Shango lounged, looking more cat than anything in that moment: flaccid, furred belly; lazy half-lidded eyes, twitching whiskers and tail. But the folded feet were bird's feet; the scalefeathers that formed his mane and wings and ringed his wrists and ankles and tipped his tail, were very much not feline.

She's not a cat, he was deciding, and turned his attention away from that. She looked like-... a goat, maybe? Or a cave deer. Short, reddish fur, hooves--that was a deer, right?

He shrugged the thought away and settled to licking at the feathers of one foot.

"Families are good," Shango said aloud, not mentioning his rather wandering thoughts. "They're good to... talk to. To teach. Good to-..." He hesitated, head lifting, as he tried and failed to formulate the right words.

Good to have someone, was what he wanted to say--good to have the closeness, the trust that only family shared.

"It is good to have," he settled on, ears flattening back with irritation at his own failure to explain himself with any form of eloquence.

Titanite had, during the brief conversation, shifted his eerie stare to the ground instead of fixing it on Marrow. Claw-branch fingers carved gentle divots in the earth as he listened (if even he were listening). And when Shango finished, he picked up there.

"Mine... I did not know mine," the tree-beast rasped. As he spoke, he cast out his magic in a weak wave: his intention had been to grow a little spread of fungus beneath him. Nothing important--just decorative; but somehow he'd misplaced it, and instead the little white blooms began to crop up along his tree-limbs, rooting in his bark, popping into being all over his shoulders and his head. He didn't seem aware of most of it, though he peered at some upon his hand. "I met them... but I did not... truly know them. It is different... for you, I think." He glanced to Shango, and then slowly shifted, body creaking, to face Marrow.

"I am also from... the cave of bones. I wonder if... they still live there. My... family," he clarified. "Your face-... is it bone?" His rattling voice had taken on the faintest tone of curiosity, one long finger crooking to indicate the stone at Marrow's face. (He didn't seem aware that his finger had sprouted one large, single wart of a mushroom cap.) Titanite's own face was... wooden, really; but hers rather looked like a skull.

He pondered how that might work.

Suddenly, he blinked, all six eyes winking out and then igniting again, his head tilting as he peered at Marrow. "Marrow is... the thing inside... the bones," he observed, and it was said almost like a question.

@Marrow

Though she did not know it, Marrow was the only one out of the three to not have had such a thing as blood—as far as blood relations in the caves, went, anyhow—family. (Though Titanite's hardly counted.) It was a foreign thing, the idea of a nurturing parent, or perhaps even the idea of an older Gembound who stayed by her side. The closest thing she had was probably... the two Gembound from the Sentinels, in her first cycles, though she had hardly stayed close. They were more aquaintances than anything, childhood friends faded as she grew, and although sometimes her mind wandered to them the idea of a companion any more constant than that was alien.

Loneliness, too, was not a thing she thought about often. But it was still there in the back of her mind; Marrow was, despite herself, a social creature. It was times like now that the loneliness rose up like a shallow tide—pricking at her heart, reminding her... reminding her that it was not a constant. That there was such a thing as companionship, as more than bones, if only she could find it.

...would this be it, then? If they stayed together, for—for the kids? For family?

It was a warm thought. And a thought that presented itself in the incline of her head towards Shango, and—was that?—a small, subtle smile. "That does sound good," a warm agreement.

Her cloudy eyes drift to Titanite as she considers everything between them, the literal and the metaphorical. "I... am not certain if I had family," she says. "There were... at my birth... two creatures who met me. One small, sandy, and catlike—one large, dark, and... green-tinted. Like you," she says, unknowing of how true that comparison rings. "But not like the trees. Ah, but we did not stay together for long..."

She brushes the ankle of her hoof along the gem set deep in her face, giving an idle hum of thought. The stone location is... unusual, she's figured, compared to others'. She knows the treebeast has his within its chest, considering where the sliver she'd given magic to had come from... as for Shango, perhaps... the horns? They seem slightly unnatural compared to the rest of him, stone-like... but it is hard to tell with such a fanciful creature. She wonders what child will come of him.

