Backdated to take place immediately after one door closes, three more open

From the bone pit, the goose made her way across Canis, towards the grove she knew was near the middle of the cave. She hadn't visited it yet, but considering Oliver's aptitude for plant magic, she wouldn't be surprised if it really had been grown by him. Her head was still swimming and she was growing a bit of a migraine at this point from all the emotional rollarcoasters and the memories she was getting shoved into her head, but she at least could see her path clearly.

She sighed. She hoped that Oliver had the information she needed, or at least another point for her to continue her investigation. It was hard to dig into the past when she didn't know anyone that might know anything.

Once she reached the grove, she paused, looking around. "Oliver? Are you here?"

@Oliver

A black, feather-tufted head popped up from behind a bush, and blue eyes widened.

Oliver came scurrying out, around its foliage, a moment later; he seemed--and sounded--happy to see the goose.

"Oh, hey! Ear-tufts flattened back, feathered tail wagged. "It's good to see you again--um, did you ever find a name?"

He drew closer, and a smile--as best a canine-creature could smile--pulled his face into a pleasant expression. "Did that basket help you? Oh--make yourself at home. I grew this place," he added, and there was a sort of bashful pride to him as he said this. "The water's clean, and there's plenty of green stuff, and fruits," he added. "The rats and stuff eat some but that's okay, I grow it back. That's what it's here for, anyway!"

The hybrid made his way back toward the grove, and looked hopefully back at the white bird--as if inviting her into a home.

{Table code credit to Madison, altered a bit!}

@Nameless

The goose's expression lightened up as soon as she saw Oliver peek out from behind the foliage. "Hey, Oliver, it's really nice to see you again too! No, I'm still going without a name, but I'm looking." Yes, that was still a problem - she needed a name, but it didn't seem like much of an urgent issue to her. She was content for now.

She realized as soon as Oliver said it that she'd left the basket stashed away in some corner of Canis. "Ah, yeah! It was really helpful, thank you! I was going to return it to you, but I left it back at my den. It ended up being easier to carry the stone like this. I found this rope stuff in one of the tunnels" She gestured towards the stone hanging at her neck.

She raised her head and looked around the grove. "This place is lovely - I'm so impressed that you managed to do this kind of thing in the middle of Canis!" She was so caught up in being happy about the environment that, for a moment, she totally forgot about why she was here.

@Oliver

Oliver beamed.

"I'm glad! And no, you don't have to return it. Uhh--mind if I call you, like, Daisy or Lily or something, for now? They're both white flowers. Lilies are really pretty," he added, glancing back at the goose. Pretty, and graceful; pristine, even. They actually reminded him a lot of her.

And, of course, Oliver would pick a flower.

"It's a nice rope!" Oliver went on, happily, as he wound his way to the center of the mini-forest.

He'd chosen a place walled on two sides by an old and crumbling bone wall; there were several small pools of water within which he'd carefully purified. Rather than brown and stagnant, then, they shone clear under the baubled vines that hung woven around the several trees that towered up above. Their shade was pleasant, half-sheltering the thick carpet of moss and grasses that the hybrid had grown here; and from every crevice and corner, ferns, flowers and bushes grew. It was a strange, flourishing oasis in the cave of bones, and Oliver seemed happy there.

He lowered himself to his haunches at the water's edge and turned, beaming, at the white goose. "Thank you. It took a lot of work--and the magic hurt, sometimes. It was hard, but it's worth it, I think. Eridanus has fires every so often, and I thought, if it dies--if all the plants die--we'll have nowhere else to go, no more plants really, almost anywhere. Except Cetus, and that's all different kinds," he explained. "So I made this place. It's mostly Eridanus's plants. But Canis hasn't got enough green stuff, so I'm trying to make this place bigger, too. So, um--what have you been doing?" It seemed more than small talk; Oliver peered with bright interest at the goose, genuinely curious as to what she'd been up to in the few cycles since last they'd spoken.

{Table code credit to Madison, altered a bit!}

@Nameless

The goose looked a little surprised, but nodded. "Ah, okay, thank you! And sure, you can call me Lily for now. That's a nice name." Not her name, but it was a title for someone else to use. That was totally fine with her. She noted the flower-themed nickname, though, and her expression crinkled with amusement.

