Tema hummed again as Carja bumped into her, nodding without really meaning to. It wasn't her plan to rest when she had things to do, but her throat was beginning to burn from trying to silence her yawns. Besides, she barely made a good hunter when fully rested.

"Thank you."

Why had she ever worried in the first place? She had always had others to fall on when she needed it, even when a perfect stranger took time out of their day to teach her to hunt. The world had been kind to her until now, save for her missing friend. Surely it would be okay to let Carja continue her work for the morning.

Her happy thoughts were interrupted as Kitty went stiff after touching the helmet, frozen. She stayed liked that for a moment, Tema staring helplessly and confused until she broke from the spell, gasping and panicked.

"Are you alright?!"

Now having been enlightened to how Kitty's history telling worked, Tema felt guilty for not having warned her where the helmet had come from. She had hoped it would show a story of it's making, or maybe shed light on the kind of creature that had warn it... but to witness its death? She had a hard enough time looking at sleeping deer spiders... How terrifying it must have been to watch them descend upon you.

"I'm sorry, Kitty. I..." She what? She hadn't known this would happen. Lacking the words to finish her sentence, she went silent instead, waiting for Kitty to recover.

@Carja

CARJA

The water hears and understands
The ice does not forgive

Carja flinched and slapped the helmet away, staring at it. She looked at Kitty and curled around her and Tema, protecting and providing what comfort she could.

"Sorry," she said, "Are you okay?

She dragged over a deer haunch and offered it to her. She knew she felt better after food, so the same had to be for Kitty, too. Right?

"I hate spiders," she mumbled, shuddering, "But at least the only ones I've seen are small. I don't think there's any that can hurt us bad."

@Kitty

Kitty was shaking in every limb as she let herself be tucked into Carja's scales and Tema's fur, taking a few moments to soothe herself from her hard breathing. "I-- hhh," she muttered, flicking an ear and clearing her throat. "I-It's... alright. I wasn't expectin' that either," she muttered. "It-- can be, uh, anything from the past," she explained further. "I can't pick it. It could've been anything, I just -- got unlucky." She swallowed hard. Still, though, it had never been a death before. Certainly not one so... violent. She shuddered.

She looked down at the dirt, and then started to smudge more or less the shape of the creature in with one of her paws. Kitty frowned at her image, and then smudged away the breaks in the armor to try and fill them in. Then, she marked in an approximation of the spear. By the end, it was a clearly recognizable image of the creature Kitty had seen, albeit standing in armor -- but not worn and cracked. New, and proud, with a spear clutched in its hands. "... Like this," she said softly, not willing to show them what they had looked like in the moments before their death.

"... They wanted something," Kitty explained, wondering idly as she looked at her drawing if she should dedicate more time to this. She was pretty good at it. "Maybe someone. Fought some spiders -- bigger than me. Bigger than Madhukar." She paused, considered. "About the size of Madhukar's friend with the spikes, maybe bigger." She swallowed hard. "L-lots of them, and then..."

She sighed, and smudged the drawing away. Kitty averted her gaze and drew her rock closer, tucking it under her paws. "Then I came back."


@carja
@tema

Tema listened as Kitty spoke, enjoying the group cuddle. It was still strange to her, being smaller than Carja, but it was also rather nice to feel protected. She wondered if that's why Carja had cuddled into her so often as a little one. Carja's comment made Tema cringe though, reminding her of the spiders that she knew Kitty had seen.

"I saw them, the spiders." She admitted, a small shiver running down her back. "It must have been horrible to watch them..." She stopped, the blank space in her sentence making her heart ache. Still... Tema found herself tempted to return, to look for whatever it was the helm-wearer had been trying to get to. Wouldn't it be beautiful if she could reunite the two in some way, long after they were gone? She was quite the dreamer.

"Keep away from the South side of this cave, okay? That's where they were. Their webs are really strong." She warned the two, hoping that knowing where the things were would help them relax. Mentioning the webs reminded her of her first use of their new spell... Maybe that would provide a welcomed change of topics?

"I found something else, too." She added vaguely, not wanting to drag a conversation on if the others just wanted to eat and rest.

@Carja

CARJA

The water hears and understands
The ice does not forgive

Carja was horrified to know that the spiders existed, and stood up, tapping her feet nervously, "Th-they're real? In this cave?!"

She curled around the two tighter, head hunched back, wings draped over them. She was terrified of spiders.

She very carefully pushed the helmet away, as if it were a spider attractant. Ew.

"I'm sorry I asked you to see it," she said, "Really sorry."

