Reseda lumbered into the room of bones, her home that she had only just returned to not long ago. This would be a place for the white one to learn, to see for itself the madness and ruin of the caves. At least, that was what she had told it. She did not care for any of that, personally. She just needed it. She needed it in her quest for the caves, like how she needed the little one and its envy.

There were loud crunching under her feet as they began to make their way through the endless field of bones and stones. She looked down and all she wanted to do would flop on her belly, grab a nice big bone, and crunch down. Yes, let her mind go away and revel in his powers while biting down on the hard surface of bone.

The mental connection between the two had faded on their way there, so Reseda reached out and latched onto its mind again, opening the connection so they could communicate. She sent both words and feelings through towards the white one. This room is called Canis. The things we are stepping on are bones. They are the remains of the dead. So many, they cannot be counted. So many dead.
"Living with myself."
Nothing but lies.


tags: @Pride
notes:

The little white fawn staggered tiredly along behind, pale grey eyes taking in the rather grim, barren Cave of Bones as his head swivelled on a slender neck. He was rapidly grasping language due to his close link with Reseda, and tried his best to speak back directly, in a soft but confident bleat.

"Dead. How?" he asked. Images, then--questions that he asked himself, which Reseda would be able to feel, to overhear. He imagined many faceless Resedas dying--for she was the only Gembound he had yet seen--dying, and being dragged here to decompose. Despite his newly-hatched mind, the concept of death and decomposition was somehow not entirely foreign to him, as if old memories flickered like diamond-glints in the near-dark.

The dead, brought here, to dispose of them? Or did many die here?

He found it difficult to walk amongst the bones--many were larger than he was, and many made it hard to walk. Pride focused on the ability he'd found at birth, the one that came naturally to him, trying to throw the bones out of the way--to clatter them lightly to either side--just as he'd broken out of his shattering shell.

They did so weakly, a few tossed aside, others just rocked a bit so that he still had to step carefully around them.

He wondered why Reseda had brought them here--how the bones tied in to what she had said. To the degenerate behavior of the cave-dwellers. Perhaps they slaughtered one another wholesale? Or maybe they did not have any order--only chaos, and no value for life. Maybe it was tooth and claw, and the weakest torn apart, and left to rot here--and that's what she wanted to show?

Physically sore and tired from the journey, and curious, he followed along.

@Reseda

Reseda tried to hold fast to the connection, but it began to fall apart. She huffed as the link between them fell away completely and she would have to revert, for now, to speaking. "Nobody knows why they died or where they came from. They have always been here. But many have died in this room since the beginning. And possibly many that have died elsewhere have found their final resting place." She didn't think that the white one would understand her words and knew that she would just have to explain again once she got the connection back. Annoying.

However, she had another reason for bringing the white one here. She stopped some ways into the room and looked around before taking a deep breath. "BONECASTER," she called, "I would like to speak with you!" She wasn't sure how this was going to play out. The last time, and only time, she had ever seen the dark one was at her hatching. And she had somehow managed to make it so angry that it attacked her senselessly. She did not want a repeat. Or, perhaps, that was exactly what she wanted. To show Pride that the denizens of the cave were insane.

"Living with myself."
Nothing but lies.


tags: @Pride and also Giggle
notes:

Pride gently tottered, and then--as regally as he could--allowed his legs to fold beneath him. His breath came quickly, shallow, his muscles trembling from the long journey undertaken so soon after emerging from his glittering diamond shell.

Quietly, he listened to Reseda speak, turning his placid but intent gaze to her, his large ears fanned to face her.

"Nobody knows... why... where from... Have always... since the beginning. And... many that have died... have found their final resting place."

He understood bits and pieces, and did his best to piece it together. The long story made short, so far as he could tell, was quite simply "nobody knows." The first two words--or perhaps he was misunderstanding, oversimplifying.

The fawn found himself faintly frustrated at his lack of ability with language, and words, but before he could dwell on this too deeply, his reptilian guide was shouting into the cave. Pride flinched, ears flicking back, as close a grimace as could cross a deer's face doing just that. He then looked around.

