Tagged M for mature language!
@Akshayaa

After his unpleasant encounter with the tasmanian devil, Bartos did the only thing he could think of that would make himself feel better and forget. He had clambered back up to his cliffside home - the ledge that hovered no more than a dozen meters above the ground - and sat down to start working on something else. He'd gathered a few rocks in his bag on the way, and now he was hard at work studying the properties of one chunk of cement in particular. The compound was composed of a dried mud substance with several smaller pieces embedded in the rock; some of them were just different coloured igneous rocks, others held the gleaming crystal lattices of gemstones. Some of them even looked like his own, or the gems that belonged to other Gembounds. He couldn't tell.

The cat had happily dismissed the events from a couple hours ago. The nest he'd made was comprised of fronds of dry grass and a few old, stiff cloths that had eased up after being dropped in water. Now, Bartos lay on his back, his hind legs kicked up over the edge of the depression in the rock that held his nest. His long, fluffy tail curled over the edge and he clutched the chunk of cement in his front paws, examining it closely. He had noticed that it held many different types of rock, but those details were merely superficial. What about on the inside? Was it different there? Curious, Bartos closed his eyes and tried to summon his magic.

Post-Roll Edit:
Unfortunately, nothing came of the small surge of energy he felt rippling outward from the blue benitoite in his chest. Bartos frowned, but he was too determined to give up now. The cat huffed and rolled out of his nest, tumbling the rock out and onto the floor beside him. Bartos danced on his toes, grabbing the rock and slipping towards the ledge. Without a second look he tossed the rock over, expecting it to hit the ground and crack in half.

It had been just a few hours since Akshayaa’s run in with the cat, whose name she still didn’t know because she hadn’t been paying attention when he’d said it. All she knew was that he was super irritating and had gotten her all wet and she wanted nothing to do with him. But even as she thought these things, her conscience came in and interrupted her. She’d been a total bitch. She knew that, she just didn’t want to admit it. She’d gone off and found some insects crawling around in the crevices of some ruins and eaten until she couldn’t eat anymore. Insects weren’t exactly her favorite. They were crunchy, which was a nice mouth-feel by itself, but… some of them like… exploded in her mouth when she bit into them and that was disgusting.

She was thinking about all this as she wandered along, aimlessly walking towards some cliffs she had seen from a distance. Now that she wasn’t thirsty or hungry anymore, her fear of finding her way back to Eridanus had left her for now.

------ WHAT THE FUCK! On instinct, she had jumped back, not even knowing what the hell it was that had come crashing down right next to her face! Her heart was pounding, and she suddenly, for some reason, could tell that there was another Gembound near her, up on the cliff. And he/she seemed… familiar? She only knew like three people, so who—Oh by the Cave. It was that cat. Well fuck. Wait. Had he just tried to MURDUR HER? What the fucking hell?

“Hey!” she shouted up to him angrily. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Are you trying to kill me? Get down here so I can beat the shit outta you!”

Bartos hadn't even stopped to take a gander down at the ground below his cliffside home; after tossing the rock over the edge, he leaned back and scratched just under his ear with his hind leg extended, a goofy grin extended upon his maw as he soothed the itch that had suddenly irritated his skin. Sure enough, he heard the rock shatter, crumbling upon hitting the earth. Shortly following that, an angry voice rang up from the ground below, startling Bartos such that he jumped up, fur all standing on end. The voice was painfully familiar, and it was with great disdain that the cat slowly crawled over to the edge, peeking over to spy the creature that shouted at him from below. It was her. The little devil that he'd escaped earlier. What was she doing meandering about below his cliff? Didn't she know any better?

"Uh... no thanks!" Bartos called sheepishly, pinning back his ears as he shrunk against the ground, just barely visible from over the ledge. He didn't honestly think that she could beat him up, considering how small she was - then again, she was really mad. He merely stared at her wide-eyed from his perch, tail flip-flopping behind him in anticipation and mild fear. Now how was he gonna get that rock?