She wanted to hide under Tema like she had all those years ago, but did the best she could and bumped her head into her chest instead, all her limbs tucked in as far as they would go. She didn't like this cave anymore. She wanted to leave and never come back.

First it was muddy, impossible to fly in, and now there were spiders? No. No thank you.

@Kitty

Kitty watched the helmet roll away, obscured now by the fog. "What did you find, Tema?" she asked, eager to change the subject. Her fur was still puffed out, and her heart still beating hard -- but she was settling, slowly, and no further discussion of this topic was something she was eager for. She rolled the stone under one of her paws, considering it. She was sort of considering looking into its memory, too, but rocks were usually pretty boring unless they had life in them. This one might, she supposed, but she also didn't want to potentially repeat the moment.

She gestured for Carja to come back. Kitty wasn't mad -- just a little rattled. She'd be okay.


@carja
@tema

Tema lifted herself to make as much room for Carja as she could, setting her head on the dragon's to cover her. It didn't make a big difference, but she tried.

"Hey, it's alright. They won't come to us here. Maybe we can speak to Sunny when we find her, okay? Look for somewhere nicer to settle... Somewhere brighter." She shifted to groom Carja's head, despite her scales being clean. It was comforting to Tema, the repetitive motions and soft tongue gliding across her fur. She hoped it would help Carja calm down, too. In truth? She would also love nothing more than to move, even if it meant having to restart her moss garden.

Glad that Kitty took her up on the offer to change the subject, Tema paused in her grooming to offer a smile.

"Have you noticed that when we all gather together like this, our magic... combines?" She tried to look for the right words, not really knowing exactly how it worked. "I tried calling on it, and it opened this... Pocket. In the air." She tried to call for the same magic again, to show them. She wanted to see if she could pull stuff out, too.

Failing to reach wherever the new spell had come from, Tema sighed. "I'll have to try again. But I'll show you!" She announced, determined to learn this new magic. Until then she had only used plant-related magic, so this was a brand new skill to master. "Maybe you can use it too?" She added, curious to see if her theory was right.

@Carja

CARJA

The water hears and understands
The ice does not forgive

Carja purred as Tema managed to at least cover her head. She shifted her body so that Kitty was enveloped in her warmth again, flopping the end of her tail onto her.

"I hope so," she said, sighing, "I don't really like it here. I can't fly."

Maybe she was just too big.

Her head raised and she faced Tema, head pressed against her chest still, "Oh, I haven't noticed."

The little pocket appeared, and she perked up. She grabbed the helmet and threw it inside, peering into it. Gone.

"Woah!", she gasped, "This is so cool!!"

She was tempted to stick her hand into it, but thought better of it, instead entertaining herself with trying to figure out where it went. At least she was distracted again.

@Kitty

Kitty made a vague gesture at Tema's question. "Kind of?" Honestly, she wasn't very attuned to her magic, but she could admit that she had noticed herself feeling differently. More... capable. Or, rather, capable of more. She watched as Carja bamfed the helmet into the new space. "I wonder if we share it?" she asked idly. If the magic was from all of them, it made sense.

A purple-and-yellow portal opened up like a wound, about as big as she was, and Carja's helmet was plonked onto the ground in front of Kitty before it snapped closed a moment later. The helmet was covered in a thick layer of slime rather reminiscent of the Voidmother's, and Kitty scowled. "Great. It's a slimy space." More slime than usual, in this specific case.


@carja
@tema

Tema hummed as Carja and Kitty each summoned the spell, one putting the helmet in the space and the other... You could pull things out! She was particularly fascinated with that, glad that it could be used for transporting things. She wondered what its limits were, but that was a test for another time.

"I think everyone can use it, then! Well, all of us at least." She practically sang the statement, thinking of all the ways that their pawless friends could make use of it.

Still determined to summon the slimespace for herself (even though she very much disliked slime), Tema called for her magic again. It responded this time... kind of. Her gem sputtered to life with flickers of light, but the familiar warmth she loved so much didn't appear. A portal still blipped into existence, though, which she counted as a success.

Until she stuck her paw in it, that is.

A rather pointed rock had tried to pop itself out as she had tried to put her paw in, resulting in an unpleasant collision. Tema ripped her paw out with a surprised growl, glaring at her slimy paw as the portal snapped shut and disappeared like a child trying to avoid being scolded for accidently tripping up their parent. Not only had she summoned an entirely different object than what she had aimed for, she also ended up with her paw more coated in slime than it had previously been coated in mud.

"Maybe we should be careful before we just reach inside it." She mumbled before pulling the pebble from her paw and tossing it out of the clearing. She was certainty more awake now.

@Carja