Giggle gave an impatient huff. She knew what the lizard claimed, and shouted, and lied, and so she simply stared for a moment. Her gaze was dark, pointed, but thoughtful.

"It is not my place," she began, her voice a lower hoarse tone--as if in irritated acknowledgement--"to turn anyone away from the knowledge of the bones. And yes--you were very young," she conceded.

With this she turned, pacing back to the bone pit--the fawn, she saw, was nudging the fungus--sneezing--and she gently pushed him aside with one paw, careful not to knock him down. "Some of those will kill you," she warned him bluntly, before pacing on.

Omen gave its haunting cry, a rustle of feathers signifying its circling overhead again, and Giggle spoke once more--turning to face Reseda by the bone pit.

"What is it you would ask of them?" she asked bluntly.

________________

ROLL THE BONES

@Reseda

She looked down at the white one, its curious, slightly confused expression. Right, she needed to reestablish the connection between them or else this would be all for nothing. The dark one was insane, that was sure, but the white one did not know this. It had only met her - for all it could know, she could be the insane one.

However, as she sent out her magic, the tendril shattered as she tried to force the magic too much and she frowned. She couldn't keep having this silence between the two, so when the dark one began to lead them to the place where she had hatched, she leaned down to Pride.

"This is the Bonecaster," she whispered, hopeful that the dark one would not hear. "They are as old as a person could get. Their mind has become shattered. They are the best example of how the caves deteriorate until there is nothing but madness. Watch, she will cast bones for us. As if the bones could speak. Her mind is lost. Give her an a question, though, a question you'd like to know or she will get angry, as she once did at me."

She stood straight and followed the dark one, as if nothing had transpired. They approached the bone pit and Reseda tossed around ideas in her head of what she would ask. She didn't want either of them to know of her plans, no. But still, she wanted to know. She, of course, believed the casting of the bones. But the white one didn't have to. Finally, she decided on how she would word it. "I would like to ask the bones to show me my future. I wish to create change. Will this change come to pass?"

"Living with myself."
Nothing but lies.


tags: @Pride
notes:

Pride listened, unsuspecting for now of Reseda's ulterior motives. He had no real reason to disbelieve her--but nor did he have any real reason to trust her. He simply listened, interested but detached, his young mind taking all this in but with the intellect--even so young--to remain distanced from it.

A question, hm? What would he ask?

He listened to Reseda's, and he supposed his own would be the same. His future, his fate. But then, if these bones could not truly speak--and they didn't look particularly alive, he noted, upon seeing them--then would the answers even matter..?

He toddled farther from the pit, watching the filthy-coated hyena, before folding long and spindly legs beneath him. Pride flopped onto the rock. Had Giggle's warning to him been madness, then? Could those mushrooms around her pit not kill others?

Curious, he peered to them. Perhaps this was what Reseda meant, then: others were ancient and mad, and began ascribing lifelike qualities to inanimate objects..?

Giggle listened to Reseda's request with a solemn stare, trying to simply accept it. The lizard was right--she had been young. Perhaps she had matured. After all, had Kerberos's first act not been to outright attack her? And the dog had become her beloved son, in time. With guidance.

As she turned back to her bone pit, she considered. Perhaps she should have offered guidance to the reptile--but she'd hardly been in a state to do so, at the time. No point in it now. Take a bone, pick a bone, a lizard-bone...

Giggle found herself stumped, for a moment. She didn't know what to use to represent the Komodo in her readings. Normally it was easy enough to snatch up a bone that reminded her, in some way, of her target--but now she saw nothing. For far too long she stood with furrowed brow, gaze wandering over her bone pit. At length, at last--and only after pawing around in the scattered bones--she chose one, a medium-small but strong, thick and tough thing, studded with little spines of some sort. This she lifted in her jaws, but a faint sense of misgiving still took her. After reaching the overhang looking over the top of her bone pile she looked down, looking over the bone one last time. It will have to do. But-... for the first time, something is not quite right with it.

Never mind it now; there was little she could do about this, though it was a thought she'd bear in mind for later. Perhaps the bones were trying to tell her something, even now, even with this.

She tossed the bone with a fling of her jaws down into the pit below, and watched the way the rest scattered at its impact--the way the patterns of the world would change at Reseda's actions. There was, noticeably--Giggle's mind picked up on this at once--no real change. Most of the bones merely rocked at the spined-one's impact, twisting a little but barely changing position. Yet there were many that continued to move in place, to shift, and just before they stopped altogether, a few fell just enough to catch a bright gleam of warm light.

