Some seventy or so cycles ago, Orion had been little but ruin and scrub grasses that managed to eke their way out between crumbling brick and mortar; a self-proclaimed king had stood upon his Throne on high and had taken his hooves through the ribs of all that defied him; a love defying apparent nature had been shattered by dark influence, and gemstone had burst from the soil to protect him and a long-gone researcher from it.

As of just cycles ago, the starry vault is full of warmth and light—by fire or by bauble. Temperance and Ember running amok, exploring and testing the world they emerged to. Oliver had joined him. Mercy worked on growing another garden. It was meant to be a grove likened to the one he’d grown for Pride’s children, both aesthetic and nourishing.

The beast had noted, with a soft, pale concern, that both of them had emerged wholly carnivorous—and, that he would be unable to teach them to hunt. Fortune played a kind hand to him, at least, in making instinct a guiding compass. Either cub was well-equipped to stalk the halls of Orion; they were self-sufficient in that respect.

Still, yet, Mercy would not leave them alone for anything.

No, no… he was something of a guardian angel to them, he thought, and what a story that’d make, to tell. A frail sort of creature, broken down and unable to understand, standing watchful. Or, was he more of a shepherd, overseeing and protecting a herd? He did not yet know the measures that he would go to.

Somehow, he imagined that he would not be so inclined to go belly-up in the face of a threat. Not anymore. Pride had unconsciously guided him towards that… strength.

Moonset eyes glanced over his shoulder, where another was pacing after him, and he chuffed softly, "thank you for coming all this way, Bolormaa."

His snout turned down, then, to the arrangement of gemstones before either of them; each were laid carefully in their own nests of ferns and creeping mosses. A sort of opal, a fuchsia clinochlore, and a rutilated astrophyllite.

A big, dark nose nudged against the first of that list, and he murmured, "I do not know if this one holds life; or if I would be strong enough to give it magic once more."

He’d found it in the nest of a red mouse long-gone. Any other appealing trinket within it had already been taken, but—for whatever reason—the stone had been left behind. Cursed, Mercy had wondered, or simply forgotten?

Lifting a massive paw and setting it atop the opal, he breathed softly, "this one—can you help me with it?"

Bolormaa sat up in place, looking away from where she'd been marveling over the garden—it really was just marvelous and stunning, and a wonderful grotto for these lost stones to find life once again. She nodded as Mercy spoke, clasping her hands together with a soft coo, "of course I can."

Her paw fit neatly overtop of the lion's, resting upon the gleaming opal. "Oh, I feel it. In all three of them—a second chance for them."

As his magic unfurled like the petals of a rose, hers threaded through it and carefully guided it home. It was a strong surge—one that he should not have doubted—and it breathed life.

The chrysalis formed nearly immediately, swallowing up a basketball's worth of space. It glistened, shot through with what seemed like an aurora.

She stepped back, then, leaving him to the rest with a soft, hopeful, "your magic is more than enough, Mercy. Thank you for giving them another chance."

A breath he didn't know he was holding escaped him, and he tore away from the opal. His voice came so softly, so reverently, that he'd almost not heard himself speak: "thank you." Not just for the assistance, but also the soothing presence, the aura of warmth and assurance. It was a steadying hand on his shoulder where Pride wasn't currently here to be (and how he wished the stag could be here to witness this first step.)

There was arguably less fanfare and build-up for the second stone, the brighter of the two remaining. He'd been steeled by the success of the first, and approached it with more confidence.

Before, when he'd helped to make Arsu and Azizos—his Stars, wonderful and dear to his heart, even now—there had been no uncertainty to fate. No random chance to subject him to. Life was fresh in those shards, and they took to one another's magic so easily.

Here, the stone lagged in its push into the soil, its formation of a chrysalis just slightly larger than its sibling.

One, then, remained of the stones that he had.

Despite the peculiar strain nagging at the base of his skull—the telltale sign of overexertion—the pale beast set a paw atop the last one. Its rutilated surface vanished from sight beneath the size of it, and he wondered for a moment, how small will they be? Precious dewdrops in the shape of children? Fawn-cubs staggering onto gangly limbs? Titantic creatures in the vague shape of a lion such as himself?

He'd love them, all the same.

The astrophyllite clung to the apparent last vestiges of his magical reservoirs, and it, too, took shape—a chrysalis similar in size to the one before it.

Mercy let himself be lost in gazing at the trio, then. His body was, a bit involuntarily, settling in for a nap, but his eyes remained steadily fixed on them. Even as the curtains slid closed, he whispered not once, not twice, but thrice: "I love you."

Once for each of them.
exit

The opal had once belonged to Sìleas, a Norwegian Forest Cat blinded by her own gemstone.

Pride's stones, gifted to Mercy, had been perhaps a coincidental pair: the clinochlore had taken the shape of an mandrill; and the astrophyllite was once carried by a orangutan.