Time seemed to pass slower and slower as the days wore on and she was finding it harder and harder to keep herself entertained. She hadn't fullly succumbed to her situation yet - she still wanted to run free, chase after those that had come and left, experience things instead of stare at the Spire and wish for a different life.

Because that's what she did a lot - wish. Wish that she had been born like the others, with her gem on her forehead maybe or on her stomach. On a paw pad, like Attikias, or maybe as a horn like Azizos. Wishful thinking, she knew that much. It would never happen, unless she died and she very much wanted to stay alive. If only to prove to herself that she could do it, but also because she didn't know if she'd ever have the chance to live again.

She didn't know if death was permanent or not. She didn't know if it would be truly the end or not if she just...stopped. And she wasn't willing to take that risk.

Still, she thought about death a lot. On the worst days, when the uselessness of herself crashed down on her shoulders, when she realized she'd been staring at the same spot for hours now and nothing had happened. The complete ridiculousness and frusteration of the moment occurred to her and she just wanted it to end. She just wanted a different life. To break out of this stone, shatter her shackles and just die.

Those moments, thankfully, always passed.

For now, however, she could do nothing but practice magic, as she so commonly did now. Eat and drink from the world around her. Each time she did it, though, she found the nutrition from her magic to be slowly decreasing. And sometimes, like now, the air was too dry for her to successfully take in enough to quench her thirst. That might be a problem eventually.

He came in gliding, appearing half-unsteady as he wavered to and fro--but each little movement was a micro-adjustment of his wings. He never really thought about it, but it might have been an easier life if Shango could truly fly. As it was he relied on magic: blasts of wind, updrafts of imbued air, and then the gentle glide as he drifted back down.

Seshat was... hard to miss. A bright purple glow where the light hit her amethyst; and at first Shango mistook her for any of the other crystals littering this cave. He veered, banking and landing, then clattered to a walk as his strange hoof-bottomed feet touched down.

He muttered something to himself, and glanced about; the air seemed to grow even drier, moisture hissing away at his approach.

Eyes narrowing, the cat-creature turned back toward Seshat, drawing closer. Something about her spotted pelt and golden hues resonated with him; he'd seen the same in his own reflections in the pools of Eridanus; in the appearance, too, of his daughter Shida.

But... there were differences too. Prime among them:

"Why are you a rock?" he asked, bluntly, as he came to a stop before Seshat. His tail twitched behind him, and he cocked his head a little to one side, trying to figure out exactly how the logistics of this thing worked.

@Seshat

She flinched (or as close to a flinch as she could get) when the beast approached. She'd never seen something like him before - unlike any of the people she'd talked to in the past, but, then again, they were so widely varied that it wasn't exactly uncommon for strange creatures to come across the lonesome statue.

Still, the spotted pelt had her heart beating faster for a second. Someone like her, or at least with heritage like hers. There was little else in common between the two, however, between the glowing green eyes and the wings...only the spotted pelt garnered a reaction.

The question was blunt, but not unexpected. Not a single creature had walked by without asking what had happened or something of the sort. She smiled a little sadly, as best a cat could, anyways. "I was born like this. My gem keeps me trapped here." For a moment, she searched over the other one, for wherever their gemstone was, and it took her a moment to realize that it was his horns. He was so...much that the horns looking like that weren't too out of place.

"Who are you?" Her voice was eager, glad to have new company to talk to. "Where did you come from?"

@Shango

He shook himself, blinking, tongue darting out to lick the corner of his mouth. Glowing eyes darted over the amethyst, over Seshat, as he (oblivious to how rude it might have seemed) shoved back into motion, pacing gracefully a few feet to one side as if to get a better angle of view.

At Seshat's question, the eyes flicked back to her face. He seemed almost half-wild in his demeanor; neither aggressive nor nervous, but standoffish, somehow other, as if an almost feral creature.

"Name is Shango. I came from the storm," he answered, the first few drops of rain responding to his call, and spattering the rock around him. And he was still certain of that; he'd hatched during a storm, therefore, the storm had birthed him. And this one--she'd never really hatched, had she?

"Everyone else comes out of their rock," he added, and it didn't sound so much like mocking as well-meaning, if entirely misplaced, advice.

He shifted back the other way, brow briefly furrowing. She didn't look like a baby. "How old are you? How do you eat?"

@Seshat

She grew a little uncomfortable as the creature suddenly began to circle her a little, leaving her line of sight for a moment and apparently inspecting the sides of her. She tried to follow him with her eyes but it was difficult. Would it be rude to point that out? Some guy comes up to talk to her and she just demands he stay in front of her? Would that chase him away and leave her alone to another cycle of sloth and loneliness?

"Can you...maybe...stand in front of me? I can't move my head to see you." She tried, she really did, but it was as stiff as every, the skin on her neck crystalline and hard and holding her head in place. Whether he did or not, she forgot about it in a moment at his reply. Come from a storm? Was that even possible? The implications of that got her excited all of a sudden, that a creature could be created by nothing but a storm, whatever that was supposed to be. And even as he spoke, rain began to fall.

Seshat, having never experienced rain in her life, squeaked with surprise when a droplet of water landed on her head. Eyes trained up just in time to watch one land right on her nose. Almost unconsciously, her tongue flicked out to catch one as it fell and, for the first time in her life, she had a drink of water.

It was a single drop of water, but it felt cool and clean on her tongue and she kept trying, ignoring Shango for a moment in favor of trying to catch every drop of water that fell from the sky. It was a game that could keep her amused for hours, maybe even days, after the utter boredom she'd experienced for the past cycle. She laughed as she continued before remembering that Shango was still there and blinked, eyes flicking back to him. "Oh, I'm sorry, I've just never seen this before. What is this? Is this a storm?" She grinned wide. "I love it!"

