Madhukar had introduced Sunny to a little red panda called Kitty the other day, and since then, Kitty had clung to her (kind of; she still preferred to be on her own, but was nearby). Charismatic and motherly, dear Sunny was used to it (even if she wasn't all that much older than Kitty, really). But something that she'd been told was that Kitty, upon touching an object, could see its past.

That had piqued Sunny's interest. She was always one to believe immediately what a magic user told her (no understanding of the stuff herself), but more importantly, Sunny had three stones with life inside of them and she would have quite liked to know just what they held inside. Not that she was aware that a stone could have had more than one possible owner, of course -- she was just under the impression that such a spell would immediately tell her exactly what she wanted to know.

"Kitty-one?" she called, and Kooru brayed for emphasis. She needed to talk to a certain red panda.

Hanging out in Eridanus was the only thing she really knew, so it had only made sense she'd stay nearby. Especially when her first real friend, Madhukar, had immediately brought her to someone warm and friendly who offered her a family. Kitty didn't exactly know what all that entailed, but she did know that it meant they'd protect her from people who wanted to hit her (kind of like Madhukar's bugs; they were swarming animals, she'd been told, who defended their own -- and wasn't she lucky only the one had been angry at her).

Hearing her name called and then punctuated by the cry of a blue kooru had her stretching her legs where they dangled off a branch and starting to make her way down. Leaping carefully from branch to branch, grabbing where she needed to grab and--

Kitty lost her grip because of how quickly she was going and hit the ground. Not seriously hurt (there was a reason she had all that fluff), but the wind was knocked out of her. She wheezed and rolled onto her stomach, taking in a sharp breath of air. Well, that sucked. Don't wanna do that again, she thought with much more clarity than she could have spoken.

Ask her in, Sunny thought, and the kooru (who was grazing outside the little den carved out behind the bones; it wasn't really big enough for her) gestured for Kitty to slip inside. Sunny already had her stones tucked gently into a collection of soft things, like shed fur from Tema and Kooru mixed with ferns she frequently replaced. She didn't want any of them to scratch, so they were separated.

"You have past-seeing," she said, bobbing her head at the stones. "Life-stones, these are. Had living things inside, like you or me or Madhukar, yes? Can Kitty-one help seeing what their bodies might have looked like?" A pretty simple request, but one that mattered deeply to Sunny. She wanted to have a hint, at least, towards what she'd be reviving...!

Kitty squeezed into the den. It was a little bigger on the inside than it was on the outside, though, and she was mostly fluff -- she might not have been able to fit inside once she was an adult, but she was already pretty small, so. Kitty curled her striped tail around her inside to not crowd Sunny, and looked the stones over. Finally, she shrugged, rolling the green, square-shaped one with some rounding on the edges. It was pretty, though it would have been prettier in better light, and she twitched her ears forward.

Just casting magic on a stone with life inside, right? No pressure. Not for Kitty -- she figured that if the stones were hurt by this, they'd probably just hit her. Before her eyes, flickery shadows shaped into the vague image of...

Crystals... a wall of crystals. Before it, an average-sized shape, like an elongated bird-creature. It was chiseling away at the crystal wall, creating some kind of carving, although its skills were amateur. Whatever it was carving looked like some kind of blob, but it was doing its best. It had long arms with dexterous hands, and feathered wings reaching from its arms that tucked nicely together into an arrow-like shape, following the point of its elbow. It was squatting on fat, bird-like legs. In the lighting of the tunnel, it seemed purple, or maybe it was white?

"What are you carving?" came a voice.

"Me," the creature said proudly, and the vision pulled back to reveal... an ambiguous blob carved into the wall. But the creature seemed really proud of its effort, and that's what mattered.

@Kitty

"Bird," she said once her vision cleared, rolling the stone back into place. "With hands, under wings. Like to carve." The vision hadn't offered her much more than that -- a voice, certainly (and the creature's), which she had assumed to belong to some kind of family member. It struck her that this seemed like a child -- she hoped that wasn't an indication of when it had met its untimely demise.

Kitty sniffed, finding that this little room was far too dark. While she waited for Sunny's reaction, she tried to light up a wisp. No luck, unfortunately, but she'd try again in a minute. For now, it seemed almost like Sunny's excitement was lighting up the room.

Tenderly, Sunny touched the stone as Kitty restored it to its original position. "A bird?" She would have quite liked more descriptive information than that, but the hands part... that was intriguing. Wings in general were good, but dextrous digits on top of them? Her mind was already racing. A meshing of her form with this one could go very well, or very wrong. Still, it was an exciting prospect -- it didn't even occur to Sunny that the magic might have faltered, or that Kitty might have been lying to her.

"Black one!" she said suddenly, gesturing towards the spinel with her tentacles. It was the second one she'd found, and Kitty had been naturally drawn towards the first one, so Sunny figured that they might as well keep going in order.

Eager to please, Kitty reached for the next stone. It was large, and she liked the shape of it. Roundish, sort of. Her stone was more in a crescent shape. Taking a breath, she closed her eyes (easier that way -- less things to be distracted by) and tried to look into its past. Maybe she'd get something better.

Images started to roar to life in vivid color, and her ears pricked forward. My, it was almost like she was there, seeing...






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A stumpy creature—with thick, tortoise-like front legs and short coyote-like back legs—stood squat in front of a doorway, as if it were deciding whether or not to move through and into the room beyond. Its buzzard-like beak opened, then closed, as if it wanted to say something and didn't. It was protected by a semblance of shell along its back, and its head was pulled nearly beneath this defense as it mulled over its decision. Its feathers ruffled where it did not have scales, and ultimately, it turned away from the door. Keen eyes were solemn, grief-stricken: it would regret this decision later, but it could not fight the anxiety and finality of goodbye...

@Kitty

Kitty frowned. Well, that was a hard animal to describe. "Uh. Turtleish? Bird-face. Dog legs. Shell, but flatter 'an yours. ... Sad," she finished, staring at it for a moment longer. She felt almost like an intruder, at least on that one. That felt like a... deeply personal moment. She cleared her throat a little bit, and then the attempt at a wisp was unconscious. She wanted the comfort of it, like when Madhukar had purred. Also? It was dark in here.

A wisp bobbed into existence next to her ear, just as comforting as purring. The warm, blue light was nice -- it made her feel happy, and a little less afraid now that she could see everything clearly.