self-thread, with Some Swearing

Kera had been taking a nap in Polaris when she heard a couple of gembound-- who truly need not be named, for Kera did not really care who they were --talking about... dyes. Kera had been waiting between the olympics' obstacle course finishing and her wrestling match to begin when she heard of it.

The wolf lifted her head, at first alarmed that they were talking about death, but she soon came to understand that an elder was looking for... things. Colourful things, to dye things with. Whatever agenda this ancient had, Kera wanted to stick her nose right in there.

Polaris had an abundance of colourful things, after all, surely? And, to boot, Kera could make colourful things, or at least glowing things.

The wolf stretched out before pulling herself up to stand. No matter what weirdo-agenda this elder had, it'd probably be interesting nontheless. And Kera would bring them some good items, for dying.

If that was really his intentions.

So, where does one magnificent wolf begin her journey into looking for dyestuffs? A word, incidentally, she was not sure was even a word at all. Not that it mattered.

One magnificent wolf begins with a rock.

A very humble rock.

Specifically, the leftover, unmarked rocks left behind at the obstacle course, tossed and strewn aside by the racers looking for ones that had little red dots on them. Kera hated this part specifically. People kept grabbing things from right under her.

Jerks, Kera thought bitterly, though she began dragging out the smoothest and prettiest forward. Her first target was a smooth little stone with inlaid, banded patterns covering it.

Yeah, this would do.

Kera pushed her nose against it, shutting her eyes.

Under Kera's dark nose, white-gold light flooded the little rock-- though barely. It was enough, at least, for it to give a faintly satisfying glimmer of light. It would definitely do.

The wolf raised one large paw, digging into the softer dirt around the crystal river, and tossed the stone in. You know, for safe keeping. The gembounds around here were absolute vipers, and not of the literal variety.

Kera stepped over the new hole she made and reached out to touch another stone, ears flicking backwards as she moved to start casting into it.

WRONG SPELL, Kera quickly realised as the magicka flowed, not into the rock below her, but into herself. She shook out her fur as she began to illuminate gold and white, warmly.

Fucking shit, she hissed quietly to herself, using one passive paw to toss the smooth, flat rock away into the crystal river. Clearly, it was the rock who had done wrong here.

Kera dragged a third and final rock towards herself with a small huff, the light coming from her paw illuminating the silvery stone underpaw. Two, surely, would be enough for whatever the hell the ancient was looking for.

Kera turned her head to take a quick sip from the crystal river before she turned back towards the stone, planting her nose against it unceremoniously.

A sharp croak left the wolf as the magicka recoiled and shot up her chest and throat, damn near causing her to vomit. She shook herself out and tossed that rock into the river, too.

Her magicka was having absolutely none of it, it seemed. Hopefully, one rock would be enough for now?

Kera turned and buried the baubled rock into the ground. Smoothly, so that no one would come and unearth it while she was away looking for other colourful things for whatever this elder was planning.

So, what was colourful?

Kera slowly lowered herself onto her haunches as she took a few moments to mull this over. She almost turned to snap at a flying gembound-- a carroller, squawking overhead.

Rocks were coloured. Greys, right? That would work....

The next few minutes were spent unearthing the rock, putting a second, regular one in there, and then covering both items up again. It took these few minutes before Kera hit her next realisation.


Feathers have colour.

"GET FUCKED," Kera screamed as she went careening for the one-legged bird.

It goes without saying the damn thing caught on fairly quickly that there was a broad, white wolf, still glowing from an accidental mis-cast barrelling towards it. The blue-and-white bird let out a horrific, lingering call as it unfurled it's wings and started to fly into the air.

Kera, somehow, was faster.

Sneaking never really was a strong point of hers, anyway. Her massive paws found the bird and pinned it by the wings into the ground, growling in it's shrieking face before she crunched down on it's slender neck. The few seconds of thrashing and flailing reminded her all too familiarly of Blackberry.

A few seconds later, she was sitting hunched over her prey a little morosely. It still hurt, of course, remembering what she did to the goose. Even if Blackberry was a terrible gembound, who killed so many, Kera felt... responsible, somehow.

Even all the inflated ego in the caves couldn't solve that.

So, quietly, Kera merely ate, plucking blue and white feathers out with her teeth as she did.

It took Kera a small while to forget about Blackberry, and that beating her into a bloody, crystallizing pulp might have been the reason the goose was like. That. Nevermind that Blackberry had, of course, been a little delusional before.

Hell, she was monologuing before trying to kill Kera.

Eating helped. Focusing on spitting the feathers out her maw helped. Distraction helped, even if just for a while. When Kera was just about finished eating, she took the caroller's stone and picked it up in her mouth.

And paused.

It was a golden-yellow, almost bordering on a rich orange. It was bright. Colourful. And stone-cold. As tempting as it was, Kera was unsure if she could present someone's deathstone to an ancient.

Who knows what they would do with it, after all. Even for a lesser gembound, that seemed too cruel for Kera. And so, she buried it, quietly, and then returned to the remains.

She'd begun digging out a hole for the blue and white feathers as well, pushing them carefully in, when she caught sight of a shiny, white bone from the corner of her eye, leftover from the caroller.

... well, if no one else was going to use it.

Alright, so it might sound a bit strange that Kera would draw a line at using someone's gemstone for dying things as per request of an elder, but using their bones is a-ok.

The thing is, to Kera, bones were nothing. Bones were what Giggle tossed around to tell futures, and what were inlaid around tunnel N to mark the bloodberries' territory. The gemstone, however, was a gembound.

Therefore, it took priority. It had to be treated with quiet respect. Not the bones, however, which Kera had seen abused in all other sorts of ways.

So, to make a long story short, Kera was burying bones in Polaris for later use.

You know. As dogs do.

When she was done, and the bones and the feathers had been meticuously buried, Kera took a look around Polaris, quietly wondering what else she could find here.

There were plenty of crystals, large and small, some supplying light to Polaris, but it would have felt wrong to try to take them. She could look for more prey, for animals and birds and the like, to get a range of different colours.

She could find some blander crystals, perhaps.

... hmm.

Kera was staring out into Polaris in a state of Deep Contemplation when. It came flopping by.

Shlup. Shlup. Shlup.

What the f--

The white wolf's head turned to stare at the source of the sound, ears flicking to point directly upwards. Some strange lesser gembound was-- well, shlupping by, sort of small and ugly, covered in a thick, black goop.

... I mean.

... if no one else was gonna use it?

Caves only knew what the hell the shlupping-thing was, it looked a little bit like a rabbit with goopy snail-eyes, but that didn't entirely matter for Kera. Instead, she went barrelling towards it.

The little oily creature squabbled and shrieked as it noticed a huge white wolf-- who's spell had begun to fade, incidentally, shimmering out and melding back into the off-white colour her fur usually was --going straight toward it.

Unlike the carroller, this thing didn't have any but four-- or was that five --legs to try and bound away with, but it was too slow. Kera was on it, and her jaws were around it's skinny, boney spine, and she was biting down.

And it sucked.

It tasted awful. Kera didn't even want to try eating from this thing. She tried to find it's gemstone to get it over with, but it didn't even seem like it had one, or at least not one on the outside.

And like hell she was going to go rooting through this thing's guts to find it.

Instead, Kera buried it, next to the hole with the bones and the feathers.