She followed Oliver deeper into the oasis, appreciating all the work put into the many plants on the path. Oliver really had put a lot of work into this place, hadn't he? She was impressed by the scale of it - she didn't think it was possible for plants like this to grow in Canis and Oliver's description affirmed that they weren't naturally grown. "Well, you've done a beautiful job of bringing it over! That's a good idea, though, I wouldn't have thought of that." She didn't have much else to say, though her sparkling expression showed her awe and wonder at this beautifully grown grove better then any words.

That expression slowly faded, however, as she remembered why she'd visited Oliver in the first place. "Ah, I've been...wandering, mostly. I met some other people and learned some more things and...started looking into why I can't remember anything. I know how to use magic that lets me look into the past now - Giggle, that hyena with the Bonebound, she helped me figure that out." She looked down at the gemstone on her neck. "When I looked into this stone's past...I saw you in it, Oliver. I don't know if...if any of it's good memories at all but...but did you ever know someone named Jayberry?"

@Oliver

Oliver eyed the stone, curiously--and then winced, visibly, at the name. A grimace crossed his features, and he flattened back from where he'd been leaning forward to see the gem. His blue eyes flicked back up to the goose, and then to the stone again--he didn't think he recognized it--and then back to her.

"Uhh... Yeah. I'm glad someone helped you? But I knew a Jayberry. Sort of. I'm not her friend," he added, as if in disclaimer, a quiet sort of hoarse unhappiness about it. "Why do you ask, exactly?"

He looked to her, clearly not particularly happy about the topic--but polite, ready to discuss it nonetheless. It seemed to make him unsettled, or nervous perhaps, or just sad; but the way he watched her was with a guarded expression. Whatever had happened, it had obviously been unpleasant--and he wasn't about to dump it all without asking, first, what exactly she wanted to say, or ask.

{Table code credit to Madison, altered a bit!}

@Nameless

She was sensitive enough to see the unpleasant discomfort that she caused for Oliver when she spoke the name. She flinched and swallowed heavily, feeling the atmosphere darken just a bit. The memory had been unpleasant but...she really had hoped that there would be a good memory there. It was naive of her, though, to think that it would be anything else. "I saw her in a vision - Jayberry, I mean, as well as you. And someone else looked into the past of this stone as well and told me she was there too. So...I figured that it was something important. You know, about me."

She looked just as unhappy as Oliver, having to ask him about all of this when he was obviously uncomfortable. "I'm...I'm sorry to drag you into this. If you're not comfortable talking about it, then I won't pry. You don't have to feel like you need to bring up whatever bad memories just for my sake, okay?"

@Oliver

Oliver hesitated, studying the goose for a moment in some confusion. He eyed the gemstone again, puzzled. They saw Jayberry with that? Or something else? He didn't recognize it, and when he looked back to the bird he just shook his head a little, pushing the thought away.

"No, it's--uh, it's okay. I can tell you what I know but it's not real nice," he added. "Plus I'm not real sure what you saw, um--what vision you mean? But."

He fidgeted, and took a deep breath, then exhaled it; his blue eyes seemed to stare into some middle distance, his mind working to pull back the right memories. "I met first Jayberry when we were both looking for stones, for something. She seemed... nice, then. Polite. We didn't talk much, and later, I found her impaled on a rock. I didn't know her really well. I still don't," he added, eyeing the goose, now, with a haunted expression in his eyes. And then, more quietly, "I don't ever want to."

"She was... badly hurt. Dying, I think. There was a moose there--she called him her father--and he pulled her off this pointed rock. I used my magic to help her. I think I saved her life? I don't know. Maybe her stone would've. But I closed her wounds, best I could, cleaned them. Made her stronger. He said--at the time, the moose--he wanted to know why she hadn't killed me. I didn't understand--I asked why she would do that? He said-... 'We're Bloodberries. We kill whoever we want.' Or something like that."

Oliver fidgeted, again, clearly discomfited by whatever was about to come next. He cast a sidelong glance at his garden, nodding toward it. "These plants--they came from Eridanus--Eridanus is our home. We have a lot of Gembound living there, and they're nice, they're... friendly? They just... grow things. Heal others. Like me. And then one day Jayberry and the rest of the Bloodberries--they came out of nowhere," he went on, voice dropping into a hoarse near-whisper. His eyes stared at a fixed point on the ground. He still had nightmares about that day. "They... attacked us all. Out of nowhere, for no reason. They'd have killed us, if a couple other Gembound from Orion hadn't helped us, I think. And Jayberry-..." Oliver trailed off, momentarily.

He took a breath.