But—back to the treebeast's question. "Ah, close. My stone," she says, tilting her head curiously. She can understand how one would fail to make the distinction; her stone is clear, set deep enough that one could see the bone beneath. Perhaps it is like bone, almost... or perhaps, more like her heart. It is certainly a more vital part of her, she thinks, than even her own skeleton.

The statement—question, perhaps?—statement he gives actually earns something like laughter out of her, faint amusement. "And I live inside my bones, do I not?" She has seen corpses before, of little vicious rats and other things she has snapped up and eaten. The heart between the ribcage, the organs nestled among the ivory; the living, breathing garden, vines upon porous stone.

She had not known, of course, of those things when she was a child. The name had come instinctually, nestled knowledge that she had carried within her since the hatch. But it is, she thinks, a fitting name.

@Shango

Shango listened, offering one jaw-lapping yawn and a few flicks of his tail, but otherwise not interrupting. When Marrow had finished, he studied her, and Titanite, too.

"We can be family," he declared, bluntly. "You can live here. We can live here," he clarified, realizing he didn't actually live next to Titanite and that he'd sort of just invited himself. He flashed the tree-beast a somewhat defiant glance, but Titanite was staring at his mushroom-fingers.

Shango eyed those, for a moment, wondering what he was doing; then he looked at Marrow again. "We can watch the stones. So they stay safe. And we can name them, when they hatch!" he added, suddenly a little bit excited. But then he hesitated, excitement a little tempered, and added a little amendment: "If they don't already have names." Some of his had, in the past.

"My bones live in me," Shango finished, peering at Marrow--"Oh! You mean the cave? ...We live in trees." His energy was nonstop: a low-grade, constant attentiveness; a slight hyperactivity to his every word. He was a sheer opposite to Titanite, who was still gathering his words.

Titanite rumbled something low, like branches grinding together.

"You may live here," he told Shango, and then added--to Marrow--a simple nod.

He prodded a spongy white cap growing off his woodlike finger, and rumbled again.

"I have grown them... on myself," he said, puzzled. But after a moment, it became clear that while they might thrive there, Titanite wouldn't; they were already discoloring and cracking the surface of his 'skin.' He began to tear off caps here and there, letting them fall to litter the dirt.

"I will... help to watch. The stone--is your face," he rasped, turning to study Marrow's face, fascinated. He inhaled slowly, eyeing her over. "Does it... cause you pain..?"

He considered the rest of her words, for a moment. He'd never really met anyone he'd considered close; the hot-blooded, living beings here were fleeting things, bright flashes through his slow and steady life. But she was speaking of things that sparked a faint sense of... familiarity in him. Of--cameraderie?

Of... almost hope, or warmth, that someone might even understand him.

"You grew... lived... alone?" he asked her slowly, his voice again like a wind through rattling twigs.

They always seemed to have... friends. He did not.

Was he not the only one?

@Marrow

Despite every implication pointing to the idea, Marrow is still caught off guard by Shango's sudden declaration of 'family'. That they, together, are family. She supposes she's been so caught up in the idea of the growing stones before them, that family, that she failed to consider that these two, too, would be family.

Does she like that? This concept? There's a difference, between children of stone and shared magic being family, and these two Gembound who, not so long ago, were strangers to her.

But she was a stranger to them, too, was she not? And she was still graciously given a sliver of stone; still accepted into their little bond, to have conversation, to talk. These stones, these children they will raise; they bind them together.

More than that. She thinks… she thinks there's something more, that could bind them as family. Or, well, could be. Could be something more, like the little green spots of sprouts in the dirt.

Family, family, family. She rolls the word around in her head until it takes root, and then, softly, she smiles.

Family.

"I would love to live here," she says, "And be… family." She looks back down at her own magicked stone, takes in the play of dappled light upon its green; it will be a beautiful child indeed which hatches from it.

They'll all be beautiful. All of the children. All of—her, her children? Or perhaps just shared? Either way, they are family.

The thought warms her heart.

