Gemini was not stupid. Mosaic had not gotten her head stuck in a rock, or hurt her foot kicking at another rock, or anything stupid like that. (Stupid for the rocks, that was, not for her. Mosaic was NOT stupid.) In fact, it had been rather... pretty. Too pretty. Mosaic didn't like being... reminded of it all the time. Anyway, she didn't exactly blend in there. She was not purple, she was not translucent, and prey could probably see her and run away before she had a chance to even take a step toward it.

So, Gemini was not as euphoric an experience as it might have been. And now she was on the move once more, searching for some place she might like better. Would she ever find something?

There seemed to be nothing special about this tunnel, and the trek was quickly becoming boring. Mosaic's eyes began to wander, searching the surroundings for something, anything interesting to look at. There seemed to be something carved onto the walls... did she want to stop and delay her journey to the next room to look at them?

Oh well. She was bored, and it wasn't like she was in a hurry, right?

Many of this tunnel's etchings were overly simple chicken-scratch; indistinct alien figures hacked into the wall by tooth or stone, and worn away by the wiles of time. Hardly any of them were clear enough to discern—except for the one Mosaic had nosed her way towards.

It, like many of the others, was formed of sharp lines and harsh angles. (Long ago, the lines might've been smeared in dye—there was the faintest hint of ochre in them.) The shape of it was too geometric to make out more than simple details: the carving depicted some sort of pileated creature with a pointed beak, four wings boasting jagged feathers, and simplified eyes up and down the flanks.

A teardrop-shaped seraphinite was gently nestled beneath the haphazard carving—cycles' worth of dust caked its smoothly layered green surface.

This stone is a guaranteed revival and will not break upon attempt. The resulting hybrid will be drawn by myself.

@Mosaic

Most of the carvings turned out to be amateurish, and near impossible to decipher. Strangely, this pleased Mosaic immensely. It was nice knowing that not everything here was absolutely perfect just like not you, then. Even the shape in front of her, though it was recognizable as a bird-thing of some sort, was simple and geometric. She stood there for a minute, admiring the crude lines, before she happened to glance down--

A glint of grayish green peeked out from beneath a thick layer of dust. Its source? A small, polished gemstone, vaguely shaped like a curved triangle. A tooth! That was the comparison she was looking for! A very smooth, not very sharp, rounded and fairly unrealistic tooth-shaped seraphinite. Its color stood out from the purple crystals of the rest of the tunnel; it did not blend in here.

Neither do I, Mosaic thought, in a rare display of empathy for an inanimate object. She reached out and brushed the seraphinite with her paw, trying to clean it off before picking it up in her mouth. A grimace at the feeling of dust clinging to her tongue--but there was no water here to wash it with, and this was the best she could do. Let's be friends, she thought to the stone, feeling oddly sentimental, and trotted off toward Canis with it tucked into her cheek.

--exit