She tried to remember the last thing he'd said to her - something about coming out of a crystal? And eating? She giggled - it probably would have offended her, but she was too elated from this rain to care. "It was too stones actually. I came out of one but found myself stuck in another. That was a couple of cycles ago, I think. As for eating..." she paused and focused, taking in the nutrition of the damp air, the stones beneath, the water dropping onto the ground around her. Shango wouldn't see anything, but Seshat had no way of knowing this. "Like that! I use magic."

@Shango

Shango was already moving back in front of Seshat, and shook himself a little as the first rain began to slick his fur. He peered at her, waiting some demonstration of her magic, but--nothing.

"-Like what?" he asked, blankly, after a solid ten seconds of waiting silence.

As to her questioning storms-... "This?" Shango's head twisted back, his ghostlight eyes squinting into the increasing downpour, then looking back to the leopard. "No. That's rain."

Lightning crashed, the first forks splitting down some distance away, the crack-roar of rolling thunder deafening in the cave as it followed close behind. Shango did not blink, still staring at Seshat. "This is a storm."

Tufted scorpion-tail flicked as he watched her.

He wasn't generally a creature of empathy--to say nothing of sympathy; he rarely tried to put himself in another's shoes, nor did he ever have any real reason to. But now, out of curiosity if nothing else, he found himself wondering what it must be like--to be stuck, all the time, in a rock. Unable to move, or turn your head, or...

"You can't walk?" he asked, at last, as if to just double-check that before making any drastic leaps of logic in regards to the gembound encased almost entirely in stone.

@Seshat

Seshat blinked. Had nothing happened? She thought that there would be something that she couldn't see from her position - maybe energy pulling into her body or a faint glow of her gem. So she was actually a little confused when Shango questioned what she'd done. "Uh, oh it must be invisible. Uhh, I basically use magic to...eat from what's around me? I don't...really know how it works but it works. Or unless someone feeds me." Her thoughts went to Attikias for a moment and the delicious jerky he fed her when he came around. She unconsciously licked her chops. His visits were the highlights of her life.

She mouthed the word - rain - before she tested it on her tongue. "Rain, huh?" She looked up again and stuck her tongue out, just letting the water fall before lapping up what she could. That was really nice. It wasn't enough to quench her thirst, although the moisture made it pretty easy to fix that issue. But the sudden barrage of lightning had her heart jumping and eyes widening with terror at the sound. Tears that ever-so-commonly poured down her cheeks were springing to her eyes unbidden, but this out of fear of the loud noises and the flashing lights. She hurridly blinked, trying to get rid of them so that she didn't hurt Shango's feelings. She forced another small smile on her face. "It's really c-cool, Shango! This is what made you?" Was it just the lightning that made the storm? Or the rain too?

She was very stimulated right now. A lot of New was happening, her pupils almost consuming her eyes. She almost missed Shango's question, catching herself right in time. "Uh, walk? No. I can't move anything other then my face and ears."

@Shango

He sat silent in the growing storm, watching Seshat without change in expression. That wild disarray of black scalefeathers framed a blank, intent face, and for a long moment he didn't stir.

Whatever he was thinking was kept entirely to himself; there was no outward sign given.

At last, he shifted only slightly--as if a statue, himself, coming abruptly back alive. "Isn't that terrible?" he asked, at last, and there was no tone to indicate how he meant his words.

But it was clear that, either way, Seshat had his full attention. Perhaps, in the now-thick pattering of rain, he hadn't noticed the tears, but he was staring at something.

A gust of fur-ruffling wind swept around him, and past Seshat, a low howl changing to a whistle as it curled up into the vents above.

@Seshat

Isn't that terrible? She paused. She knew it was terrible, but it hadn't ever been words she'd said to herself. She tried to stay positive, find the good things in her daily life, but having Shango just say it out loud...yeah, that hurt. She couldn't stop the tears now, streaming from her eyes as she stared at the hybrid. "Yeah. It's pretty terrible." That's right. This was all terrible. This was a mess. She couldn't walk, she couldn't move, she couldn't even turn her head. One sentence was all it took to wipe out all that hope she'd been trying to build in her heart.

What was the point of listening to stories and remembering things? What was the point if she could only stay here and waste away? There wasn't - she was totally useless. Just a waste of space. This was terrible and Shango knew that it was. Her eyes dropped to the ground and she fell silent.

@Shango

Shango still showed little sign of anything, showing no real acknowledgement at Seshat's tears; or maybe he didn't know how to react?

Maybe he thought it was the rain.

After a moment, however, he spoke. "The caves aren't big. Everyone is stuck in them." Matter-of-fact; and then a pause. "There is supposed to be-"
...pause, again. A long moment of thought. What was the word? "...Sky. But there isn't any."


Still, not to be able to move? He tried to imagine it, and shuddered at the thought. He enjoyed his freedom. He enjoyed flight, and running, and exulting in, of course, the storm "You could get a pet,"
he suggested. He'd seen others with them. "They say you can feel through them. See through them."
It wasn't much information to go on, but then, Shango didn't know all that much. Just bits and pieces, things he'd heard, familiars that he'd seen. He didn't know how one went about bonding with one, or whether there was magic involved.

But it seemed a piece of secondhand freedom, anyway.

He watched Seshat a moment longer, and his tail briefly flicked. "Can I help you?"
he asked, at last--not asking for permission, his tone was clear in that. He was asking if there was some way Seshat could be helped; because on his own, he sure didn't see any.

@Seshat