Sunny and Tema had been living in Eridanus since they'd stumbled in and met so many other friends. Sunny was eager to hang out with Oka for one thing, but the wealth of food available to them had also been a driving force. That, and Eridanus was a comfortable cave. Sunny had found several Lesser snails with spiral shells rather than cone-shaped ones like her own, but hadn't been able to talk to them. They'd been interested in her slime, but didn't seem capable of complex communication.

Mostly though, curiosity was starting to prod at her. There was something outside Eridanus, drawing her in. She'd been aware of it back in Fornax -- somewhere out in the caves, there was something calling to her. The only problem was, Sunny felt guilty asking her friends to help her move around and she had trouble moving long distances on her own. However, when Carja offered to help her satisfy some of her wanderlust, Sunny had jumped at the chance.

Following her impulses, she had directed the dragon in various directions, thrilled with the fact that she didn't have to hang on to fur or something. Carja's skin was smooth and sort of ridged, which meant that Sunny could use her stickier slime to hang on and also not be horrifically uncomfortable. Furthermore, she didn't mind dunking herself in a little bit of water first to avoid accidentally poisoning Sunny.

Finally, they'd ended up in a cool, damp room with mist all around. The snail pulled up onto Carja's head, between her horns, now that they were stable on the ground, and decided to practice some of the "real people words" she'd become more acquainted with. "Really wet," she said brightly. This was a positive for her, after all. Her eyestalks and tentacles stretched out, trying to feel around for various forms of stimuli. She looked around the trees, and then towards the swampy ground.

This was an excellent cave. A little chillier than Eridanus, but she didn't mind it, and most of her friends had fur. "Is Carja-friend okay?" she asked suddenly, recalling that lizards didn't do well in the cold. Not that it was like, freezing, but. Still.


@carja

Carja was overjoyed to be essentially a taxi. Who wouldn't? Especially because Sunny could hang on even if she went upside-down or did loops!! Such was the benefit of having glue-slime all over you.

"I like cold!" she chirped, "Svartis says I'm like him- he likes the cold too, it's how our magic works! If I get too cold, I can lay down on a warm rock to heat myself back up."

The dragon swooped under a branch, her claws grazing the muddy ground before she flew back up again. She flapped her wings hard to stop and alighted at the very top of a pine, the tree bending over as she let her weight rest on it. She furled her wings in halfway, gently flapping down to balance herself if she tipped.

"I've been here!" she said, "It's so muddy and fun- I like to run around and splash in it!"

Carja spread her wings out again and swooped down towards the ground. She was bigger than the last time she was here. Instead of being cat-sized, she was now about the size of a Golden Retriever, her growth increasing by the day. It was weird! She hadn't grown an inch since reaching cat-size, but all of a sudden she was sprouting up and out like a weed. She'd be as big as Svartis by the end of it!

@Sunny

Satisfied that Carja was okay, she started to look around a bit more. Finally, Sunny took a deep breath and looked in a much different sort of way. Nothing came to her attention, but she still directed Carja in a vague direction. "This is nice place. Madhukar might like it." That was mostly determinant by if Sunny spotted any bugs, she knew, but she figured that the distant sort of buzzing in this room was indicative of some sort of insect life. Then again, she'd thus far seen bumblebugs anywhere there were plants, so.

Sunny wasn't even sure what she was looking for -- just that there was something here that needed finding. Or maybe it was in another cave entirely? She didn't know. "Walk around? Looking for something. Not knowing what," she admitted. Still, the fresh mist was nice against her skin -- the various particulates captured within it gave her a pretty solid idea of what was going on in this cave (nearby her, at least).


@carja

Carja landed gently and giggled as her feet squelched in the mud, "Eeeeeeew... It's all muddy and gross!"

She fluttered over deep patches of mud, before her leg sank into muck and she yelped, struggling to yank her foot out. She backed up and hissed at the ground, slapping it for good measure.

"It gets deep," she said, and slapped her wings down to fly instead, "The ground's unsafe here... If I get stuck, I won't be able to get us out."