@Akshayaa

Aksha was so angry she was seeing red. And when he refused to come down to “greet” her, she only became angrier. She didn’t know why she expected him to comply when all she wanted to do was beat him up. Why would anyone ever comply with something like that? But she wasn’t thinking straight, so logic was meaningless to her right now. “What’s the big idea chucking rocks down here without looking first?” she shouted up at him. “What if it had hit me? I could have literally died. By the Cave, do you have no common sense? Fucking look first. Stones*!”

She peered up at the cat, annoyed that he was so barely visible. “What are you even doing up there, anyways? Waiting for innocent bystanders to walk by to use as target practice?” Her anger had left her a little, since she realized he was out of reach and wasn’t coming down. And she was too lazy to come up to him just to get into a fight she was gonna lose. But she was still pissed at him, so she stayed where she was, hoping to make herself feel better by continuing to yell at him.

*said as an expletive, like, “Jesus/Jesus Christ!”

She started to yell at him again, causing Bartos to shrink even further against the cliff. It wasn't fair that she was yelling at him! He didn't know that she was there - she shouldn't have been walking right along the edge of the cliff anyways. It wasn't as if other rocks didn't fall off the cliffs either; she should have known better. Right?! Despite berating him, once she had fallen silent again Bartos began to inch forward, preparing a comeback - until she started right back up again, yelling at him about something else entirely. "Uhh, I live here." He answered matter-of-factly, gesturing with his paw at the alcove in the wall, though she probably couldn't see it from all the way down there. "Besides, you shouldn't have been walking there! Rocks fall all the time." The cat rolled his eyes and again shot a response down at the tasmanian devil, as if it was totally common knowledge. It should've been, at least.

"You'd know that if- if you weren't so dumb, maybe." Bartos said thoughtfully, clearly unaware of the impact that his words could have on the already fuming critter below. He was just stating the obvious, after all - it had become evident that he was much smarter than her. If she was as smart as him, she wouldn't be getting mad all the time.

@Akshayaa

“Oh-ho-ho-ho!” she yelled up at him. So she was dumb, was she? “Oh, I see how it is? You think you’re so smart! Man, you may have book smarts, but you have no common sense! Sure, let’s fling a fucking rock off a cliff even though, gee, other Gembounds live in this area too!” she said, sarcastically. “They’ll be okay! Being brained by a rock won’t hurt anyone any!” She glared up at the little bit of the cat she could see. “And you call me dumb.”

And once again, Aksha had distracted herself with more questions. “Why did you choose to live way up there? I think I’d be terrified to live somewhere so high off the ground. What if you fell?” She was showing her hypocrisy now – her anger at the cat, yet motherly sort of concern for him at the same time. She was a female, after all. Even little girls had maternal instincts. Although hers were a little… muddled by the rest of her emotions. It was like she had been born with a chip on her shoulder or something. Nothing ever went right for her. She was always fighting or running or in pain… It sucked, and she didn’t know why it happened.

She didn’t know she brought in on herself.

By now, Bartos felt comfortable enough with her being down there and him being up here that he had relaxed on the ledge, sliding onto his stomach and folding one paw over the other while he stared down at her. There was no way she could threaten him from down there - and if she decided to come running up the path to get him, Bartos would have ample time to flee, or maybe he could try to use his magic to cause a rock slide and knock her down again. That would teach her, wouldn't it? He only twisted her ears as she laughed, quirking a brow as she continued to go on about throwing rocks down and how it was stupid, even though he still thought that she was just as dumb for not expecting there to be falling rocks on a cliff side, where rocks fell all the time, according to Bartos, who was always right and never wrong because he was definitely smarter than her.

"Maybe you shoulda been lookin' where you were goin' then." Bartos once more rolled his eyes, dodging the fact that - yea, it was a little brainless of him to throw a rock off the edge without looking, but he maintained that she really shouldn't have been there in the first place. More angry questions were thrown up at him, only they weren't angry - maybe they were a little - and more curious or worried, which was strange. The cat definitely didn't understand this sudden change in temperament, and so he cast a look of utmost confusion down at the tasmanian devil before delivering a rather algid response. "Well you aren't the one living here, I am." He snorted.

