He had hatched but a couple of days ago, earlier than he was supposed to. Instead of being an adolescent he was a hatchling and his little peeps and chirps made him astoundingly cute. He was like a soft adorable fuzzy plush toy. An exceptionally impatient plush toy at that, if he had stayed near the shattered stone that once held him he would have grown to adolescence rather quickly. Instead he wondered, not as overwhelmed by the world as when he first hatched, now he was inquisitive. He wobbled around, through the underbrush. He was getting quite adept at going through the foliage on his two little talons and using his beak to move things out of his way.

He had found a giant mushroom and he stood staring at it for a moment, wondering if he could climb it. He put a talon up against it, sinking the claws deep into the soft flesh of the mushroom. He was sure he could do this. Using his beak and his claws in a manner that was more instinctual than anything else he began to climb. When he was a fair amount up the mushroom he looked around. Staring in awe at the world around him.

It was when he realised he wasn’t quite sure how to get down that he started keening like a derelict.

@Kin-Kin

Kin-Kin had finally parted ways with Tukluk among the leaves. Whilst leaving her newfound friend brought an ache to her heart, Kin-Kin felt alive in a way that she hadn't felt for many cycles. What an odd thing fate was; the last time she and Tukluk had met, the sparky little monkey had a vendetta against her, and as the wolf found it quite amusing she wasn't about to stamp it out.

An amused hum rose in her throat and her glow swelled in response to that feeling of nostalgia burning within, so that as she progressed deeper into the forest she lit up water droplets like diamonds scattering the surfaces of the leaves. It'd been a long time since she'd wandered like this, but she was in no hurry. She had nowhere to be. And so she padded on like a living flame, golden and flickering, with cloak whispering along behind her and blade clinking quietly in its sheathe.

As she kept moving, she began to hear something; quiet at first, but as she got closer, louder. The sound brought her to the base of the Monarch, and after a sweep of the clearing from the undergrowth she realized that it was coming from the mushroom itself, quite high up on the ridged, foamy stem. Kin-Kin took a moment to consider how she might go about reaching it, ears twitching in deep thought. After a moment, she grunted and approached, setting her paws squarely apart against the earth.

A smirk crept across her cheeks on her face as a pillar of quartz pushed itself up from the ground, rising up, and up, and up until it loomed high above her head. There it stopped its growth, roughly three times higher than she stood. By rising onto her hind paws she could peer over the crystal platform, and by straining hard she could reach over with her legs. Using all her cycles' worth of training, although admittedly she was quite out of shape, she managed to scramble up onto the ledge using various pawholds on the rough quartz surface. Once there, she rose up again to her hind legs, placed her front paws on the stem of the monarch and finally met the gaze of a tiny, fluffy ball.

"Need a save, kiddo?"



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