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This post contains potentially sensitive material:

sad kitten ): and probably gore later.

After having fled the scene in Draco, Blastocyst had ran and ran, and hadn't stopped running. until he'd made it back to here. This foul and accursed place where his brother had first introduced him to that miserable pastime sensation of burning alive without any fire. Boiling and vaporizing from a false heat. Bursting with a light that cut through every internal seam, every cell. Full body apoptosis. It had been disgusting.

And yet, he'd returned to the view of the horrible burning thing. From here, its effulgence was almost soothing; it whispered magic and life into his stone-lungs and stone-heart that made them beat all the better. But Blasty knew its truth. Blasty knew what it was capable of. And he was far too young, too grief-stricken, too guilty, to understand that fire only burns when it's misused.

But he didn't know what else to do. After witnessing what had become of his brother, and running through like four or five caves and tunnels crying so hard he could barely see, Blasty now stopped here with nothing to do but think. He didn't want to experience it again. He didn't want to go down with his rotten brother who refused to listen to anything or anyone.

But wasn't it his fault that he had gone along the whole time, and had to witness it? Hadn't that been his choice, to let his brother go ahead and eat whatever it wanted? And what kind of brother was he? To make it this far and not finish what they'd started together. Blasty was far too young to understand, and his youthful mind was internalizing it all—making himself out to be the real problem.

He was a coward! A coward, and also a traitor, and also a terrible sibling! He should've joined his brother in doing apparently what it was that kittens do, and that was eating horrible, awful tasting rocks, and being generally miserable about it. Life was such a hungry chore.

Suddenly filled with kitten determination to right the wrongs it had never committed, Blastocyst steeled itself (as much as a literal baby can), and began to search for something.

Unable to find anything easily accessible, Blasty was presented with two options: cry some more, or try again. Babies are not born believing that failure is forever; they still have yet to learn that some disappointments are ever-lasting.

In the interest of learning this lesson the hard way, Blasty would not give up hope and would continue the search for another crystal of the Spire. Perhaps they weren't looking high enough?

They would try to jump up onto the Spire as they had last time, but as it turns out, when your brother isn't there to goad you into doing dumb things, those dumb things become significantly harder to do.

The grief at this point was almost unbearable. Blasty should've done something. Blasty should've stopped him. But Blasty couldn't do anything—couldn't even climb a rock by himself! Oh, it was far too much for a poor kitten who knew nothing better. Without magic and without company, itself was all it knew.

Blasty couldn't stop the tears from falling as they pawed helplessly at the glowing rock, as if begging the thrumming presence under their paws to be so kind as to bestow upon them a piece of it.

In the potent cocktail of emotions, Blasty's building frustration caused them to lash out at the stone instead. To mirror their brother, to copy what they had seen. Kitten claws tore into a weak point of the Skystone spire, and tugged and tugged until, at last, a piece came lose.

Tired, and so so hungry, the kitten looked over at the stone. Unappetizing. Maybe they should listen to that instinct to find food elsewhere? But oh, they were so tired... Most Gembound live through this tragedy, of knowing childhood without parenthood to go with it. So many Gembound were born lost and alone.

Blasty wasn't alone, but he did feel lost. So very lost. The fragment of Skystone hummed beneath his paws, its fleeting magic fading slowly like the juices from a plucked fruit. Sugars... proteins... a growing kitten needed more than this. But this was what he had, and running and feeling had made him so, so hungry...

Delirious, tired, consciousness fading, Blasty scooped the stone in his mouth and waited for the outcome of his foolishness.

No merciful oblivion swept in to take the kitten from the horrors he had seen.

Instead, he felt... re-energized. The exhaustion and deliriousness abruptly faded. The stone they had consumed sparked through him, flaring with power, igniting on their own. There was a touch of pain to it: a promise of disaster if he kept it up, and a deep sense of inhibition, a powerful instinct to not do that. But for now it seemed only to empower, to infuse, what it recognized as its own.

The stone, however, would prove a bit uncomfortable to pass.

@Blastocyst

He waited, and waited, and waited. Grief is so strange. Some people have epic stories written about it. Some people are moved to create, or moved to act unwisely, or moved to do anything meaningful at all. Instead, this poor kitten just gets a weird poop out of it.

Well, of course, that's not all it'll incur. I once saw someone say grief doesn't ever really go away, life just gets bigger around it. We can only hope for this poor too-small kitten, without hair to bristle at the vibrant and violent buzzing as the skystone passed through his intestines, that life will continue to expand beyond this moment.

But we'll have to see.

- end -