Shango, as so often happened, was bored. He was making his way through the jungle, pushing past rain-soaked leaves; the pattering of drops had stopped and he was looking for something new to do.

Titanite--a creature he had met quite some time ago, and who he occasionally spent time with (purely to pass said time, really)--was somewhere near here. He picked up one foot, flicked the rain from his talons, and pressed on.

"TITANITE?" he yowled, his voice hoarsely echoing into the trees. He lifted his head, ears swivelling this way and that, nose working the light wind--and finally, he caught the scent.

It wasn't easy; Titanite smelled, on the best of days, suspiciously like a tree himself. But he always had a very faint musk to him, and a clinging odor of musty, mossy bits, and flower, which when taken all together made him at least a little find-able when someone knew him well.

Shango made his way, grumbling and head held low, to the odor's source. Titanite was kneeling, its branched feet in the dirt, and it was holding a gemstone in its fist--one Shango didn't recognize. He spared it a disinterested glance, and gave Titanite a brief and irritated hiss.

"I was calling you," he snapped, sullenly. He made his way over nonetheless, settling in to sit alongside his friend (acquaintance, really; but Shango wasn't any more socially adept than Titanite was, so he didn't really know that).

There he lounged, sitting idly, tail flicking behind him. When Titanite didn't answer straightaway, Shango turned to complaining: "I'm bored."

Titanite was knelt in the dirt, a large chunk of Oilstone in his talon-branched hand. He'd found the thing quite by accident, plucked it from the dirt, picked debris from it, and carried it around with him for the last three days.

He ignored Shango for the moment; the smaller creature had always been impatient, fickle as his storms, and impulsive. Titanite was not the sort to let that bother him, and so he answered only when he was ready. "I found..." and he held it up, turning to blink all of his eyes slowly at Shango, "...this."

It reminded him, he thought, of Vargas. Vargas had only visited him a scant few times, but the Leviathan had taken a keen interest in him; and the stone at his hip was just like this, a deep and sinister violet-black with iridescent shimmers of purple and green. He wondered, perhaps, if Vargas had died; or if this were some relative of his.

Then he turned the stone back toward himself again, blinking at it.

He cast his other hand over it, overly-long branched fingers trailing a shimmer of green in their wake. Then he set the stone gently down, and began to cover it with a thin layer of dirt.

Shango flopped to his belly, wings folded haphazardly across his back so that their scalefeathered edges trailed in the wet dirt. He watched, sidelong, as Titanite showed him the stone, and then... planted it?

"You don't PLANT them!" he exclaimed, blinking. And Shango had made a few kids in his day; he knew! He knew you didn't plant those!

He came upright, and quickly moved to uncover the poor Oilstone. "Don't bury it! They aren't plants, Titanite! Then it has to dig out and maybe it just dies! That's stupid!" The inner father in him was emerging, alarmed, concerned. He sat back down, and sighed, staring at Titanite--who was peering at him, hands held midair and motionless. "...What?" he snapped, his tone demanding. "You don't!"

He huffed, and looked away, tail twitching now with irritation. But it was occurring to him that maybe some kids weren't all that bad an idea, and he looked back to Titanite with eyes narrowing in thought. He'd always liked being a father; Atropos was now grown, and had--in the way of so much of his family--mostly wandered off. Ivory visited a lot, but she wasn't a kid anymore; it just wasn't the same.

...But he couldn't just ask Titanite for that, could he? Just--ask him to make a kid?

"Can you give me some rock, so I can make a kid?" he said, bluntly, his mouth outrunning his brain. He blinked.

And for once, some measure of common sense caught up with him. "I'm--I've been lonely! Bored. I miss having kids." Then he hesitated; was that a weird thing to ask..?

The smaller, warmer beings, he never really understood. Shango was perhaps the worst offender, in some sense--that impulsive nature made him very hard for Titanite to predict, or even read. It wasn't that he minded; the company of these other creatures was often a faint amusement for him, a sort of comfort. Something he indulged, pleased at their presence.

But when Shango uncovered his carefully-planted rock, he turned and stared.

"...Ruuude," he breathed, his voice like a wind through the trees. Then he looked back down at the Oilstone again.

When his mind caught up, Shango was asking him for children; Titanite internally shrugged. He'd had no plans otherwise, and any sense of romance that some might ascribe to the act, or any sense of bonds they might find necessary, he did not. He had made a child once before, and it had gone before he'd known it well; perhaps it might be nice to have one that... lingered.