Marrow herself seems a midpoint between the two; not with the hyperactive energy of Shango, the catlike urge to bound and leap and speak at rapid speed—but neither the sheer sedateness of the tree, her blood still running hot and her movements still mammalian, if subdued. "I tried to climb a tree, once," she comments. "But I fear I need more practice at it." She'd hardly made it halfway up the trunk before slipping back down. Her deer's hooves are agile, yes, but not all that great for finding purchase in the bark.

She glances over to Titanite. Amusement pricks at the corners of her mouth as she realizes that the mushrooms that had sprouted over the treebeast had, not, from the looks of things, been just something a tree-creature like him did—but rather, a misfire of magic. She supposes she can't fault it; she remembers with some mirth the time she'd attempted to aid a hunt with her magic to command plants and been smacked in the face with a branch for it. Perhaps that particular tree had been temperamental.

"It's painless, thankfully," Marrow replies, thoughtful. "I don't know what it would be like to not have a stone such as this. Perhaps less heavy on the neck." More durable than flesh, she supposes. Vulnerable for it, too, although Marrow has never been in such a situation to have her stone broken and she hopes she never will.

And then his next question comes, and she falls silent, considering. The beast's face, as it is, is not all that expressive, solemn wood and glowing eyes which wink and blink seemingly on a whim. But there's something in his tone, there—a kind of yearning which strikes familiar. A kind of yearning which, perhaps, she knows.

The concept of loneliness, and the concept that, perhaps, one does not have to be so alone after all.

"Yes," she says, "With only my magic for company." And the few vicious rats which lived near her den in Canis, but she didn't count those. Her glossy eyes meet his, knowing. Yes, she thinks. You are not alone.

Perhaps they will not be alone for a long, long time now. Perhaps there will be companionship for both of them, a steady thing instead of the few wavering moments Marrow can recall ever meeting another. There will be children, she knows, and…

…and family.

@Shango

ooc: EDITED you can reply now

"Magic's good, though," Shango interjected, conversationally. He glanced up, eyes half-lidded, at the canopy and with another flick of his tail, tried to summon a casual storm. "I make-... stoooorms," he added, this last word drawn-out and pleased. The air turned cool, the light shadowed, and a mist gathered with a distant rumble; there was no thunder to follow but a drizzle soon began, shifting to a downpour.

The spotted cat seemed pleased with this--and his colors in the dimming light changed, too, taking on gray and bluish hues. His tail kept thwapping on the forest floor.

"So why are you named after the stuff inside the bones?" he asked, curiosity overtaking him.

And as an afterthought, out of nowhere: "Has anyone seen Alf-? It's a kitten. I don't know if it's okay."

He paused, muzzle scrunching up in thought. "It was a kitten," he corrected. That'd been many cycles ago, now. Maybe the thought of 'kids' had brought it back; but Aleph--Alrik--had been a bright, if brief, blip in Shango's past. He remembered a day or two of carting the kid around, gathering crystals for them--showing them the Spire, too.

He'd never seen them again, after that; he hoped they were okay.

Titanite let out a long, slow hiss, and seemed to gradually draw inward, at the downdraught of cold air. The wet that came with it seemed even to dim his lights and still him. He liked light, warmth; rain was good, but Shango's was always so sudden and comparatively cold.

"Too much... storm," he responded with a rattle.

It took him a moment, as he picked free the last of the fungus, to turn his mind back to Marrow's answer. He had to think it over: no pain. That was good. No pain was good. -Yes? "It is good... there is no pain," he rasped, sitting back against the dampening soil. His branching body began to glow more brightly, the soft green that lived within his chest spreading to ignite, in gentle illumination, all the spaces between the gaps in his woody exoskeleton. It was as though little green wisps danced along his limbs--not enough to give off all that much light, but it was something, at the very least.

"I grew... alone... but with the trees. With... plants. Flowers." Mushrooms, he thought, glancing down at the remnant scraps of traitorous fungus that he'd torn away. His gaze then shifted, gradually, back to Marrow.

