The pup seemed to try his best to face the wrath of Giggle's breath. He'd already half-predicted her breath would smell worse than her coat, and unfortunately he was right. Still, he tried to tolerate it, though he couldn't help to turn his head once she was done to quickly lick his own shoulder a few times.

He turned his head again to rest it on the ground in front of him, blinking blearily. He licked scraps off meat off his muzzle with a tongue seemingly too thick for his own mouth, chewing on them quietly. He mumbled slightly, repeating the word as spoken; "Giggle."
He watched her for a while, eyes half-closed, quiet.


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Giggle paused in her gnawing to eye the pup. He was watching her through eyes half-lidded, obviously not quite ready to sleep, yet.

She pondered.

"Yes, Giggle. ...Do you have a name?"

The hyena--huge beside the tiny wild dog pup, despite their closeness in age--peered down, waiting, her dark eyes glowing faintly with the reflection of Origin's orbs.

"No name," the pup responded after a moment, staring at her. She sighed gently through her nose, eyeing him and thinking.

"Hm. I don't know many names. I know good things, though. Maybe you can name yourself one of those? Meat. Bones." She paused.

She seemed to have run out of "good things" after meat and bones.

...I'm going to have to learn to be creative, she mused.

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Roll the bones.

((ooc -- pup's response given with permission))

"Bones," the pup repeated simply. It wasn't too clear if he was declaring this his name or not.

He wondered, briefly, how this hyena had been given her name. Maybe she thought of one herself. Maybe she was given a name. But the pup soon realised, it didn't matter and therefore he didn't particularly care.

He grumbled slightly to himself, nestling a little further into the hyena. He briefly tried to lick her shoulder in an attempt to rid her of her stench, though to no avail. He felt sick, in fact.



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Giggle eyed the pup, and nodded slightly.

"Bones, then. That's the best thing. Do you..." And suddenly, just like that, she felt awkward. He was looking at her, appearing a bit ill? Or was that her imagination? ...In any case he looked tired, and she wasn't sure quite what to do.

"Hrmph," she huffed softly. "Do you want me to tell you a story, maybe? Or... sing... you a lullaby?" She hesitated, round ears rotating a bit, then peered at him. (She did not know how to sing. In fact, she wasn't sure how she knew what a lullaby even was, but never mind.)
"And if so, what about? Or--would you rather just... rest?"

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Roll the bones.

"A story?" asked Bones. He wasn't sure what a story or a lullaby was, but he was somehow sure that a story would end better. He hoped so, at least.

He buried his nose below his skinny legs (though it didn't help), ears flopped down as he waited for Giggle to go on with her story, closing his eyes.

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She'd never told a story, before. What should she even make it about?! He hadn't answered that part...

Giggle glanced quickly around, eyeing the bones and the ground, the rock, and the orbs, wondering just what in hell she could tell the pup.

Finally she glanced down at him, and realized that he was depending on her to tell him a tale. She softly cleared her throat--she couldn't disappoint a pup, after all--and began to quietly speak.

"Then I will tell you about names, since you have only just gotten one. Once upon a time," Giggle began, "there was a cave."

...A cave? DAMN it Giggle, you can do better than that!

"The cave was dark, black as night. Nobody could see anyone else, so they weren't quite sure how many they were. They came to recognize this voice and that, but some beasts sounded like others, and so there was much confusion."

Giggle paused for a moment, both rapidly thinking of the next turn for the plot, and quickly assessing the pup's reaction. Then, she continued. "Finally, one strong-voiced Gembound came up with the idea of names. A Gembound might know that they had claws, or feathers, and so they'd name themselves like that--Softfeather, or Talon. Or maybe they would pick a sound that they liked, like Krakarak," she continued, remembering the cawing raven.

"For a time, everyone had their names, and all was well. But after a few weeks had passed, a very greedy black lizard decided that he wanted many names, and he began to collect them. Soon, he had dozens of names. He called himself the Skrak the Cave-Eater, and Woll the Darkness-Gatherer, and all sorts of other silly and grand names."

Giggle paused again, to gather her thoughts and her breath, before continuing. "But even that was not enough. He began to steal the names of others, too, adding them to his own. When someone asked who he was, he would say the names of others, and they became his own. Now--I ought to tell you," and here Giggle paused, tilting her head to smile humorously down at Bones, "This lizard was not very big. He was not very strong, and he was not pretty to look at, for many of his scales were dull and damaged. But he had a very big, and very powerful voice, so that when he called himself the King of the Cave, and the Most Handsome Royal Squig, well, the others believed him--for they could not see him in the darkness, and so they didn't know any better."