It was--though he didn't realize it--an age before he answered. "...Very well," he rasped, and slowly lifted one branched set of fingers to the thick, moss-like beard that hung down across his chest. He parted these fibrous strands and held there, for a moment, focusing on his stone. "...But I wish... to know them."

It took time; the energy was already fading from him, and he could feel the strain as the sliver of green stone pushed its way forth from his bark-like chest. He grunted--it hurt--and then, a moment later, he was holding the little piece out to Shango in his hand.

Perhaps the voice of another Gembound yelling at top volume about 'rocks' and 'kids' would attract attention.

And in this case, it did—the drifting figure of one deer, wandering through Eridanus for… no reason in particular, really. Marrow liked the plants here. She liked many plants—all plants, even—but the ones in Eridanus were the most numerous and vibrant. Certainly a far cry from her home cave of Canis, as much as she enjoyed it.

But—back to the subject of children. (And rocks.)

"Excuse me?" she asked, soft voice cutting through the background buzz and hum of the jungle. "I heard you shouting."

She didn't think it was a distressed kind of shout, per se… but when you heard someone yelling in the middle of the forest, you did tend to go and wander over to see what in the caves the whole thing was about.

She almost didn't notice Titanite, still as the living tree was. He blended in with the jungle abounding, and really the only reason her eyes caught upon the Gembound at all was because of the glow of his four eyes.

But once her eyes locked upon the tree-beast, she couldn't look away.

Oh.

All skeletal form and glowing insides; like fireflies filling up the husk of a shell, and Marrow couldn't help but wonder who created such a creature. Someone had to have created him, right? Like the bones she had played at cobbling together into animated form—but those would never truly become sentient. 'Children', to her, sure, but child in the way a pet would be.

Perhaps she would not have thought of it in any other instance. But the subject of children has already been brought up, and Marrow looks at the stone grasped in his driftwood hands and feels something like longing tug at her heartstrings.

"You have a beautiful form, tree-beast," she breathes. "If you are already making children… I would not mind giving life to your stone… for another?"

If it doesn't mind, of course.

@Titanite

Shango turned toward the newcomer, studying her briefly.

"Hey," he said at last, casual. "You have a rock-face. Like my daughter."

Questionable introduction complete (and it wans't clear if he was blunt, overly reticent, or something else entirely) Shango turned back toward the sliver of Titanite he'd taken into his own bird's talons. He examined it closely, almost reverently, before backing up a bit--giving some clear space between the Oilstone already planted, and himself.

Then he focused, green eyes glowing intently.

There we go, he thought, feeling as his magic took hold--and he set the gleaming green gemstone carefully into the dirt.

He didn't cover his, though.

He wasn't stupid, or something.

Titanite looked, too, toward the stranger.

He hesitated only briefly--it was a stranger, after all, and some part of him was vaguely loathe to simply give something so precious away. But it wasn't a strong feeling; and "precious" was rather relative. He didn't think about doting on children, about having a close family, really; these thoughts came and went in his long, empty hours staring into the forests as his mind wandered.

So a moment later, Titanite had pushed up--and shuffled toward Marrow, each step a creaking sigh. He came to a halt just before her, and again raised a hand to his chest, concentrating. It came with a little less pain, this time, and his power seemed to rush from him as though it'd given up trying to conserve itself: the last of it faded into the stone, and he could feel, instinctively, that it would be some time before he could create another.

"This... may be... my last."

This was his greeting--without even introduction--as he tried first to hand Marrow the small chunk of stone and then (realizing she had no hands), setting it gently down before her on the dirt.

@Marrow

Oh, right. There's another Gembound here.

Marrow's eyes flick to the other present curiously, taking his form in. It's strange, she thinks—he's not like any one animal she's ever seen before. A hybrid, of course, but of what…? Some kind of cat? But there's bird in there as well, and he has spines, and horns…?

Then again, these caves are full of strange and marvelous creatures. She shouldn't be surprised. It's simply that he feels… almost recognizable as something she's seen before, and it catches her attention more than most other strange creatures do.

She does wonder who his daughter is. Marrow herself certainly doesn't remember seeing anyone with a similar stone placement as her around the caves…

…then again, it's hardly relevant right now. The atmosphere feels less welcome for casual conversation and more a serene kind of silence. Respect, perhaps, to the stones set to growing. Already, she counts two; hers, she realizes, will be the third.

A trio of children. She likes that.