He did not know who Bonecaster was, but he understood "like to speak," at least. Reseda enjoyed speaking with whoever this was. Was this another Guide, another Caretaker, called to teach him? That made sense. Reseda found him hatching and brought him to another to grant him the lesson he'd requested.

He looked around, accepting this in confident silence, resting his limbs as he awaited this new stranger's arrival.

Her ears swivelled forward, head lifting on a long and muscular neck as she heard the call. "BONECASTER! I would like to speak with you!" Her hackles raised like a brush along her mane, and she stood and shook herself out with a sharp exhale. She did not recognize the voice, but she considered, as fungus flicked from her coat in a dry spray.

No-... She didn't recognize this voice.

It was her duty to act as a conduit to the truths beyond this world, and she would not turn anyone away--even if she had been in the middle of sleep. Groggy, she made her way down the worn stone trail, paws treading stone heavily-marked by strange and ancient prints. Her head held low, tired, she loped forward.

Overhead, Omen called out in a single, haunting cry. The rustle of black feathers overhead reassured her that the bird's one blood-red eye was watching over her--and indeed she caught glimpses of bones flashing by below. Of two strangers in the dim light. A faint playfulness, a slight sense of mischief, took her--and she called out to them before she herself came into sight.

"Yes, reptile, and yes, small-white-thing, I come," she barked into the cave, her own voice hoarse and masculine. Let them chew on that, she thought to herself with dark amusement. A moment later she crested the slight stone rise, her dark silhouette appearing above the line of ragged rock, and paused to peer at her two visitors.

Since Reseda had last seen her, she would seem to have put on a great deal of healthy weight; no longer was she rangy and bone-thin, but rather, gaining back much of her old muscle. Likewise she was not twitching and gibbering so much as she had once done, but seemed far more focused as she eyed the strangers over. Let's see--do I know them?

One was indeed a reptile: long, dark, and gray-green. She remembered it--no; she remembered one like it, one who had many cycles ago come to attack them all with ice. Kerberos had chased that one off. She had seen a dark hatchling once, too, with a similar shape, but she was unsure if this was the same child.

Her gaze then flicked to the fawn, clearly freshly-hatched--its pure white fur was tousled, round gray eyes staring at her with an unexpected sharp curiosity and confidence. None of the gentle helpless lamb for this critter, then. All for the best. ...I bet it'd taste delicious. She stared a moment longer, her thoughts not quite betraying on her face, and then looked again to Reseda.

"What is it?" she asked bluntly--not quite rude, and not dismissive, but very to-the-point.

________________

ROLL THE BONES

@Reseda

Reseda watched carefully as the dark one approached. She had noted the white one's exhaustion, but had not put much thought into it. They were strong and she knew that, if she turned to ask if it wanted to stop, then it would just get mad. Such were the uselessness of emotions and the pointlessness of pride.

However, that didn't matter now. The dark one was approaching. She spotted its dark coat, still matted with blood and fungus, but did notice that it seemed a lot bulkier then it did previously. A lot more...normal? If that's what it was called. It still looked half dead, but at least not mostly dead, as it had when she hatched in front of it.

Once it was in front of her, she raised her head, ready for its scathing remark or even something as violent as an attack. However, neither came. Did the old fool already forget her? It had only been a few cycles since they had met.

She stared, unblinking, at the dark one. "Giggle, do you not remember me? I am Reseda. You broke me out of my shell. We have come for the wisdom of the bones."

"Living with myself."
Nothing but lies.


tags: @Pride
notes:

Having rested for but a few moments, the fawn--proudly, indeed--pushed back to his feet. He gave a soft huff and plodded, shakily, to Reseda's side to stare up at the hyena.

"Pride," he stated quietly, though without fear. "Name is Pride." He did not make anything strange of this hyena, though he noted at once that even from a bit of a distance, her smell was rather unpleasant. But he had no idea what was normal, and what was not, and therefore had no idea that this hyena did not quite fit the cave's general milieu. He flicked his tail and took a staggering step toward her, then lifted his head to watch her, for a moment, taking in her features--her dark eyes, her thick, fungus-matted fur, her rounded ears.