"She-... pinned down one of our really nice deer." Antelope? his brain suggested, uncertain, and he ignored it. "She was like... torturing her. Hurting her slow, and laughing at her, really mean. Saying we hadn't gotten there fast enough to save her. I tried to use light to blind them all," he added, quietly, and his expression darkened a little; "There was--Blackberry, their goose? Like you but--mean, ugly, really mean," as if the addition of the 'really' made it another adjective entirely. "She kept yelling at them to kill us. To kill Rift. I don't know why. I don't know what ever happened to her, or to Jayberry or the rest of them--last I knew Blackberry was like, in a cage? Three of them got caught. They were all messed up. All three. I guess Blackberry used to, um... mess kids up until they were scared of everything, and violent, too. I don't think we ever caught Jayberry, though, so--if you see her? She's a black wolf. Golden eyes--you saw her in your vision, right? Don't--don't ever go near her," he warned, softly, earnest eyes lifting worriedly to the white goose's face.

{Table code credit to Madison, altered a bit!}

@Nameless

Oliver's story was as sickening as the goose had thought it would be. She knew something bad was coming - after seeing what she'd seen in the history of the stone, and herself, she knew that this was....messed up. A goose brainwashing children to be murderers and one latching onto those ideals and killing wildly - someone who had, apparently, tricked Oliver into being friends with her.

And then there was the moose, the "father" who was apparently in on the whole murder thing too. She looked down at the stone on her chest. Perhaps...perhaps this was his. All the memories coming from this stone had him in it. There was a goose and a moose, and a family called the Bloodberries. They'd attacked Eridanus, as Pride and Oliver had said, and Jayberry was still on the run. So it hadn't exactly been that long ago. Pride had said Blackberry had been in a cage but...Oliver didn't know what had happened to her, so obviously she wasn't there anymore. And all those memories, all of her memories, had been of Blackberry.

Her stomach churned as she silently came to the conclusion - the correct one - that she had once been the goose known as Blackberry. It was something she had slowly been coming to and it made sense - Pride had said she smelled familiar, but he wouldn't recognize her if she looked like this. The memories she'd seen in herself hadn't been from her perspective looking in - they'd been her memories. And all of it just...it all came together.

The question remained, however, how she'd ended up like this. Giggle suggested I either went insane from it all or that I made a deal with someone to change me. She was so immersed in her thoughts, eyes haunted and staring blankly, that she didn't realize the silence that was stretching between them. She suddenly flinched as she came back to the world and her heart dropped to her stomach. Could she....could she ever explain this to Oliver?

"Sorry, I....that's horrible," she whispered, as a response. "I'm sorry I asked you to talk about it again, I'm sure you'd rather just...forget all of that. Pride mentioned that fight too but...I didn't even imagine it was that bad. I won't go near - I promise. I'd never want to meet a monster like that." Shit, she was just going to make it worse, wasn't she?

Do I even need to tell him? She struck that thought out quickly. She would feel like she was lying to him if she didn't tell him who she thought she was, especially since they had a history. "H-hey, Oliver...um..." She swallowed hard. "You know how I can't remember who I was? Like, I have fractured memories, like bits of leftovers, but nothing I can put together? Well...I, uh, I've been searching and I think...I know who I was before? I can't remember it at all - and I would never want to go back but - I think I was her. Blackberry. All those memories I saw in this stone and the memories I saw when I used magic on myself...it all points to that. That's why I wanted to ask you about Jayberry, I guess, because you knew them. The Bloodberries I mean. Kind of."

@Oliver

Had he been able to hear her thoughts, perhaps he'd have corrected her assumption on Jayberry 'tricking' him--he hadn't thought that, not for a moment. Then again, he was very, very naive. But he thought that, at the time, she'd just had no reason to attack him. In retrospect, though... Had that been the case? Why would someone take pleasure in tormenting one Gembound, and not another?

He didn't know.

Nor did he know what to do with the white goose's sudden statement. It took him so much by surprise that he just sat there, for awhile, staring at her. Blankness swept through him, and he hesitated, staring at her, slowly pulling back. He watched her. His mind was shocked free, even, of any thought, any consideration about it, for a moment; and then he wondered if it could be.

Whatever his internal dialogue, when he spoke it was slow, wary, and careful, but not unkind.

"Well, we can find and ask Rift. He was in charge of Blackberry, and he didn't tell any of us what he did, even though there was meant to be a trial." There was faint reproach in this, though it didn't go so far as to be resentment. Whatever had happened, though, surely Rift would know.

{Table code credit to Madison, altered a bit!}

@Nameless