The demon walked purposefully through the cave, large nose quickly at work, arms spread at weird angles, eyes in his palms quickly searching for something, anything that could give Mother sustenance. He wasn't sure why he'd come so far, but he figured she may be getting tired of the rats he brought her continuously. It seemed better to maybe bring her something new. Something he hadn't brought her before. Perhaps a fish from Fornax's ocean, or perhaps a seashell, if she could eat those. Or coral. Or seaweed. Anything sounded good.

But as he approached the edge of the water, he slowed. It occurred to him, then, that he had no idea how to swim. He'd never actually needed the skill before - there wasn't exactly an ocean in Canis - and his built in instincts didn't account for sea adventuring. Why would he need it, after all, when he could hunt rats so efficiently?

It was, perhaps, a testament to how much Azrael had grown, mentally. He wasn't thinking just like a predator anymore but rather a more thoughtful, free-minded creature. There was still a long way to go, though.

Carefully, he reached forward with his foot and dipped it in the water. It was a lot warmer then he'd expected, but he didn't like the feeling of it on his fur. He snorted and stepped back, trying to figure out how to solve this new problem. Perhaps he could blast fire at it and make it evaporate. No, there was probably too much water for that. He didn't have any fancy water-moving spells either, nor any other spell in particular that would help him fish.

Well, there was just one option left open to him. Sighing deeply, he lowered himself to the edge of the water and leaned over the edge, raising all four arms and opening the eyes again. There were fish in there. One was coming closer too. Closer and closer and...

All four arms lashed out at once and plunged into the water, creating a large splash as they chased the fish that had almost breached the surface. He felt claws sink into scaly flesh and immediately pulled back until he threw the thing onto land. It was...small, a little disappointingly slow, and it was still wrigling. He'd never seen a fish before and suddenly found himself very much at a loss on what to do. Did it have a spin to snap? Did it have a neck to rip open? It sure didn't look like it! In his panic, his brain decided to switch off and he did the first thing that came to mind. He reached for it, grabbed it by the tail, and began banging it on the ground until it stopped moving.

...Quite a long ways to go.

@Siren

Serendipity didn't come to Fornax often, but if you wanted to fish, then really there was no better place to do it. Cetus was downright dangerous sometimes, and the mud was uncomfortable and squishy under her feet. Polaris' river ran very fast and the incline was steep. Even as an adult, Dip could easily drown in there.

Pisces, granted, was good. But Fornax was closer to Orion-- even if it had a bit of a trek. And even if Serendipity also hated the feeling of snow under her feet. She had at least learned to wrap pieces of cloth around the soles of her feet before going, or else she was afraid her toes might start to fall off. She had also learned to take the cloth off her feet before wading into Fornax's shores. Walking through snow with wet footwraps was, potentially, much fucking worse.

As the person-elf-friend made her way into Fornax with a flicking tail and long spear in hand, she at least felt fairly confident in her hunting abilities. She'd certainly come a long way from her first cycle-- spears were a good tool. You could throw them, or stab them at stuff, and twist it. It killed most things, or at least knocked them into the ground so that they could get killed.

It should be noted she did this away from Azure, however. She didn't need to see any of that, and she definitely didn't need to be offered any of it. Azure did fine with her plants and fruits and stuff. Siren just liked eating something hot, once in a while.

The water was warm, comfortably so, against her feet as she trundled carefully across the shoreline. Her hand lifted, warily and cautiously, as she scanned the silvery surface of the water, waiting for a dark shape. It was not a dark shape that eventually caught her attention, however-- it was a crashing splash followed by a thump thump thump thump.

Bewilderedly, Serendipity turned to look at the demon, bashing a tiny fish into the cave floor. It seemed cruel-- or perhaps he just didn't know how to hunt? But most importantly, she was fairly sure she recognized this one.

".... dude," she called out with a blink, pacing back out of the water and lowering the spear in her hand. "That's not how you hunt a fish."

The humanoid gestured to the mangled, bashed-in fish. "You'll shatter all the bones and it'll be hard to get them out of the meat. And you could choke and die on fish bones, I think? They're bad to eat at least," her tone was gentle but stern. Serendipity hated fish bones. "Do you not like rats anymore?"

@Azrael

After a moment, Azrael ceased his relentless pounding and held up the dead fish, staring intently at it in case it started twitching again. It...well, it certainly looked a little ruined - broken bits of bone sticking from its scales, its head was bent as a weird angle, and its tail certainly hadn't looked like that before.

His eyes flicked up at the sound of a voice a little ways away, narrowing at the sight of the creature he saw. She looked familiar, distantly so, and he forgot about the fish for a moment while he wracked his brain. Something about "hunting" and "darkness" but that didn't exactly narrow it down that much. It was in Canis somewhere...but wasn't, like, more then half of his life spent in the bone room? Uh...yeah, nothing really substantial was coming to him.

At her observation, he looked down at the undersized fish in his hand and frowned. "Huh? Hunting is wrong? How? I caught it. That is correct." And he didn't really see a problem with bones. He ate rat bones fine, after all, and it wasn't like Mother was too concerned with picking out the innards of the prey he caught for her. She'd just eat the whole thing without complaint.