Despite his youth, he could tell that something about her seemed... off, however. Not in the mad-gibbering-witch-doctor sense--Giggle was showing none of that, not yet--but in the way of a wild animal ready to bolt at a moment's notice. She did not seem afraid, as such--more... hyper-alert, staring down at them both but with rotating ears, and no friendly tilt of her head.

And she knew who we were before she saw us. How? Perhaps her sense of smell could discern such things, even from a distance? Or her hearing?

Or-... Had she known they were coming? He peered to Reseda, wondering if the lizard had expected his birth before he'd ever hatched.

Giggle watched, flicking a tail and tilting her head ever-so-slightly. Trying to think, to remember. Attacked it? I do not remember attacking it. I do not remember it. But then memory clicked, and she was abruptly pacing closer, peering at the lizard.

She remembered it--yes. The one who'd hatched and immediately called her a liar, and a crazy old fool. She snorted, then looked to the fawn. Why was it here? A lesson, a sacrifice? Giggle looked to Reseda.

"You don't plan to harm the little one because you dislike me? I remember you--of course I did not, at first, you crazy fool,--do you remember calling me that, when I told you only truths?--because you have grown tenfold. You look much, much different now." She said this matter-of-factly, with dry and darkly amused humor. "I did not attack you!" It had been her intent, of course, but her magic had failed her, and she doubted the little one could have genuinely interpreted her irritated bluff charge and jaw-clacking snarls as a failed attempt to summon magic. And anyway, how would she know what she was casting? The lizard had some reason for implying this, or she was a mind-reader of some kind who'd read Giggle's intentions, or was calling her snarling lunges an "attack" though she'd never hit, or-...

It didn't matter.

The hyena huffed. "I told you of the Void, the not-space. I know more of it now, and oh yes, it exists. Its controller is the unfurred-cat Senka. There are eyes in the void and she has pulled many in, now, though they are since released." She spoke slowly, her mind threatening to shy away from the topic, to fragment her thoughts, but she clung to them stubbornly. She had vastly improved after actually confronting Senka, and her phrasing and body language showed it.

"You--as a newly-hatched thing who knew nothing--called me a liar, and mad. And after I had helped you hatch! Yet now it is you who lie, and say that I attacked you. Why have you come?"

She asked this without any particular malice, merely aloof, and a little irritated. She only vaguely remembered the exact wording of the encounter--moreso, she recalled deep, furious frustration at the stranger's disbelief and its arrogant words.

But, if Reseda were here to ask about the bones-... well, Giggle had no right to turn her away. She simply waited, detachedly cold, to hear the komodo's purpose.

________________

ROLL THE BONES

@Reseda

Reseda knew that it was coming, the accusations and the anger. She expected it of the gems to remember old grudges, wrongdoings from the past. But there was something in the rambling that she would latch onto. "Giggle, I never accused you of attacking me. I didn't mention it at all. I did many wrong things in my early cycle that I regret. I never meant to be rude. I did not understand."

She was too focused on the dark one to reestablish the connection between her and the white one, which would be her loss - she could direct Pride into the thought that Giggle was insane, that she had seen so much terrible things that she had lost her mind.

Instead, she gave the dark one a small dip of her head in mock respect. "Like I've said, we've come for the wisdom of the bones." Yes, she remembered it, long ago. The dark one had predicted the light one's future...and it had miraculously come true. If Reseda had heard correctly, it was the light one that had turned the lights back on. That was power, power that she knew she would never obtain, but hungered for it yet.

"Living with myself."
Nothing but lies.


tags: @Pride
notes:

The little white fawn listened to the hyena's long rant. Most of the words were meaningless to him, but he watched her slightly-off-kilter body language, observed the scars over her face, and the controlled heat in her tone. He didn't make anything of it, yet; like her words, they were meaningless without context.

Reseda, however, seemed far more calm and controlled, more reasonable, and he noted this in silence.

He could understand enough to grasp that Reseda seemed to be apologizing, for something--or perhaps explaining it--and that she, too, had once been quite young. It implied to him, at least, that this Giggle must be older.

Why has she brought me here? What are these bones, and why do we seek them? Quiet, the fawn turned, and tottered over to the bioluminescent mushrooms, gently nudging one.

The spores broke free, drifting into the air--into his nostrils--and he sneezed.