Giggle paused awhile longer here, to let all of this sink in, before continuing. Now she had some idea of where to take this story, and she was rather pleased with it.

"Finally, one day, in outrage at their stolen names, the other Gembounds formed an army. They knew, Bones, that they couldn't ever let anyone take away what they were. Your identity is all you ever have. And so they marched on the tiny black lizard, and he fled before them, and he left their names behind. And they picked them all back up again, and so they got their names back. But then they carried on after Squig the Magnificent, knowing that if they did not stop him then, they would have to face him again in the years to come. In his haste to escape, the lizard raced up the tunnel walls, and pulled himself up the ropes that held the light-orbs, and tugged them into place quite by accident--and for the first time, there was light in that cave."

Giggle widened her eyes dramatically, letting her slow, soft voice set the tone. "Then they could all see what they had been afraid of all along: a tiny, squirming lizard who could have never truly hurt them. So they learned two lessons from Squig: first, never lose who you are--there is only one of you, and only you to guard that. And second, never be afraid of someone just because they seem powerful; once you see them truly, you might find out you were cowering from something pretty damn silly."

Giggle fell silent, eyeing the pup. She was relatively sure she'd said it all slow enough for anyone to comprehend, but then, he was young, and he was sleepy. Ahh, well. She lay there quietly, waiting to see if he'd fallen asleep, perhaps, or if he had something to say.

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Roll the bones.

The puppy lay where he was next to Giggle, listening with one pricked ear to her story. He quietly repeated every name mentioned, taking a mental note of it. He watched the hyena closely while she told the story, though was quiet for most of it.

Even after she finished, he was quiet, perhaps allowing himself to digest the words, peering at his paws. Finally, he asked in a careful, unsure voice, "Is Squig real?"

The puppy had began to look at the orbs hanging off the walls in Canis, huge ears lifted. Apparently, looking for a tiny black lizard clinging to the ropes.


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Giggle froze, for a moment, suddenly faced with that choice that all parents have to make. Did she tell him that the fictional figure was a figment of her imagination, a story not to be afraid of? Or did she tell him that it was real, and keep him in wonder...? She thought, quickly, and then settled for something about halfway, smiling as mysteriously as she could as she did so.

"Who knows? It's a story a bird brought me, a very long time ago," and never mind that she was only just two cycles old, "and this bird said that it happened a very long time before that, longer than anyone might remember. Maybe it was only a story, or maybe Squig the River-Drinker was once a real Gembound. Maybe he lived in this very cave," she added, smiling good-naturedly, with a demeanor that seemed to indicate there was nothing to fear.

She gave Bone's head a little nudge-ruffle with her nose, hoping she'd given the best answer.

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Roll the bones.

"I'm gunna find Squig," Bones sounded unusually confident about this, his head thumping down onto the floor again. He shut his eyes and pushed himself further into Giggle.

It took him a while to get comfortable, several minutes of leg-repositioning and roughly nuzzling the hyena's fur ensued, though eventually the pup seemingly found an acceptable way to sleep, stubby legs starfished out and his face pressed against Giggle's shoulder.

He grumbled to himself before he fell asleep, probably dreaming about black lizards and mysterious story-telling birds.



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((exit bones))

Giggle smiled as she looked down on the pup. Maybe had she been older, and her cynicism grown, she would have been thinking of the various ways she could forcibly mold him, as he grew, into something useful to her. But for now, as a half-pup herself, her only thoughts were warm ones.

He's adorable. I'd best let him rest.

She smiled to herself, or rather smiled as a hyena smiles, and--moving very slowly and carefully, so as not to wake him--curled her own neck and head around the pup, until he was half-engulfed by spotted hyena. She laid her jaw on the rock, sighing contentedly out through her nose and closing her eyes.

Giggle was not normally a lonely creature, but there was something pleasing about drifting off to sleep with a trusting young pup close by, and in her care. It was a motherly instinct, though she didn't know that. Before she could think on it much, however, she was drifting off to sleep herself, her mind drifting off into dreams.

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Roll the bones.

((ooc -- exit Giggle))