As Madhukar shook the loose water off of her hands, she studied them. Her hands. Paws. Hands? Paws? There was a difference in her form, one she had never really grappled much with until now. So she looked at her hands. What had they changed for?

Her left still had her gemstone in it, poking up like beads from her skin. Still solid and tense. She flexed her right hand, watched how it moved. There was some level of dissociation between her and them. These were her hands. Not her. Just her hands. Madhukar sat down, still looking.

Or were they her? When she reached out to touch something, did she reach out with her hands? Or did she just reach out? All this time, when the separation between body and mind wasn't buried in her conscience, had she been acting as one functional being? One whole person. Looking at any part of her body used to make her feel so strange. Almost sick. She expected to feel sick here too but...

All she felt was cold.

Really, really cold.

WAIT. WHAT--

Madhukar jumped to her feet and skittered over to the water. Quickly, one freezing hand shot out for the water and-- the moment the pawpad touched it, the surface froze.

'WHAT.'

Just as quickly, the ice was gone, rushed away by the rest of the stream. But Madhukar's hands still felt FREEZING. And now she definitely didn't want to bring them close to herself for warmth.

So instead she slammed them onto the ground. They were still too numb to feel. As... well, expected, but still it came as a surprise, the ground she touched developed a thin frosty sheen. 'WHAT IS HAPPENING.' In silent terror, Madhukar tried to slide her hands across the ground. Those wound up turning frosty too. 'OKAY THEN.' But it wasn't okay, because here's the problem: 'HOW DO I MAKE IT STOP?!'

Madhukar's mind came up with... a number of possible solutions. First: Flapping her arms madly. Which she did. And um... well it wasn't terrible by any means, but it wasn't making them stop being cold.

Second: Magic. Except... Madhukar didn't know what magic to use. The most her range of abilities could do was make her feel colder.

Third: Wait??? So Madhukar would press her paws against any number of surfaces until they finally stopped turning frosty. It was torture. A good enough strategy, though. Eventually, it did end, and when it finally did...

Fourth: Madhukar stuck one paw directly in her mouth. It was disgusting. Why did her hair have that texture?! WHY WAS SHE SO COLD!?!?! The other, she shoved into her armpit and held there. Now the rest of her was cold. NOW SHE WAS JUST COLD!! AH!!!!

Madhukar stumbled back to where she had left her costume. The walking felt nice at least. When she got there, she looked at her craters in the ground. She hadn't reached the sky yet, but she was significantly closer now. Which was better than ever before. The best she'd ever had.

Madhukar huddled tight within her impact crater, a little ball in the grass. Soon, soon the cold would leave... soon. Right? Soon.

Think "Speak"

It was there that Madhukar finally started to figure out was meditation was. Somehow, with her mind set adrift and her body equal parts warm and cold, Madhukar entered a state almost like sleep. She was thinking, quite actively, but every other part of her felt like it was turned off in some way. To the outside world, now a dark void in Madhukar's eyes, the felinoid might as well have been dreaming.

Her mind came back to the mushrooms. She was in a state of calm... what better time to think about them, right?

With mushrooms always came Tahi-shei. "The Fungal Prince". Gosh, what a name. Madhukar had a name too, did she ever tell him? Voidclaw. But that one came from a good decision. His was an extension of a bad one that he said he wouldn't go through with.

He betrayed her. Then, she had betrayed him right back. It should've felt even, like balance, or really more like vengeance, but instead it just felt like cold, deadly hypocrisy. Madhukar had threatened him with lightning then, even after literally striking him down with it before. Which had helped him, back then, in this awful, brutal way. You have to say it like it is. Madhukar had struck down her friend and then threatened to strike him down again, and then she had left him. And Tahi-shei had killed somebody. Killed somebody for real. No coming back. It almost felt like neither of them had issues with "flaunting their power", but Madhukar knew that was wrong. Tahi-shei had been desperate for forgiveness, desperate remorse in his eyes, and then desperate fear. He had told them, actually talked to them. And before then, at the Hunt, he had chosen to watch, cause no harm, while Madhukar had chosen to...

