privy to Sylvanberry's thoughts. She didn't know that she'd gone from thinking Azure was "mom" to a total stranger. All she knew was that... Sylvanberry thought she was Blackberry, and now was cowering and crying "don't."

Her heart broke a little, old wounds she'd thought healed abruptly tearing open, and she felt as though she were bleeding out. But her focus sharpened. This wasn't a kid, she didn't think, but-... Sylvanberry might well have been. Cowering, crying. Azure's own horrors were nothing in the face of it.

She folded herself down where she stood, quiet for a moment, trying to become as small and harmless-looking as possible. Any thoughts of Polaris and dye and gems had fled from her mind, now, as she spoke softly.

"I'm not--her. I'm not Blackberry. I'm not gonna hurt you, or do anything bad." That must've been what Sylvanberry feared, right? To Azure, at least, that made sense. "She's--gone, okay?" She's dead, I hope, and the rest of us left to pick up all our shitty pieces. She'd thought it all to be over with, and the sudden knowledge that there was even one other out here still suffering filled her with a sudden, distant rage. She tamped it down.

And as she studied Sylvanberry, faint memory drifted in. An introduction, a... a literal lifetime ago. This one was... softer-looking than Blackberry had been, let alone what the goose had become, but--weren't they siblings? Or--were they? She wasn't actually sure what Sylvanberry's true parentage had been. And it had been so long that-... I don't remember her name, she realized. They had met, she was almost sure of it. This one was family but-... One of so many of them, created for violence, then left behind.

"Hey--you okay?" Azure pressed, softly. "I think--I think we're family. I used to be Cloudberry, do you remember? -My name's Azure, now."

Tentative, afraid, pushing back horrors in the hopes of building something new-... but this family was a stranger to her, and she had no idea of how this would end.

@Sylvanberry

Terrified eyes never left Azure as she lowered herself to the ground. What did that all mean? Instinctively, it felt better then when she was towering over. Less threatening, more...safe. But logically she'd never learned body language or interaction. She wasn't sure why she was lowering herself to the ground.

She swallowed another sob down and tried to control her trembling. She needed to be brave, right? What does Mom want me to be? Probably brave. Strong. She remembered her, very distantly. It was all she remembered, a sharp-edged bird of fury but also of gentleness. Warmth. Also anger. Strength. She didn't know. She'd only known her for a little while.

But she was focused on Azure now, the name bringing up some distant part of her. Faint recognition twisted through her neurons as the name Blackberry struck something that had nearly faded away. Something deep, deep, buried inside. That was mom's name. Blackberry. She remembered.

And she remembered the name Cloudberry. It was more faint, but she had heard it before. She blinked, trembling a little less. "Y-you are...family?" Was this what she had been waiting for? She wanted to believe it so bad. She wanted to. So deeply did she want that to be real that she fully threw herself into it and suddenly swung the opposite direction. Trust, joy, relief surged through her and every part of her relaxed as tears slipped from her eyes. "F-family! You came back for me!" She couldn't contain the sobs now, but they were less pitiful, less fearful, and now came with the smallest laugh.

She hadn't been abandoned! Someone had come for her!

As if suddenly taken by a surge of energy, the hybrid jumped to her feet and darted forward, pressing herself against Azure's feathers, crying loudly. "You came back, you came back!" she repeated, over and over again.

@Azure

It couldn't have hurt her any worse if someone had taken a dagger and stabbed her in the heart, and twisted. Her mouth went dry and she worked her beak as she struggled to find some words that wouldn't stab this--whoever-she-was--right back. And in the meantime she half-stood, arching out a wing to cradle the smaller bird in close, snaking her head around to briefly, instinctively preen her in a protective, friendly gesture as Sylvanberry cried and repeated her frantic words.

But, fuck, no, Azure hadn't come here for this one. She hadn't been waiting, or searching. This other child, this other victim, had been abandoned here. Forgotten.

Azure couldn't fucking tell her that. Not now, at least. Maybe not ever. She wasn't a liar, and it already sat heavy in her gut that she would hide this but the alternative? No. What am I gonna say? I can't go 'nah, just coincidence, nobody remembered you.' Fuck that. Maybe when she gets... better. If. Azure had no plans, beyond "okay, don't abandon her again." But what did that look like for the future-? Was this-

One step at a time, she told herself, and took a breath, trying to calm the grief and the righteous anger and the horror and deep, miserable pity that was welling inside her.