The hyena observed this all sombrely, and she began to make her predictions.

"No," she answered simply, at first. "I see bones that do not fly at your touch. All remains the same--the same as it was, the same as it will be. The same as it is. Yet your bone--your future--it doesn't falter. You must be strong and continue on--perhaps even past an end of all you know. A near-death, perhaps. A death itself. A rebirth--that, I cannot see for sure; that, is a guess. What you must find is light: creation, lizard, and enlightenment. You have a dark shroud over your mind. It will be driven away with light. With understanding. Inspiration--perhaps companionship. I don't know that, either, not for sure. But what must change is you."

She looked up, at length, up at Reseda from her own perch high above the bone pit, and waited for a beat before speaking further.

"Is there something more you would ask the bones, or something you do not understand?"

Once upon a time, Giggle had deliberately tried for theatricality, for dramatic flair in her readings--the better to draw others back, the better to spread the wisdom of the bones. But now-... Her mind was still too fragmented for that. Perhaps in time. Yet now, her matter-of-fact delivery made it perhaps even more strange, particularly for the fawn: she truly believed in her own words.

She believed that the bones spoke the truth.

________________

ROLL THE BONES

@Reseda

Once again, she tried to get back the connection and, finally, it succeeded and there was another mental connection established between her and the white one. She made sure to shroud parts of her mind so that the young thing didn't go probing where she did not want it going. She listened closely to the dark one and, as it continued to speak more and more, the less and less she believed it.

She would create change, no matter what this chattering, mad hyena told her. No matter what a pile of dusty old bones, easily broken and smashed to dust, showed the dark one. She would take the power she desired, she would rise and destroy and create fear. She would be respected, as she had always wanted.

"She is not the only one." She sent this along as both thought and word. "There are many that are deranged and insane and their poison seeps into those that are untouched. But I shall not be affected. Will you?" No, the white one was strong. And, just for good measure, to try and probe the pride within it, she continued, "What do you think of this, Pride? Do you believe in a destiny you cannot change?"
She turned her attention to the dark one now, who had finished her reading. "Perhaps that is what the bones say, but I will try, nonetheless, to create the change I desire. I have no more questions for the bones." She turned to look at the white one and gave it a knowing look. "Do you, Pride?"

"Living with myself."
Nothing but lies.


tags: @Pride
notes:

Pride listened to Reseda's words, and one little fawn's ear flicked. He'd been with her up until the point she started her snake's silvertongued whispering into his mind, again, and now he found himself mildly put off by it. He did his best to hide this, instinctively, the way one hid an unpleasant expression in company, but he kept his eyes on Giggle.

He couldn't tell if she was deranged--to him, Reseda and Giggle were both creatures of a sort he didn't know enough about to judge. Likewise, regarding the destiny that could not be changed, he simply didn't know enough. He dismissed the question indifferently with exactly these flashes of emotional meaning. I don't know enough about it.

Yet-... He wondered, curiously, what the scraggly hyena would have to say about this. Again he pushed up, slowly, legs splayed and trembling, and he took three steps toward Giggle, peering. He wasn't about to buy her words wholesale, any more than he trusted Reseda, but he discovered abruptly that it was in his nature to seek the truth of things. He would not be led one way or another by other words; he would find his own beliefs.

"Do you believe," he bleated softly, echoing Reseda's words to Giggle, "in a destiny you can... not change?" The words were hesitant; his tone was not. He was unsure how to quite pronounce them, and some of them were partly mangled--but understandable, nonetheless.

"And. I. Would ask bones. My future." Reseda had told him to ask a question to keep the stranger appeased, and he had not forgotten her lesson. Intent, curious, he watched Giggle after speaking.

Giggle chittered softly, listening first to Reseda, watching her without expression--then the white fawn. She had half-expected the komodo to ask further questions--how to alter her fate, or what change she ought to seek. At the fawn's stammered question, she looked down at it.