WHY did James just FORGIVE him like it was NOTHING, as if COLD-BLOODED MURDER was NOTHING, and yet he can't even LOOK at you without BOILING IN HIS RAGE-- WHEN DID TAHI-SHEI KILL THAT PERSON ANYWAYS, WAS IT BEFORE THE HUNT? WAS HE REALLY HOLDING IT TOGETHER EVEN BACK THEN, THAT SLY-- and what about YOU, MADHUKAR? JAMES CHOSE TO PROTECT THOSE IN NEED, TAHI-SHEI CHOSE YOU STAY OUT OF IT, AND YOU CHOSE TO SEEK OUT MURDER FOR POWER, AND YET YOU HATE THE POWER YOU GOT AND YOU COULDN'T EVEN SUCCEED AT GETTING THAT QUARRY CAUGHT---

The thoughts she'd been running from, the monsters chewing at her walls, finally allowed in. What had she been thinking about? Mushrooms. Of course it was the mushrooms that let them in. The mushrooms had always been informative for Madhukar. They taught her how to control her lightning. They taught her more about Sunny. They were friends with Tahi-shei, who taught her...

Oh, how she'd missed him all these cycles. His eyes and his care. She had even begun to miss James-- Suddenly nothing. Radio silence from the angry mob. Madhukar longed to see him again. And Sniffles. She had to be honest about Sniffles. She had been longing to see Sniffles again ever since she left. Some days it would randomly hit her. She hadn't spent much time with Sniffles, and yet th... they had been one of the first to care, for absolutely no reason at all. Madhukar, as a kitten, had read it as Sniffles being a control freak over things they didn't even really know or care for, like her. And yet, even as a kitten, she'd been curious to know why truth. Why had they been so sad when she had left? What was the point of that?

She felt colder every day without Tahi-shei or Sunny. She wanted to see Kitty again. How was that one doing? How much had they grown? And Tema, Madhukar had barely seen Tema around except at Tahi-shei's lesson, so clearly the Voidcrawlers were still out and about... and Carja, she'd seen Carja around with a bipedal creature such as herself. Who was that guy? And still nothing from the monsters. They've all gone quiet. They are all listening. Doug. Oh, Doug... Last time she had seen them, they had been here. Right here, in Pegasus. Looking absolutely awful. And they had run. Madhukar hadn't even returned to check on them...

The life she had run from. She thought she was running from monsters. The only monsters where the ones she made in her mind, and now even they seemed to want to go back to this life. The yearning in her fuzzy lump of a chest pulled every heart string as far as it would go. It felt like she was about to snap. And what was snapping? Madhukar had broken down plenty of times, that was part of how she ran away. Make a monster to run from. But snapping? Snapping felt like running towards something. Snapping felt like taking a page out of Doug's book. Going home.

A flood of good memories unraveled and the final wave left Madhukar standing at the shore with a pearl in hand. Glittering and gleaming. A mushroom pearl. She could melt into this grass below and become the dirt. Not even the cold would be enough. What did mushrooms want? Growth. So did Madhukar.

Beside her corpse upon the ground sprouted a little cluster of white caps. Madhukar always remembered those. They reminded her of Tahi-shei. She wanted to go back home.

Think "Speak"

Madhukar's eyes fluttered open once again as the world gave every last thing that it had to her. Revival after revival, and this one likely wouldn't be the last. But for now, it was the best she'd ever had. A fresh breath of crisp air infected the felinoid with its laughter. Her cheeks felt squished by the magnitude of her smile. And she looked up. The sky felt closer. Close enough to hold and carry Madhukar, or to reach out as she did.

There were little mushrooms beside her chest. Madhukar plucked one and added it to her piled up costume. She was carrying her garden on her back, like Atlas. Soon she would shrug it off her shoulders and expand it to every possible cave. She already had some in mind.

For a moment, Madhukar stood, still chilly as ever, wondering where to go next. Maybe probably some place warm. Or perhaps she would drift and wind up somewhere less than warm. She knew she wasn't ready to return yet, but now she was awake, and closer than ever to being prepared. Just a few more stops. Madhukar wanted to collect some things... stuff for her garden, for her costume, and for what would eventually become her home. It had been many cycles since she had felt this alive.

The tendrils of wanderlust grasped at her legs and tugged. Madhukar donned her costume quickly, then looked toward the sky. What to leave in her wake? A storm? A spire of wind? A mushroom? Madhukar stared at the ground. A... plant?

From the ground, right beneath the scrutiny of her lens, came a little pumpkin orange. A little magic orange. Huh.

'Is that what they meant by "magic oranges"?' Mmmmmaybe. It was good news though! Meant Madhukar could get more of those, which was useful for all sorts of things. Possibly everything.

Madhukar left then, off to somewhere, who knows. What mattered more, in my opinion, was what she left behind.

Think "Speak"

- exit -