She was on one of her many trips between Polaris and Eridanus on a supply run for their project when she looked down one of the branching tunnels with a sudden urge to explore. She had looked to the tunnel that lead to her safe jungle home, and to the tunnel that called to her with a far away distant howl, a sound that had intrigued her ever since she had first heard it, and decided on pure whim that she would go to see it. When she had seen Polaris for the first time, she was full of excitement and awe and wonder at seeing the glory of the crystals and the wild colors and life of the room, and the same curiosity and sense of adventure filled her now.

This room was as different as her two favorite rooms were from each other as she could imagine. Here was bleak and howling, pure stone and whipping wind, pulling at her like invisible fingers, and she clutched her satchel protectively, afraid the things inside would come whipping out in the gale. Seeing the huge twister off in the middle of the room stole her breath away, adrenaline filling her veins as she moved closer and closer to see it.

The twister was a force of nature, wild and untameable, the closest she'd ever come to pure danger. She both wanted to touch it and get as far away from it as possible, a complex emotion that twisted itself as crazily as the vortex inside her. She grinned, her little fangs flashing, and she turned away from it to duck into one of the trenches that kept her safe from the wind.

Hair wild, eyes wide, she leaned against the wall and laughed and laughed, her satchel clutched tight to her chest.

@Louie

Both his gembound children had been able to be placed and secured at his old platform. They were hidden within the same room that Booker had been kept captive during his "recovery" from Louie's special disease. Eventually, Diamondfang would find him and possibly trial him for his supposed crime of desertion. Making his way out of Monoceros as the wind swept cave held nothing of importance for him at the present moment, he heard the odd sound of... laughter? That appeared to get caught up and tossed around in the turbulent air.

It was eerie, mostly because he couldn't see exactly where it was coming from but he had put up with enough of people's shit to last a life time. "You find the twister amusing do you?" The red man barked back into the twister as he skirted his way around it to avoid being sucked into the the vortex. "Care to show yourself?"

@Cayenne

Cayenne heard a voice in between her laughs. All she heard was,"-amusing-" and then, "-show yourself?", the sound cut off by her own noise and the howling of the wind. Was someone around? She hadn't seen anyone when she entered - maybe she'd just missed them.

She climbed the walls of the trench easily after wiping the adrenaline-made tears from her eyes, calming down somewhat, and she peeked around, the wind whipping at the tufts around her ears. She spotted them easily, their red fur giving them away, and their back was turned to her.

"I am amused!" She replied, half-yelling over the wind. She saw them turn to her, and for an instant she frowned with concern, seeing a huge chunk of their face missing from burn wounds, and she remembered the giant Vazi and their burns and how she could barely help them with her new and weak magic.

"I just hatched recently," She explained, climbing fully up the trench and coming towards them. "And I've been exploring room by room. It's like- it's like opening a completely new present that would take years to fully discover, and it makes me incredibly happy."

"...I'm sorry if my laughing may have irritated you," She added, seeing their nasty expression, the last vestiges of her wild euphoria fading. "I can leave."

What was that? The creature was something he had never seen before and he raised an eyebrow. Reminded him of Diamondfang but with more length and a long maneuverable tail. Up on the ledge, he made to move away from the twister in hopes that she would move down the perch she was on so they could speak in more solitude within the walls of the gorge.

"Yeah I suppose it is probably the broadest most open room in Origin." Pisces was as well, but it featured a lot of water rather than a twister. Able to comfortably sit down, he positioned himself on the ground. "So you're a gemling. Interesting. I suppose there is no goal for you then." Louie didn't even have a true goal at the moment. Just get his kids to be born, that was all he could focus on.

@Cayenne

"Goal?" She echoed, her eyebrows raising. Then she grinned, her tiny face opening up with unabashed glee. "I do, actually! See, I met this other cat-sibling named Tenn, and in this really amazing room called Polaris we're gonna set up a ranch where I can grow my herbs and plants and he can have his animals," She explained, her excitement growing again, her hands motioning and miming what she was saying in wide sweeps, "And it's going to be a safe haven to anyone who's hurt and when I get older I'll be a doctor! I'm not very good yet, "She conceded, her eyes flickering down, remembering Vazi. "But I'm getting there. I'm only going to get stronger."

She grinned at him. "Do you have any goals? I'm sure you do, being older. I haven't met many older gems, to be honest."

"....If there's anything you could teach me..." She said quietly, looking up at him with wide eyes, "I'd be grateful." This older gem looked wise to her, even if they looked bitter. Maybe they were some aficionado, some horde of information that she could listen to. Surely with age came a treasure trove of knowledge!