"It is... quiet... that way. It is... good for thinking. But I thought... it was only... I who lived that way. Alone... slow. You were--alone. With your magic, with--bones... too?" He was mostly just repeating what she had said already: but the thoughts were only now percolating up through his consciousness, solidifying into knowledge, into memory. It was as though his repetition of them somehow made them firmer in his half-absent thoughts. With that came questions, and he struggled to form those into words. He took a slow and wheezing breath before speaking. "It was... because I am... different, I thought. I was... I am... slower. I think slowly," he admitted, though he didn't see that, really, as a bad thing. He just took his time. He could be blindingly fast physically, if he had to be--but he didn't like to be. "So it was... time to think, alone. But sometimes..." -and here it was, the part where he tried to find the right words: "It felt... empty."

One clawed hand gestured at the jungle leaves around him, bobbing and sweeping in the wind of Shango's rain. "Like... a space... where others should have been."

How did one define 'loneliness'? When it was a term he didn't really know?

He looked to Marrow, wondering if she understood--almost beseeching her to. "...Did you... have the same?" he asked.

And do you still?

@Marrow

Magic is good, Marrow can agree that much, with the small, subdued tilt of her head that counts for her as a nod. Magic is good indeed—common in the caves as it is, she has never lost her love for it, nor her wonder for it. There is always something new to discover when it comes to the magic exoteric to the caves. There will always be something new to discover about magic, Marrow thinks, no matter how long she lives.

But it is a small comfort compared to the presence of other Gembound. Marrow is a social creature despite herself; she can content herself with the bones, with the plants for a time, but without distractions her mind will always wander back to the longing for another soul beside her.

And then the rain begins to roll in, and Marrow's eyes flick to Shango, curious. Storms... was that really his doing? To spark the weather in the cave? It seems too long-reaching for one caster to work—and yet...

Oh, but she wants to know more about magic like that.

Soon. Some other time, perhaps; aren't they bound together by child, now? Family? She will have all the time in the world to talk to him of things such as magic... won't she?

Marrow does not mind the cold rain which begins to sprinkle at her pelt. The humidity itself is a welcome change; Canis is always so dry. But it seems that others are not of the same opinion; and as Titanite shrinks away from the rain Marrow reaches out with magic of her own, asking gently for nearby foliage to please perhaps lend the tree-beast some cover?

The magic flows well, strong, steady; the nearby trees listen as they bend to shelter the tree-beast, and Marrow hums to herself in surprise. Volatile as the magic is, as that spell could be... perhaps they simply favor the tree-beast. More willing to listen to her on that regard, maybe.

She does not mind the way Titanite speaks. There's something about it... the soothing repetition, the slow retracing of thoughts already spoken, that makes her feel more grounded herself. Sometimes Marrow feels as if she will drift away from reality itself, some days; to float out of her body, an untethered spirit... but with the rain, the coolness, the rising smell of petrichor and the rumbling, creaking sound of Titanite's voice, she feels almost... balanced. At home.

Is this what the absence of loneliness is?

"Magic, the bones... tireless companions, both," she says, her eyes lingering on his glow. (Beautiful.) "I am... strange, to some Gembound, I think. And I thought... with myself as a complement... perhaps, I did not need company."

A quiet shake of the head. "I was wrong. Over time, when I had time to myself, to think... I found myself wanting to speak with others. To have—someone other than myself and the bones to hear my voice. To have my existence acknowledged.

It was... it was an emptiness, yes. Of the harshest kind. I was able to distract myself from it, at times, but it was always... always there. Always with me, as constant a companion as the bones, as my magic. I..."

A slight waver of her voice. "...I am grateful you—both of you—allowed me to come up as I did. To share magic and stone... to be... family."

@Titanite
;fade to black

"It's cool," Shango said, a sort of half-asleep acknowledgment of Marrow's gratitude. For the rest, he stayed silent. As Titanite spoke--as she spoke--his head drifted to his paws, tail gently twitching as the rain dappled his already-spotted pelt with patches of wet.

He lifted his head once more--to yawn, widely, saber teeth gleaming yellow in the dimmed light. He then glanced to Marrow, shaking his scalefeather mane briefly to shed water in a spray. "We should teach each other stuff," he decided--what that meant, he didn't elaborate. But he was thinking about magic, about one anothers' histories. Maybe they could learn about each other- "But later."

For now, his head drifted back to his paws, and from then, he stayed silent, ghostlight eyes slipping shut.

exit Shango