It probably comes as a rather strange sight to see a thick wad of coral sitting outside of the water. Perhaps, even stranger, a collection of coral sitting beside a rather shallow pond it couldn't possibly hope to live in. To make matters worse, if the stone was scooched even an inch to the side, it could've just fallen in. But this coral was a teasing, tantalizing creation, glued to the floor like a penny glued to cement.

The jaguar encased in said coral didn't mind jokes, but this one was just unnecessary. She wanted life. She wanted birth. She couldn't wait around for a freak accident to give it to her. If it could be helped, she preferred to be the freak accident upon the world rather than the other way around.

So rattle she did. Rattle and shake. Throttle and vibrate and quake until...

It was a wimpy breakout, but it managed. Slippery and slidey, being a newborn and all, the cub took the next logical step: landing into a shallow pool beside her broken chrysalis with a weak little "plop".

Here she comes...

(Relatively) tiny, slinking... creeping along the floor on her knuckles and just about scraping her knees on the floor - aha! Tiny needle-teeth snapped down on a lesser butterfly. The poor thing gave a few fitful flutters, and ultimately went still. Glaive shook it around a few times, childishly destructive and -

Cr-crack!

Oh?

Baby blues blinked in the vague direction of the sound. A quick reach for her magic had her trundling right towards the source, broken-up butterfly still in her jaws and already forgotten about.

Furry? was her first thought about the shivering little thing. Glaive dipped her snout down, nudging the prone form in the puddle, gently at first and then more fiercely, trying to shove them out of the puddle and onto the safety of land. Doesn't look like a fish...

The whelp tried to speak, sputtered, spit out the butterfly, and tried again, "hello? I'm Glaive."

As the butterfly fluttered to the ground for the last time, she added without much context and puffed her chest out, "it rhymes with cave!"

@Kaimana

It took a bit for the baby to wake. Rushing water nearby casting chilled air throughout the room sent a shudder down her spine, and that helped. But what truly evaporated the grogginess of first awakening was... a voice! "Hello? I'm Glaive," said the voice, but the words were half muffled because, well, such was the jaguar's face, half of it covered in puddle. A strong cocktail of scents hit her nose and she flinched from the impact. At last, the sensations were enough to lift the cub to her stumbling paws.

"Mmm..." mentioned the child, blinking several times. A quick full-body shake freed her of the watery chains remaining on her baby fuzz. "...mmm Kai," she finished. Swiveling in an almost drunken manner towards the source of the noise, she mimicked, "rhyme w'--" and then she saw it,"--hi."

Kaimana had no expectations. Life was a brand new idea, so the first thing she saw, she found she had to accept. And that which she happened to see and accept was a very tall, very spiky dinosaur named Glaive.

Alright.

Kaimana, or as she herself had announced, "Kai", could only stare blankly up at the creature who probably knew far more about life and all its mysteries than she did.

@Glaive

Paws! Glaive didn't have a word for them, but she was absolutely enthralled. Her snout immediately invaded the poor neonate's personal space again, pressing against the toes and the beans. "So soft!" she cooed, shuffling in place.

But, "ack!" The spinosaurus stumbled back a few steps, recoiling against the amniotic fluid sprayed on her. She'd yet to have that happen. It made her sputter and tip her head back, but - ah well. The baby was spouting words, and one sounded weird enough to be a name. Glaive too this and ran with it, nodding when she was finally acknowledged, "hello, Kai?"

She went onto her knuckles fully, crouching down and sniffing at the newborn cub, head just about hitting the floor multiple times due to the awkward placement of her nostrils. Contrary to Kai's belief, she did not hold all the secrets to the universe. Actually, Glaive held absolutely none, except - "the fish here are good! What're you? I'm a water-dragon!"

Hey Google: How do you talk to newborn babies?

@Kaimana

The beast once again gifted Kai(mana) a new sensation: ticklish. It's not that the word instantaneously came to her mind, but it was hard to ignore or misunderstand the sudden jolt of energy derived from a tickle that had so far been completely absent from her life. Her two-minute-or-less life. Perhaps her companion had felt this energy jolt as well, for when she had shaken off the unwanted weight of water and amniotic fluid from her body, the other creature also reacted with a sudden yank. A yoink, perhaps.