Azure swallowed.

"Sure. And I won't leave you again, okay? What--do you want me to call you?" she asked quietly. It felt better than asking what her name was, again. They were family--they were family, she was sure of that, at least, whatever the exact relationship might've been. She couldn't admit that she'd forgotten her.

@Sylvanberry

She cried harder as Azure's beak began to gently preen the ruffled, damp feathers. She had never been preened before. Not since...

Did mom do that too? She did. She remembered. Before everything went away. A sharp beak carefully clearing out dirt, helping the new feathers open. It was one of the last things she remembered. She relaxed into it now, lost in one of her only memories.

This one was bigger then her mom, and she was different. Cooler tones, more legs, weird things on her head. But it didn't matter because she was family and she had come back for her. Everything was going to be okay now.

Her sobs finally began to calm minutely and she leaned back, sniffling. "Call me?" Didn't she know her name? Oh...oh, because she'd chosen a different name. Azure. But Sylvanberry did not understand why she would have done that when she distinctly remember they'd all had a naming scheme, right? "Sylvanberry...my name. Why did you...change yours?" Wasn't Cloudberry enough?

@Azure

Azure hesitated. Oh boy. From what she remembered, Sylvanberry--and now the name did come back to her, in a flood of old memory, as it was spoken--had hatched... here? Not far off. And--fuck, had she been chrysalized ever since..? How to condense all that had happened into something... palatable, but understandable? Something that wouldn't shatter the fragile creature sobbing before her?

Azure took a breath and did her damn best, because what else could she do?

"A lot... happened. Some bad things. I think some of us didn't want to be... associated with our old selves anymore. Um. Have you been asleep... since you first hatched?" she hazarded. Her wing gently moved up and down, a softly reassuring gesture like rubbing the shoulder of a younger sibling. She... didn't know what else to do. She'd had kids of her own, since then. Raised them, with help. But this wasn't a child. This-...

This was someone who'd been treated the way Azure had, and she didn't know what to do. She could only hope that Sylvanberry hadn't been exposed to-... the worst of it. That the chrysalis had spared her.

@Sylvanberry

Her eyes widened with surprise as she looked innocently, and ignorantly, up at Azure. She didn't understand. "Didn't...associate? W-why?" Did they not want to be part of family? Did family do something, or did they do something to the family? She didn't know anything. She could barely remember. Some part of her, deep and partly faded, said of COURSE they didn't want to associate. The family wasn't good. Something bad had happened, really really bad. But she couldn't remember what it was.

Hadn't her mother been so sweet to her? So gentle and loving and warm...? Family was good, that was what she knew. And they would come back for her.

Had they lied, then? If Azure had left the family?

Further tears welled in her eyes. "Y-yes. Mom said she was going to come back for me. Everyone left. And then I waited. For such a long time and I think someone else was here. But then I went to sleep because I was tired. I didn't want to leave. What if they came back and I wasn't there?!" She was nearly hysterical, panting through her words as she tried to fight back the panic. What if they had come by when she was sleeping?! And she missed them! Surely, Azure would fix this. She was...yes, she IS family. She would know what to do.

@Azure

Azure winced, deeply, as she heard the tale of woe and hurt. And she'd have grimaced if she'd had lips to do so: she was slowly beginning to realize that it wasn't fear of Blackberry that had made Sylvanberry flinch like that.

She was also realizing that she couldn't tell this story as she normally would. If a stranger, a competent and healthy adult, had asked her? She'd have told a blistering tale, rife with old hatreds and thick swearing. But... that might destroy this kid.

Azure took a breath and looked around, ensuring they were still alone, safe--and wondering if she should put this off. If she could put this off. But the desperation in Sylvanberry's words... Azure had to tell her something. She took another breath, this one shaky, as she settled on what to say. "It's... a long story," she began, quietly. "The short version is that some bad things happened, and... she--Blackberry. Mom. She isn't around. She couldn't have come back, I think. I don't think anyone meant to abandon you. I can tell you more, but... maybe we should get you someplace safe and warm? And get some food," she reasoned. "I have a home back that way," and Azure nodded back toward Orion. "I can take you there and get you comfortable? I won't leave you," she assured, again.

That'll give me time to think of a way to explain it that won't absolutely destroy her. Fuck.

@Sylvanberry