All around the tunnel, iced covered everything. From the smallest stone to the very top of the ceiling. One wrong move and a gembound would find themselves loosing control of their footing. At first one might not have noticed but there further down in the direction of Pisces there was moment. A large stone shifted, a layer of ice had formed over top of it. Shifting some more, a crack in the frozen water would form. Revealing not a stone, but a chrysalis. Bright red, the surface was rough in most places. The color almost bleed out from under the ice. How could it have gone unnoticed with such a brilliant hue! What could be moving inside? . . . The red chrysalis paused for a moment. As if to pounder how the little one inside would emerge into this mysterious world. . . . More ice around the chrysalis cracked as it began to rock again. The base of the cinnabar shell was stuck pretty tightly in the ice. Clearly having been there for number of cycles. Twitching a few more times before taking another pause. Then almost as if with a sudden jolt of energy, finding some hidden strength build up inside. CRACK! It wasn't the ice this time. A long crack formed down the red shell. And again, CRACK! Jutting out from the chrysalis were a pair of red antlers. As red as the shell they broke free from. With a few more struggles, the rest of the gembound followed suit. If anyone stumbled upon this little being, the first thing that was clear is that the antlers on top of their head were almost 5xs to large. ". . . hello?" Bright brown eyes blinked from the light in the room. --------- "Speech" Thoughts OOC: OPEN to anyone! Come say hi to Cinna!

There was a stirring.

It was the first thought she'd remember, her gray eyes rolling open into the swathes of black and murky waters of her chrysalis. There were muffled noises outside of her gem. Life sparked into the previously twitching body as she stretched for it, twisting and turning in tight confines to peer at the place where light was the strongest.

It was here she'd make her breakthrough, where she'd find the light illuminating her formless idea of her body, where she'd emerge into the world outside of this one. Pressing her- beak?- to it, followed by her head, the shell gave a sense of cold and frail-ness.

She didn't have the strength of a caribou emerging nearby, though the dull thrum of magic it had given upon awakening only dragged her to motion even more. Eyes shut, her head tried to press through. Cracks webbed through the gem. It wasn't enough- she was already tired, and her lungs had spurred awake, a dull sense of oxygen deprivation reaching her mind.

She needed out. Straining, she pushed with all her might in every which way. Muscles committed themselves to the strain and magic bolstered through her subconscious. More and more cracks rang out at every push point and she was free- gem and ice both shattered in a short radius around her, and she slid out on fluid-logged feathers.

Her first action was to cough, pushing up on frail flippers to get off of her belly. Where was she? It was so bright- her eyes squinted as she looked around, head slowly swiveling to the other hatchling nearby. Even with her eyesight blurry from the chrysalis's fluid, she blinked hard and squinted forward, trying to take in who she was seeing.

A curious trill rang out of her beak as she managed to stand on slippery ice.

She had been en route to Fornax--her father's hatching-place, and somewhere she'd never seen. He'd told her the way, of course--and warned her of the ragged ice and hellish climb. Already her wings were almost too broad for her to comfortably traverse the tunnel, and so her passage was half-clambering along, and half-leaps with wings part-spread to catch her.

All around came the drip of melting ice and the hiss as it refroze, here and there, and the cracks as it resettled. Up ahead the cracking was louder.

It took Bone a moment to realize, as she crested the next shelf, that the cracking wasn't ice at all--but gemstone. And, to her surprise, she found that there were two. The white dragon's pupilless eyes widened, and she hauled herself quickly closer. She'd never seen another child hatch, before--only her own, and her brother's hatching; and she wondered why two wholly different stones (one brilliant red, one muted black) were hatching so near and at the same time.

As she waited, it occurred to her that the cold was bitter. She hated the cold, herself; she liked heat, dry heat, and this tunnel was anything but.

"Hello?" the white dragon offered, gently, as first the caribou calf, and then the strange, squat bird, emerged. Jaws opened to provide a blast of warmth, hopefully drying their chrysalis fluids, though Bone had no way of knowing that these creatures were those of cold--as her mother was--and not heat-lovers like herself.

The dragon then stepped back, wings folded carefully and body held low to the ground. She wasn't fully-grown, yet, herself, but she was some fifteen feet long as it was, and she didn't want to frighten them.

@Cinna

Struggling to stand as she crawled out from the crimson shards that were once her chrysalis, finding her feet seemed to hold strong against the rocky and icy ground beneath her steps. Legs still a little wobbly but she was about to shake herself off of the fluid the calf slept soundly in. Tho the weight of her antlers was very apparent, the little one had to strain her neck and was lucky the shaking didn't cause her to fall over from being so top heavy. The antlers were the same shade of red as the shells, brilliant against the white of the ice surrounding her. Turning around, she soon noticed the other gembound that followed suit escaping from their stony shell. The caribou calf blinked for a few moments, eyes still adjusting to the light that surrounded them. As soon as the other little one made it to their feet, she felt the presence of another behind them that spoke a greeting before feeling the warmer air wash over. Head twisted to see over her shoulder, taking in what seemed to be a being so much larger then the two freshly hatched gembounds. The little furred one found herself unsure what to think of the one who echoed back a hello. She was to new to this world to outright fear another but maybe it was the shear size that took her back. Would she grow to such a size? Would her fellow hatching as well? The calf had made their way closer to the little bird, ears perked up a bit at the soft sound they made. Gaze danced back and forth from the larger gembound and back. " . . you are . . you are SO BIG!" Shocking herself to how much emphasis she put behind the so big part. Glancing back over, "Will we be . . . as big as you?" Tho she had a feeling not, but why not ask? --------- "Speech" Thoughts OOC: might as well asked why she was the only one with scales too.

@Curie

There was something huge greeting her- them- TWO things! Her eyes were wide when she craned her neck up, and she squinted at the warm air like she was trying to decipher if she liked it or not.

Yeah, it felt nice, and the corners of her beak turned up into a smile. But good things couldn't last forever, and the cold seeped back in soon enough, the source of the warmth retreating. Well, the cold wasn't bad either- in fact, it felt better in the long run, but the brief warmth was nice too. "Hell-o?" she parroted back. Her own attention went from each other party- and to herself? Little flippers patted at thick downy in curiosity. "You are big!"

She directed it, really, to the both of them. "Or maybe... I'm really small." She's the smallest thing she knows, at least!

"How do I get big like you?" Since the... Uh- medium thing had asked if they were going to, she was adamant that they were going to.

@Bone

Oh, no. Oh no they were so cute. Bone blinked, a flash of surprised maternal instinct--adoration, even--flitting through her. That was... new. Up until now, she'd been the child, joyfully exploring the caves all on her own, small and slender and cute. But these things... they were babies!

The white dragon smiled, as best a dragon could, watching them; and she lowered herself to the ground, so that they could come closer, if they wished.

"Or maybe I am big and you are small? I don't know. There are things of many sizes! My name is Bone," she added. "My mother and my father were both big. They were dragons. So I'm a dragon, too. I don't know what you are, but I think you," and here she nodded to them, Cinna first and Curie second, "look like a deer, maybe--and you're a bird?" It was a guess, hesitantly-hazarded. Curie was so small it was hard to tell, and for all Bone knew, she could be some kind of fuzzy land-fish. Her wings certainly looked more flipper-like, or fin-like, than true wings were, in her experience.

"The caves are--big. I guess you will want to explore them, but I can stay here with you for a little while first, if you want? Since you just hatched," she added.

For protection, she thought, but didn't say--she didn't want to spook the children.

@Cinna