@Louie

Oh so the gemling had a life goal? Louie flicked his ear as he listened to her ramble about a ranch to grow plants and farm animals. Those little paws were a blur as grew more and more excited. A safe haven? Interesting. Louie had to hide the smirk that began to crawl over his lips. There was no such thing as a safe haven in Origin. Even telling him this now was a bad idea. But with talks of Hasira beginning to take up residence in Orion, maybe it wouldn't be him to cause the pain. "What can you do then. If you want to be a doctor what are your abilities." Getting up, he began to pace around in circles.

"To be a doctor, you need to be able to do this," concentrating only for a few moments, he tried to send out his own healing powers. Pleased, she questioned him about his goals and the fox withdrew slightly. There weren't really any goals he had that were worth sharing. Stuck on where he had to go from here, he remained quiet for a few moments, "I'm in between goals at the moment. I may be one of the oldest in the caves but that doesn't mean I have my entire life sorted out. Plans don't always go the way you think."

@Cayenne

He asked her what she could do, pacing around her, and she followed him with her wild, child eyes. "I can...weave skin together with plant matter...though I'm not very good at that so far," She answered, feeling like she was under some sort of test. "I can make any plant I know of sprout from my skin, um, and I know which plants will bring down inflammation and which will numb pain, and which will make one drowsy and quiet. It's not much, but...I'm only two cycles old," She murmured, looking at them. "So it's something. And I've helped a few gems I've met, without a teacher."

Then the fox spoke, and she felt a rush in her blood. Her muscles relaxed, the slight headache she'd been tending and ignoring went away, and thought she already felt happy and carefree, now she felt completely and utterly at ease, like she'd just been given a hug, a warm blanket, and a tender smile. She let out a soft sigh, and blinked at the fox. "What...what did you do?" She asked, breathless. "Can you teach me how to do that?"

He spoke again, softly, quietly, and she felt bad for asking. Not everyone was as lucky as she was with finding Tenn and having a goal to share with someone. "No...that's true. You can only do the best you can, and hope for the best, sometimes."

@Louie

As he listened, he was astonished to hear how she was able to do something like that. It had never crossed his mind that one would even have the capacity to meld flesh and foliage. Plants sprouting from the skin seemed a bit more realistic in his head. Possibly because he had seen parasitic mushrooms growing on Deer Dad as well as other critters in Origin. Again, plant knowledge was something any chump could learn, so he was becoming more and more underwhelmed. "Yeah. It's something to start with."

Still he kept the smirk on his face as she remarked how astounded she was. "Well. I could teach you. But I doubt it would end well for one of us." One eye lidded, he didn't have much interest in teaching another. Though she might show promise after some work. Right now she was nothing more than a naive child. "Of course, but hope is never going to get you where you need to go in the end. Only doing things and trying different things helps." Maybe that's why she was here, to join the Merry Men and start a new chapter. "I'm guessing you don't know whose territory you just stumbled across?"

@Cayenne

Well, of course it went without saying that trying different things was the path to growth - any child knew that. You couldn't get anywhere by doing the same things over and over, staying safe with the things you already knew. That was how you became afraid.

She felt a small flicker of annoyance when he seemed unimpressed with all the things she could do already. She was strong for her age! She could help! But he just seemed to dismiss it entirely, and for the first time she felt like a child who knew nothing, and it made her mad. It crawled under her skin like some multi-legged bug, and she kept her face carefully blank and chewed on the inside of her cheek to compress her anger and keep from saying anything that might make him leave. Being mad at him wouldn't accomplish anything.

"No...not at all." She replied, staring at him. "Was I supposed to know?"

Her annoyance grew. Its not as if there was a sign posted at the front door saying who lived here, even if she could read as well as Tenn could.

How was she supposed to know things and be wise when no one would teach her these things? Her fingers curled into the palms of her hands. She grumbled at the unfairness of the self-depreciating cycle like a petulant child.

@Louie

Not responding to his assessment of her abilities, he didn't bother prodding her further as he just struck that up as him 1, her 0. That response to his telling her this territory belonged to someone made him inwardly laugh. Yes, she was annoyed. Just what he had wanted to get her. See if he could get to bend and break a bit more. Origin always needed more bitterness from its newest gemlings. It did, however, irritate him slightly to know that the Merry Men still remained as the unknown group of bandits, "You should have. But it is no matter." Diamondfang was supposed to deal with that anyway. All he was was a nobody.

"If you're looking for a trainer you won't find one. Magic isn't something that can be learned." Louie just shook his half mangled head as he made to now turn away from the black creature, she was boring him. "Just ask anyone else but me and you'll get the same answer." Straightening up, he snorted, "I may have tried to if you'd shown that you weren't such a short fuse child."

ooc; idk how to not make this lame help

@Cayenne