Resisting the urge to shake her head, she swooped between the tall trees instead, and landed on a jutting outcrop of rock. She perched on the tip and folded her wings in, snorting softly.

"Does Madhukar like bugs?" she asked, perking up a bit, "I like bugs too!"

@Sunny

Sunny watched distantly as the the mud enveloped Carja's back foot and followed her eyes as she expressed her distaste for it. Then they were in the air again, and Sunny set her mind towards clinging. It was a conscious switch, after all -- slime and muscles both were trying to hang firmly on. It was helpful that Carja's horns were there to help stabilize her if she ended up close enough to them.

Once they were a pretty solid distance away from the last place, she tried again. Seeing-without-seeing, but not in the usual way -- it wasn't like slime-sense, where she could taste-see-smell it, and it wasn't like being able to feel the moisture in the air which was taste-touch-smell. It was something else entirely -- something magical, vibrating out invisible and calm from her stone. A stretching, distant offering. Show me what's out there.

Sunny finds a master-level cubic chunk of pharmacosiderite; its edges are worn and slightly rounded due to its soft nature, as if it had been in use for some time by someone, suggesting an external placement. It may have consisted of more cubic structures at some point.

@Sunny

Poking up out of the mud and partially enveloped by the murk, Sunny spotted it. Glowing bright and intense, in her eyes. Little bits of green poking up, the stone weathered with the cubic edges disturbed just a bit. "There! Take it! Little, little stone! See it? Green-shine in the mud?" She made it as clear as she could without hands to indicate with, her tentacles straining towards it. Life echoed within it, and Sunny needed it. Needed to... to mother it. I will be a mother, she thought with stunning clarity. To all of them. To anyone who needs me, I will be a mother.

She felt a warmth rise in her, and from within her shell, her pulse visibly picked up. Sunny needed to make sure Carja got it before it slipped out of her grasp! She had no idea what she'd do with it, but... "And be careful! It holds... life," she said, voice echoing that same warmth. "Like ours."


@carja

Carja cooed as she spotted the stone, and swooped down off the rock, tail hanging low as she hovered above the rock. She reached out her hind feet to gently pluck it up, her thumb claws holding it securely as she took flight again.

"Pretty..." she said, "It holds life? Really?"

She wondered how Sunny knew that. A darker thought wondered what exactly Sunny wanted to do with it...

"Are we going to find more?" she asked, shoving the thought down like a hammer to a whack-a-mole.

Carja moved the stone to her front claws and clutched it close, landing on a branch with her back feet perched on it, her wing claws clutching another branch and the trunk of the tree.

@Sunny

"Really," she said warmly, watching as Carja plucked it out of the mud. She'd make sure it got cleaned later, even if it might have been dangerous for her to clean it herself. She didn't know what this mud might hold. "It will be... brought up, one day. When I'm bigger." The stone already had life within it, but she would put more life inside, one day. Once she figured out exactly how, anyway. Maybe her other friends, like Oka, would help her too? Sunny wanted more snails in the world.

Carja's question made her perk up. "How many can Carja-friend carry?" She didn't want to risk the stones or Carja getting hurt (or herself, but Sunny's shell was very tough and didn't break easily -- topaz was a strong stone and she could be dropped from pretty high without getting messed up because of how small she was). Sunny wanted more, of course -- lots of stones and therefore lots of future-snails could only be a good thing! Not that she... really had anywhere to put them.

Maybe Stone-kin Tema can protect them? Or... maybe Madhukar? ... Idea will be returned to.


@carja

Carja hummed, "I can carry two easily, three with difficulty."

One in each front paw if she needed to land, or one in each front paw and another in her hind ones to carry them to safety to be set down later.

"You want more?" she asked incredulously, "I mean... they're pretty..."

She took flight again and tried to reason why Sunny would want as many stones as possible. It was an odd concept, though she understood a bit. She herself wanted shiny things for her hoard, but not stones with life. Those were to be left alone.

"Once we get the stones, we head back?" she asked, sounding... anxious.

@Sunny