A brief nod to the winged one to acknowledge his speech; and back to the tree. It moves as slow as nature does, as plants grasped in her magic; a gradual kind of thing, like growth, and she wonders at the creaking fluidity of such a creature. Who made this? Who could have made someone like him? She wishes to meet them.

But, ah—that's an impossible future, lost in hazy mist, and she wonders at it no longer. Instead she focuses on the present, and the quiet words of the treebound before her.

"I am honored," she says, tilting her head down both in respect to the Gembound and to get closer to the stone before her.

Hello, little one, she thinks, admiring its pretty green hues. You will be beautiful.

And alive, and thinking, and so much more than any of her constructs would ever be, if she has her way with things.

She touches her nose to the stone and lets her magic flow.

@Shango

Shango glanced up, looking at the strange deer, and at Titanite just... staring at her.

"...I'm Shango," he said, at last, and gestured to Titanite. "Titanite is... friend." He'd come a long way from his speech patterns many cycles ago, really--when he'd just sort of yelled words without any connection between them--but now and then he slipped up, just a little.

He didn't care, though.

He stretched, yawned, and paced over near his stone, circling it several times before curling up around it.

"Where did you come from? Will we all raise them? Will they be, family?" This third question held a brief, odd pause, as if he'd had to search for that word.

Or maybe as though it was a strange thought--a deer, a weird tree-thing, and a spiky hybrid raising kids together. Not that he wanted that. Pfft, not him.

...It would be kinda nice, though.

we can fade here? or rp some, idm! I'm going to bed now though lol - (and titanite's just staring atm)

@Marrow

The magic which flows into the stone—her stone, now, her stone—is unexpected. Not for its effects, per se. There isn't much of an effect at all, at least not one that Marrow can see. But she does feel something. She feels a lot of a thing. Her magic flows out from her in an unexpected way, like a kick to the chest; she feels it not in her magicka, not in her reservoir, but in something deeper. Her soul, perhaps.

It is a piece of her which has been drawn out from her, she knows. It has been drawn out into the stone with a smoothness, like a flowing river, but it's still a strange sort of absence. She understands the tree-beast's words now; she thinks she still has the energy for perhaps one or two more casts, she knows, if she had the inclination, but the thought of going any further fills her with a kind of instinctive wariness.

It's all so fascinating. Is it like this for everyone else? How many others like them have made stone-children? Perhaps it would be a personal sort of topic to go around asking her fellow Gembound about, but, still, the questions leap to her tongue.

Deed done, she settles to the ground, tucking her hooves beneath her as she lays on the leaf-litter and glances back at her fellow… Gembound? 'Gembound' seems too impersonal a title, now. But she is hardly known to them in any case, hardly knows them, so anything else also rings just a little bit off.

Perhaps she will figure something out in time. For now, she locks eyes with the treebeast; curious thing that he is, he's seemed to have settled back, but his gleaming eyes are still locked upon Marrow and she looks back with equal interest. The novelty of his form has not yet faded. She wonders if it ever will.

And to the other, the—hybrid. His voice catches her attention.

"Marrow," she introduces herself as, her voice dulcet as always. "I come from the cave of bones."

Bones she was hatched in, and bone she will forever be, and bone she will return from. Marrow has wandered, often, but always her path has taken her back to that fateful cave. Although—thinking of it, she does wonder if she will stay there now that there is a stone growing before her. Canis is wonderful, and she will take her child there when they hatch, she knows, but it is also… barren. Not quite right, especially for this Gembound who will be a synthesis of both plant and flesh. No, the flourishing jungle around them seems much better a place for one such as they.

And that leads back to Shango's questions. What will they do with the stones? Marrow… for hers, she intends to act as mentor. A guiding hoof in whatever they choose to do. But as for the other two…?

Well, they are not of her magic. But these are still the ones she has given life among, and the one who had let her so generously have this piece of stone in the first place, and she feels a certain sense of kinship between them. Kinship, that, perhaps, could be nurtured, instead of being a fleeting encounter as she had initially expecting.

"...I have never had… family, before," she says, the word also faltering on her tongue. "But… I am not opposed to the thought."

Her little green stone seems barren in the dark earth before her. Absentmindedly as she speaks, Marrow wills a few sprouts to spring up around the small thing. The magic slips from her, but she doesn't mind much; her attention is divided, anyhow. There will be more time for that later.

@Shango
apologies for the delay, i'd be down for more RP!