But then came the unnecessary and yet totally necessary at the same time explanation. "I was born here, and its where I keep all my treasures, and its where my brother was born too, so I live here because its home. If you don't like it, you can go away and let me continue throwing rocks off the edge in peace." Bartos huffed. He was getting antsy about that shattered rock now.

@Akshayaa

The Devil was curious now, craning her neck up at the cat. She was about to ask some more questions, but the crick in her neck was suddenly killing her! She let out a groan and then sank to the ground and rolled onto her back so that she could look up at him without hurting herself. It seemed they were having some kind of conversation, so she saw no issue with getting comfortable.

“You have a brother?” she called up to him. “And… since I know you weren’t actually trying to kill me, why did you throw that rock off the ledge? I thought you said you collected them or something? Was this one just not worth it?” She glanced over at the offending rock, noticing that it had shattered upon impact with the ground. There didn’t seem to be anything interesting about it… But, then again, rocks were not interesting to her in general.

She didn’t have much else to say, instead waiting for the cat to reply to her questions. In truth, she was being a little odd, and a little rude, staying when she clearly wasn’t wanted, but she had no knowledge of such things as overstaying one’s welcome. This was free space, wasn’t it? She could go where she pleased. And, in her own strange way, having arguments with others was her way of making friends. She subconsciously tested the boundaries of those she came across. The Gembounds who could put up with her bullshit were the ones she counted among her friends.

“I’m Aksha, by the way,” she added as an afterthought, raising her voice a little so he could hear her. “Well. My full name is Akshayaa but you can call me Aksha.”

For some reason the tasmanian devil below decided to make herself comfortable, as if they were actually going to have a conversation across the length of the cliff wall. He furrowed his brow and twitched his whiskers both in curiosity and concern, leaning over further to stare down at her further. When prompted about his brother, the cat made to say something only to remain silent. He actually hadn't seen Faelon in a while, and he felt a sense of guilt over the possibility that his brother might be lost. Or maybe he'd been driven away by Bartos' antisocial behavior when working on his rocks.

Thankfully she took his attention away from that when she asked why he had lobbed the rock over the edge. Bartos narrowed his eyes slightly. Should he tell her? What if she ruined his plans by stealing the shattered remnants of the cement block? "What! No rock is ever not worth it." He answered with a roll of his eyes, truly shocked to hear her even suggest such an idea. "I wanted to see what was inside." Well, even if he'd wanted to keep the answer from her, it was too late now.

He flip-flopped his tail behind him and cupped his ears forward. Aksha. Finally, a name for the little devil that had been giving him hell this whole time. "I already told you my name." Bartos answered stubbornly. Of course, if prompted he'd repeat it - Bartos couldn't really keep up an angry charade for long. To be quite honest, he lacked the capacity to even remember why he was mad in the first place.

@Akshayaa

Well this cat certainly was obsessed with his rocks, wasn’t he? Aksha smirked up at him in amusement as he went on about how no rock was not worth it. Hm. He’d wanted to see what was inside? She turned onto her side to look at the thing, which had shattered and was lying in pieces next to her. There didn’t seem to be anything at all interesting about the grey rock. There wasn’t anything colorful or sparkly inside. She called up to him, “Uhhh, I don’t know what you were looking or hoping for, but the inside looks just as grey and boring as the outside.”

She rolled onto her back again as she tried to remember his name. “Uhhhhhh…” she drawled out, mouth hanging open. She looked hilarious and dumb, or at least she would have looked that way to herself if she could see how she was lying there on her back with her mouth hanging open, staring off into space as she attempted to remember something. “Nnnnope. I don’t remember your name. But then again I have a terrible memory. So, sorry…? But, you know, whatever. I can just call you Rock Guy.” She gave a short laugh. “What was your actual name again?”