Now feeling more energized, Kaimana was capable of finishing her name. After the other said the shortened version, she piped up, "Kai-mah.... nah," sounding out the word designated as a name in her mind. Then the great beast strenuously sniffed at the baby, said something about "fish", and being a "water dragon". What were... either of those things?

As the cub's eyes trained on one of the two nostrils investigating her existence, Kaimana suddenly became very aware of how close they were. Everything seemed to move at a quicker pace than she could before, but as she felt more and more awake, she too began to speed up. The jaguar would attempt to put one paw on the snout (snoot) pressed into her non-existent space bubble. She wanted to know what it felt like.

"Wha fish? Dragen? 'M a Kai-mah-nah. You a Gl... a Gl-- a Glai-eeve," Kaimana said as she tried to place her delicate baby paw where she'd aimed for. It did not occur to her that she might've wrongly interpreted that question. She was too busy quickly deciding that words were hard and they sucked. There were a lot floating in her head right now, with no clear definition, and she just wanted to understand things already.

Maybe the Glai-eeve that rhymed with cay-eeve would help.

((Origin Google can't help you now sucker))

@Glaive

Touching and bothering the baby made them more active? Dully noted in the rest of the whelp's limitless enthusiasm. Kai stared again with that sound, but dragged it out into extra syllables - appending a mah and a nah to it. They seemed extraneous to Glaive, but who was she to argue? Her snout clicked a few times as she parroted, at an equally slow pace, "Kai-mah... nah?"

A quick hum, and the spinosaurus decided: "that's too slow of a name! How about: Kaimana? Fast, snappy... loose!" What rhymes with that?

Glaive didn't stay on that train of thought for long, fascinated by the feeling of one paw bean placed on her smooth, ridged snout. She stilled, completely transfixed by the sensation and her own eager pride that Kaimana'd figured out so quickly that her name was - "Glaive!" Unhelpful, but enthusiastic accompanied with a few gentle nods beneath such a delicate little peet. How was it so soft? Round? Effervescent?

Slowly, the water dachshund dipped her snout lower, nudging her way away from the investigator, if only to ask, "you don't know what a fish is?" Without even waiting for an answer, she darted for the water, calling over her shoulder, "I'll show you one! I'll be babrbrbrbrb!" Into the water she went.

And out she came with the smallest, most precious of silverlings, ready to eat. Glaive, sopping-wet, deposited it at the cub's feet, plonking down on the spot. "You eat them!" She watched eagerly, to see if - well, Kaimana would eat it. Everyone else she'd met thus far ate fish.

@Kaimana

Glaive decided to put together the syllables composing Kai-mah-nah's name. Kai-mah-nah was Kaimana now. Fast, snappy, loose! Whatever that meant. My how she'd grown over such a short period. At least they finally found a name they both liked by the end of three harrowing two-second evolutions! Kaimana simply nodded with a little vigor in acceptance to the name. She wouldn't try to say it yet, it sounded taxing. She didn't have enough energy for that at the moment.

Kaimana noticed that Glaive, who had been buzzing and rambling since the second she'd seen her, came to an uncharacteristic pause when placed under Kaimana's paw. Glaive was made of an interesting texture, rough and bumpy. Kaimana wondered if she felt the same. Glaive repeated the name back to Kaimana that Kaimana had just said. What was this? Was Kaimana supposed to say it back again? The excitement of being tickled was already fading away, but the cub would try if that's what her visitor wanted...

But no! Water! Fish! Dragen! They were already talking about something else. Fine by Kaimana. The most unexpected part was when Glaive suddenly went under the water. Supposedly, fish were down there. Glaive came back up with a strange object in jaw, slopping and dripping. It looked smooth and exceedingly small compared to Glaive. Kaimana supposed that was a fish?