"No fate is set in stone. It is why we consult the bones--or any of the patterns-which-speak. So that we may adapt, and change!" She trotted down to the bone pit again, starting to search the pit for a bone to serve as the bones' avatar for the fawn, speaking hoarsely all the while. "Most would ask further questions. They would ask--what change should I seek. Why will my change fail. Others will not ask, because they accept the bones at their word, and find their own way!" She did not realize that Reseda merely rejected them, rejected this future foretold, rejected the advice that the universe offered her.

"You see water, you can see where it will flow; you can see if you drop a stone, it ripples. But you can change the way the water goes." Giggle picked up a slender white bone, smooth and curved and slightly twisted--some old horn, undoubtedly, bleached colorless by time. This she carried up cautiously, and tossed down into her pit.

"Your future, then," she said to Pride, and watched the bones collide. Her expression remained focused, her demeanor relatively calm, as she began again to speak. "Pride..." What a strange name, she thought; but then, was Giggle not an oddity as well? Perhaps he was a proud little thing, as much as she was a cackler. Or-... had used to be.

"I see bones in the dark, some hiding the others, tumbling over one another and shrouding what lies beneath. I see yours spinning among them, but not falling away, though it does fall. I see talons falling around it, an open hand, but a clawed one. You are playing a game, Pride, though you might not know it. Mystery, and secrets hidden to you. What this game might be, and who will win, I can't see. You have to remain strong. You, like she, might endure much. And as she, you may even die, or find yourself reborn, or re... imagined. Changed. But it isn't what you need to seek. I hold only a warning for you; the bones warn of this: there is violence far in your future. It's needless. Unnecessary. Don't fall for it; don't engage in it. You can win without it--whatever that battle might be."

Giggle looked up at Pride, attentively; she seemed a confident professional at her task. "Do you have other questions?" she asked.

________________

ROLL THE BONES

@Reseda

Reseda didn't know how the white one would react. It did a decent job of shielding its thoughts from her so she retracted back, curious. She froze when it repeated her words to the dark one.

It mocked her. This was a mistake. She had been wrong about the dark one. It held more power then she realized, to begin to sway this creature already. Or perhaps she was wrong about that too. She didn't know. She wasn't used to this delicacy.

She decided that, after this, she was done with her games. Perhaps she would show Pride one more creature, if it allowed her to do so, and then give it the offer. If it refused, she would destroy it. If it agreed, then it would be a powerful asset.

She didn't listen at all to the prediction for the white one. Why should she? She didn't care, she didn't believe. It was now a power that she had no interest in whatsoever. She would ignore this, forget about it, and continue on with her plans. She stepped back, deciding that she would at least try and be respectful to the white one, as that seemed to be the way to its trust. She looked at it, as if asking his permission to leave.

"Living with myself."
Nothing but lies.


tags: @Pride
notes:

The fawn watched Giggle for a long moment, curious, taking in her words and absorbing them. He didn't understand a good half of them, at least, but he understood the concept of games and secrets, and changing, and violence. At least a little.

For awhile he merely stood, digesting this and going back over the sentences in his mind, wringing every last bit of meaning that he could from them. This didn't mean that he believed them, no; not any more than he believed anything else. Not yet. He needed a body of knowledge for comparison. But the hyena did not believe in a fixed future--that he understood. Neither did Reseda, from what he could gather, and so perhaps in this they were both correct.

He lifted grey eyes back to Giggle, mind working for a moment longer.

At length he managed two simple, elegant words, spoken quietly and matter-of-factly, and with no emotion attached: "Thank you."

He then turned to Reseda. He did not know she had withdrawn her mind from his--or perhaps she'd merely covered her thoughts; but he directed his own toward her, nonetheless, and again in emotion more than pure words.

You have shown me sickness. How would you change it? What would you change it into?

Aloofly curious. Indifferent. Distant.

Giggle turned away after a moment, losing interest in the two that had no more questions for her. There wasn't much to note about the lizard: it had grown, it apologized. There was now nothing truly notable about it--and the fawn, well, it was a fawn.

Nothing about it was set in stone, yet--future was indeed mutable.

With a long yawn she stared absently at her bones, and then turned, shuffling to lie down on her overhang. Unless they requested her further, she would let them socialize amongst themselves, and leave when they pleased--so long as they didn't touch her bones.

She glanced back, laying her head where she could vaguely watch them through half-lidded dark eyes, in silence.

Her bird continued to circle overhead.

________________

ROLL THE BONES

//exit Giggle (unless her bones are messed with o no you dint)

@Reseda