But the suggestion that one could choke and die on fishbones had him worried. He did not want Mother to die. So, to test out if this creature was right or not, he held up the fish and stuffed the whole thing into his mouth. He chewed for a moment, the crunch of bones loud in his ears, and felt some of the broken bits poking at the inside of his mouth. After a moment, he swallowed, cringing as some of it scrapped down his throat, but it didn't really hurt to bad. "Bones are fine," he huffed once he'd swallowed. "I eat bones. Fish has small, sharp ones though. Hurts a little." One of his arms leaned into the ocean, cupping a bit of water in his palm, and bringing it up to his mouth, the meager drops that he managed to catch soothing the scratches in his mouth.

He paused at her final comment, though. Then they must have met before! "You remember me? I do not...remember you. Sorry," he rumbled apologetically.

@Siren

He could speak more words than she remembered, at least. Serendipity could easily recall struggling to get more than a few words out of him before-- but she also knew that most freshly-hatched gembound struggled with their volcabulary. He still sounded a bit stilted, but it was a lot easier to understand what he meant.

"Hunting's not wrong," she replied with a shrug. "You're just not killing it right? I know you don't really care about bones and skin and stuff but it'd probably be nicer to just eat something good without it hurting, even if it hurts just a little bit."

She turned back towards the depths, scanning the waters for the dark, flighty shapes of fish. "I'm Serendipity," she introduced. Five cycles of working on her words had eventually resulted in her being able to properly say her own name. "Or Siren, for short. Or Dip for shorter." She'd wondered, briefly, if she was wrong and mistook the demon for someone else-- but he was a fairly difficult creature to forget, and the caves weren't full of many things like him, or herself, with hands.

Hands were special, the Collector had said, after all.

"I mean, it's fine," she rambled on absently. She was very still in the water, the hem of her skirt drifting lazily on the surface of the rolling waves. Her tail flicked back and forth patiently. "I know it's kinda hard to--"

As she spoke, she caught sight of a blackened fish drifting nearby, in reach of the spear. "--remember stuff from back when you were a kid--" She readied it in her hand, lifting the shaft above her shoulder. Gold eyes locked onto the shape for a long moment, waiting for the exact second where she couldn't miss. "--because I don't know about you but--" When it paused, she fired the spear down in front of her. She did not account for her skirt.

"--I met a lotta people when I was a kid--" The silvery head of the spear slid into the water like a knife through butter, only causing a brief ripple in the waves as it drove into the ocean. "--so sometimes I--" The tip didn't catch onto a fish, but it did snag onto the drifting hem of her skirt, pinning it down into the sand below, narrowly missing her foot. "--forget certain facOOF!"

Serendipity went tumbling down with an explosive splash of salt water, flipping right over her upright spear and into the water. Her back hit the rock-and-shell-ridden bank with a thump that was muted by the disturbed waves. Hot water flooded her mouth and went up her nose, but luckily-- for her, at least --she was not underneath the surface for very long.

Pastel-pink curls stuck to a lavender face when she re-emerged, blinded and flailing. Her calloused hands found the shaft of her spear sticking out of the water and she used it to drag herself up-- damn near falling over until she realised that her skirt was still caught on it --and swept her hair back between her horns. "Uhh-- s-sorry--" she spluttered, choking out salt-water. She rubbed her mouth and nose violently for a few moments, clearing her throat.

She shook herself out as she lifted the spear back up, frowning at the water. Shit, she thought to herself. We'll be lucky if they come back here anytime soon. She gave another shake before looking back up towards the demon.

"That's definitely not how you hunt," she offered.

@Azrael

As the person-creature spoke, Azrael began to pick at the dark teeth beneath his lips with one of his black claws. There were some bits of bones stuck in it and he decided then that he didn't like fish. Too small, with tiny bones that he did not like. Rats were better - cave rats were big with bigger bones that crunched but did not hurt. Simple mind, simple tastes, apparently. He didn't respond at first - he knew that he probably killed it wrong, but that was more out of a lack of even knowing what fish looked like. Perhaps just running it through with his claws would have been far easier.

At the name, however, he stopped. He blinked. "DIP," he roared suddenly and seemed startled by the force of his voice. He cleared his throat and tried again, a little more calmly. "Dip. Remember now. A little." Really, it was just her name that he recalled and successfully tacked it onto a young purple face that did look very much like this grown-up version. Just...younger. "I did not meet many. Mainly alone. Just don't remember much of childhood. Memory not great."

He realized a moment later that he hadn't introduced himself back, but he found himself stumbling over the memory of what his name even was. He paused, expression twisting through confusion as he tried to remember what he'd named himself - it had been a while ago, in a hazy memory of a dog and a rat skull he was not allowed to eat. "I am called Adreal...no, Ag...As...Az...Azrael! Yes, my name is Azrael." That sounded right. And even if it wasn't, that name seemed to fit him fine. He'd keep it (if he remembered).

He didn't realize that Dip was about to spear her own skirt until she did it and he instantly stood when she went tumbling into the water. "Dip?" he huffed as he started forward, worry rising in his chest. Could she swim? Because he certainly could not. He didn't realize at first that the water wasn't very deep and breathed a sigh of relief when she reemerged. He leaned forward and held out a couple of arms to help her, but retracted them a bit when he realized she was okay. Still, as she stood, untangling her skirt from her spear, he rumbled with concern. "Is Dip okay? Hurt?" He glanced at the spear, a little confused by what it even was. "What did Dip do? Do not understand. What is that?"

@Siren