The "fish" was placed before Kaimana. She stared down at it for a while, unsure of what to do. Glaive then defined it as an edible. Well, in that case, Kaimana bent down and sniffed. It had an extremely sharp odor that caused Kaimana to recoil. Really? She was meant to eat this? Hm... actually, it didn't necessarily smell bad. Good, actually, very good. Just also very strong, like a scented candle held up directly under the nostril. Kaimana, master of childish complacency and soft paws, decided to take a bite, and-- oh.

Kaimana began, without a second thought, to take another, and then another, and then another again! She hadn't realized the sensation brewing in her stomach. And this fish, the first food she'd ever tasted, felt like the perfect thing to get that unpleasant sensation of hunger to stop.

Nom nom nom...

@Glaive

Well, it seemed like Kaimana liked her name - and that was good enough for Glaive!

The baby looked rather warily at the offered fish, though, giving it a few cursory sniffs and setting Glaive on the proverbial edge of her seat to see whether or not it was accepted. She'd never thought to eat any of the birds or snakes that were in the cave, and that was the source of her later conclusion that nothing else was really edible to Talkers. Blight, from several caves away, proved that! But, Kaimana fit her tiny jaws around the slippery edible and tore off a chunk, then tucked in.

Glaive squealed eagerly, swaying on the spot in an eager sort of dance. She ducked low, staring down her long snout at the way Kaimana was able to just gnaw off chunks of the fish and actually chew them; as opposed to the whelp's own ripping, tearing, a few crunches, and swallowing. Her mouth was opening and closing quite a bit, but there wasn't a bunch of fish falling out of it.

Interesting.

Deciding that the little one'd had enough personal space, she slunk closer, shuffling so she was just about side-by-side with Kaimana. Baby blues glanced about as Glaive tried something: lifting a stumpy, fat baby claw to pat at the cub's back - "oh? Oh!" The spinosaur ran her hand down the spotted back, chirping, "you're so soft!" Her snout tipped slightly, chin knocking into Kaimana's back in a bit of an awkward nuzzle. "Wow!"

Are there more soft friends like this? She had to pet them all.

@Kaimana

Kaimana was too enchanted by the fish to really be paying attention to wherever Glaive was going. She could tell subconsciously that a presence was nearing. It only became utterly unignorable when that presence put an object on Kaimana's back.

Suddenly, Kaimana became for alert to the fact that this innocuous presence was Glaive. Her attention trained back on the giant scale-buddy, and Kaimana realized that Glaive had put a strange-looking paw on Kaimana's back. Strangely enough, the cub felt another new sensation that compelled her to lean into the touch. Glaive gave her back a pet and oooooooh wow, that felt marvelous. Kaimana's hackles raised slightly in response to the "petting nerves" being stimulated, and then quickly resettled. Such a brief amount of pet made her wish for more, but she didn't feel obliged to say anything at the moment.

The slight force of Glaive's attempt at a nuzzle made Kaimana a bit unsteady, for even though the giant was gentle, it hadn't ceased to be giant. The cub felt very endeared to her companion now, and desired to return some of what Glaive had given. So Kaimana twisted around and attempted to give Glaive's snout a tiny lick.

That should suffice.

If the lick was permitted, Kaimana would sit and stare up and Glaive for a bit, wondering what new things the friend would teach her.

@Glaive

Glaive gasped softly as the cub leaned into her claws, then far more forcefully as a soft, pink tongue slipped out to steal up her snout. Baby blues locked onto it as it disappeared back into Kaimana's mouth, absolutely transfixed - it was the same thing that Blight had! But, it was rounder and pinker! The spinosaurus clenched her jaw, straining to feel for a tongue that wasn't there and blinking dumbly. Does everybody but me have one of those? What're they for?

Licking, obviously! But, she couldn't do that...

The whelp looked fairly disheartened for a moment, but an actual lightbulb sparked in her eyes. So carefully, so delicately, Glaive edged forwards, booping Kaimana's nose with her own. Then, she stretched an arm out as far as it could go, offering her claws for another pet... just to see what'd happen.

@Kaimana