double+ posting by request

The first stone found, Pride moved off again, the quiet tap of pale cloven hooves somehow reverent in Orion's hush. His ears were cupped forward, his eyes searching the dim light between glimmering outcrops of quartz--but it was his magic that was extended, his magic that was the sense by which he sought.

Delicate steps drew him closer to the Tower, until his magic flared in warning, in promise: something's just here. Underfoot, just ahead.

Pride again lowered his head, nudging gently at the rock, wondering at so many lost children left behind in unknowing stone. "Here, too," he said at last, and stepped aside, as if to expose this poor lost orphan for the lion's judgment--knowing full well that his judgment was, would always be, mercy.

Pride studied him quietly for a moment, both solemn and somehow light, and offered a respectful question: "How many?" he asked.

The caves were full of them.

The caves were too full of them.

They'd never be able to bring them all to life; that was beyond any of them, but a few-? How many children did the white lion wish to pull into their family fold, to embrace with all that love and care, this time around? They will be lucky to have him, Pride thought, suddenly--and fervently. He could imagine, no--remember--Mercy's tender support, his gentle urgings, his strong care, for their first children. They always will be.

@Mercy

Pride returned to Mercy with a jagged, semiopaque, and fuchsia clinochlore as well as an astrophyllite streaked through with a number of rutilations. Both of them held Pupil-level magic.

These lost souls—well, stones, if there was to be no trace of the mold they’d once filled—wouldn’t be quite so dearly familiar to home, but Mercurius would adore them all the same; he would adore the homages to Pride’s ilk all the same.

The pale beast had smiled softly, nodding his agreement while his heart kicked and swelled out of his chest.

"A large family is a happy one," Pride had promised, and the storyteller clung to that sentiment; that and "I will always be there for you—for all of you. All of us."

By the Caves, by the Spire, Mercy hoped that that would remain true. He fell headfirst into faith that it would, without so much a glance at the ever-looming possibility that it might not (and the knowledge that his friend would, inevitably, spring into action to defend another against an immutable threat.)

Pride returned shortly with a two stones: one a glossy fuchsia; the other earthy and streaked through with gold inclusions. Either of them contained life and light—a second chance.

Mercy was almost overly gentle as he laid them, for the moment, to rest beneath the cover of some lamb’s ear and sweetgrasses. "How many?" the stag had asked, eliciting a rumbling hum. Moonlit gaze studied him in kind before he turned his gaze sidelong.

He leveled a small smile on the chrysalises, in perfect duality. Azizos and Arsu had come in two, as well.

And, so, he murmured, "I think that many good things come in twos." The pale beast blinked, pupils expanding and contracting with the slowness of it. "This’ll be just right." Mercy shoved to his feet, padding forward. He craned his neck, stopping just short of Pride’s nose—a nuzzle in thanks, awaiting permission.

"Once there’s a place—a garden—for them, I’ll… plant them."

He stared up from beneath his brow.

"Thank you, Pride."
@Pride

He waited, watching in a silence that was near-reverential as the lion set the stones gently down. He felt... like this were some sacred moment; hushed, soft, one that needed quiet and stillness. For a moment his life seemed to stand still: the motes of dust drifting gently in Orion's 'star'light, the gleaming white of Mercy shimmering beneath as he turned to look to Pride. The glint of the gemstones, waiting in their soft nest of fresh green garden.

It was one of those few moments caught in time, snagged unexpectedly with the pause of an inhaled breath, imprinted perfectly into the memory as wonder. As... magic. A magic stronger than any he himself could wield.

When Mercy stepped forward, he was leaning to meet him, neck arching out to touch nose to soft nose.

He turned, casting that soft gaze over the garden, the stones--and it occurred to him that those plants needed more light than Orion could offer, more water than its meagre mists. He debated briefly, and decided to work on water first... A gentle rain, he thought, would only add to the wonder of this important moment.

But when he reached for his magic, it felt as though something had dried his mind--reached in and crumpled his brain, pulling free the water, drawing it from every pore within his body and... discarding it. He went down abruptly onto his knees, the thunk on rock painfully audible, his subsequent wince a demonstration of the pain it had caused.

He reeled, half-conscious and dizzy, pain spiking through him. Confusion--his thoughts of the beauty of the moment before, of the backfire now--mingled his croaked explanation into one word:

"Magic..."

Pride looked, swaying, up at Mercy, as if pleading with him to understand.

@Mercy

Just like that—the flick of a con artist's wrist, a pickpocket’s sleight of hand—the moment’s awe-inspiring… softness, vanished.

Moonset eyes blowing wide, the pale beast lurched forward to meet Pride’s descent. Brows furrowed deeply with worry, wondering what he'd done before he even confirmed magic to be at fault. Mercy hummed and bobbed his head in careful agreement; not pitying, but fretting in that way of his.

Rather than guide the stag back to his feet, the lion pivoted where he stood, so that when he laid down, they’d be nearly flank-to-flank. Mercy rocked down to his chest, elbows thump!ing against the stone as he did. Spiraling horns arched carefully away while he offered a bracing, maned shoulder.

"Here," he murmured, if a little redundantly, "as long as—whatever you need, I’m here." He said nothing of the newly-formed puddle of water.

Spam posting Sensorial Link now with Dark's permission lol

There, that low-simmering fire—a spark of magic amid the very bottoms of his reservoirs. It greedily drank down the scraps of oxygen it could get, smothered by so much exertion, and it surged and swelled from time to time. Each beat of that loving old heart came with another pang, another pulse; feeling, pushing, begging for a handhold.

All it would take is just the right alignment of parts that were already so smoothly in motion.

Still, nothing.

"What can I do?" Mercy uttered, after a time—once Pride could recover enough to muster a response.

The sensation flickered again, as a yearning to take a part of that misery for himself, to soften the blow as much as one could; instead, it recoiled in misfire, piercing sharp through his own skull. He flinched and stilled like a gun'd been placed squarely between his eyes, or a sword balanced against the arteries of his neck.

He leaned, carefully, against the stag. Not enough to make him bear any of his weight, but... perhaps enough to assure them both.
nevermind. i give up
@Pride

Was their bond not great enough? Did it not broker a symbiotic sort of thought process?

It so desperately wanted to tether itself, weave its delicate hooks into the strings and atoms that made up Pride's being; to join two stars in a binary system—neither larger than the other, yet orbiting in perfect harmony. The bottom of the barrel had been scraped raw, and still yet, the influence lingered in the aged, treated pores.

Was it not meant to be?

Had fate cruelly aligned them to run so perfectly parallel to one another, that they could never find their paths crossing; all that stardust that made up their thought processes never to interlock hands and share?

No, no, the magic had to keep scraping, keep struggling—like it were a skilled set of shaky, aged hands threading a needle. It merely needed the chance…

Pride stirred weakly, blinking foggy eyes. He hadn't passed out, exactly, but after a moment he'd lapped miserably at the water he'd expelled, trying to give it back to himself. He tried to speak, and on the first attempt his tongue was cotton.

He debated briefly, a sort of weary unwillingness to try his magic again flaring up, but the lion's obvious concern reached him--pushing past his rocking exhaustion. His mind flickered, magicka obeying him this time--the magic of the mind always came more easily, regardless. He stretched out tendrils of his thought, touching them to Mercy's mind. "I'm all right," he reassured, but it was half-empty: truth, fact, but not what he felt. He was all right; but he felt like crap.

And so, he amended the thought with honesty: "I just feel like crap. Magic isn't ever cooperative, is it-?" he went on, lifting a dizzy, amused gaze to meet those moonset eyes.

If only he knew.

@Mercy