Oliver'd been hard at work. Frantic, almost.

He'd planted garden after garden--little plots of herbs and useful flowers everywhere he could find dirt. The flowers Vivilene grew--the little pain-dulling poppies and the plants that she called Warmroot--he now had samples of, and was trying to propagate as many as he could.

Yet it felt distant, somehow--it was preparation, not really helping anyone, not yet. He had, then, been keeping an eye out for anyone else that he could find. Anyone he could help.

Sometimes, that desire to aid grew almost manic, and he'd feel the urge fall over the rest of his thoughts like a curtain; and sometimes, he'd wake up somewhere else, the feeling having past, but Oliver unsure quite how he'd gotten there.

For now, he had his little wicker basket--a gift from long ago--and was carefully tucking some of the rich soil from Eridanus into a crack in Polaris's rock. It was one of those cracks the big dragon Raheerah had broken into the earth, he thought--but it'd make a good spot to plant some flowers.

He patted down the seeds, covering them with dirt with a flick of talons, and then pressed his forepaws over them. A glimmer of magic and he'd pulled away, little green sprouts pushing their way up from the soil.

@Lior !

“I didn’t know magic could do that,” A squeaky voice commented. Nearby was what some might recognize as a baby alligator, though Lior resembled more of a small sized lizard than anything else at this stage of their life.

“What’s the point of that? Growing things?” Lior wondered. “I can use my magic to hide. Can you eat plants? Is that why you’re growing them?”

It was a bit rudely worded, not that the hatchling noticed (or cared), but Lior was genuinely curious as to the purpose of this magic and the plants.

But, perhaps Lior wasn’t entirely rude. “I’m Lior, by the way!” They introduced themself with a cheery chirp.

@Oliver

Oliver started a little at the sudden voice, turning and blinking as his gaze found Lior. "Oh--hi! I'm Oliver," he responded, turning and sitting beside his plants.

Almost at once his demeanor was polite, helpful, as if he were there simply to answer Lior's questions. "Magic can do a lot of things! I can bring water or light for the plants, or grow them. And there's a lot of points," he went on, still blinking earnestly. "Some of them I can eat--if I use my magic--and others can eat them, too. Some of these help if you get sick. So I'm growing them to help others!"

He turned, scooting aside further, as if inviting Lior to examine the little sproutlings. A wave of his clawed forelimb, and they began to grow a little higher in fits and starts; they didn't look thick and healthy, but rather a little spindly, but they did grow. Leaves sprouted, blossoms unfurling, the plants rising like weeds.

"Do you know Eridanus-? It's the cave with all the flowers and forest? -There've been fires there, and I want to make sure if there's ever another big fire, that there's more of its plants in other caves. So they don't all die," he explained.

His keen gaze flicked back to Lior, hopeful. "Do you need any help with anything?" he asked, almost eager.

@Lior

“Light?” Lior repeated, a thought occurring to them. “I can hide myself with shadows. Is that the opposite of the kind of magic that makes light?” They weren’t very aware of how their magic worked, only that it did. Lior did want to know, though.

Something else caught their attention as well, and it was enough to have them scurrying closer to examine the plants. “Can plants really help you if you get sick? How does that work?” They stared intently at the growing sprouts. “Can these?”

Lior shook their reptilian head to indicate a negative. ”I don’t think I’ve been there,” The baby alligator informs the bigger gembound. “I guess you must like its plants a lot, to grow them elsewhere.”

At the question regarding help, they puffed up as much as they could. “I can take care of myself,” They proudly reassured Oliver.

But then they paused. “You’re not an alligator, are you?” They inquired doubtfully, leading into a second question. “I’m an alligator, but I don’t know if I’ve seen any others like me around. Have you? I know alligators have a bunch of sharp teeth, like me.” They displayed said sharp teeth by opening their jaw.

While the teeth were relatively tiny because of their own small size, they were indeed plentiful.

@Oliver

Unfortunately for Lior, Oliver's understanding of Light magic was exactly Lior's understanding: dead wrong.

"Yes!" he exclaimed, very incorrectly. "My Dad had shadow, darkness magic. My Mom had light. I have Dad's stone but Mom's magic," he went on. He had no idea, of course, that they were two sides to the same coin--the same element, requiring the same proficiencies to learn and use. So far as he'd been taught, they were very different things; in his mind, they were opposites, after all.

He made an effort to demonstrate his own magic: to form a light that might hover over them. He spoke, as he did so. "I could make a rock or something glow, if you wanted to take it with you--glow forever, to give you a light?" The light he'd formed, meanwhile, flared up in a bright ball of golden white, just sort of bobbing overhead.

But Lior had many questions, and Oliver struggled quickly to change tack and address the next topic. His long snout turned toward the plants as Lior addressed them, and he blinked. "Oh! These red flowers can help with pain. And there's others that'll make you feel better if you eat something bad. Or can make you sleepy if you're too sick to sleep!" He wasn't exactly an alchemist, but he had a few basics down, at least. The 'I take care of myself' prompted Oliver almost to shrink down; he looked like he deflated, a little, disappointed.

"Oh..."

But--ah! Alligators! He knew this one! "I'm not an alligator! But I do know one! His name is Dragon and he lives in Cetus! My mom lives there with him!" he exclaimed. So--maybe he was helping, after all-?

@Lior

“Why do some of us have parents but others don’t?” Lior wondered aloud. It seemed this gembound knew lots of answers, which was good, because this baby alligator always had plenty of questions. ”I don’t have parents,” Lior added.

“No light,” Lior responded hurriedly, then somewhat apologetically explained, “ I won’t be able to hide away in the shadows if I have a light on me, I don’t think.”

Lior studied the red flowers even more intensely as the purpose of these plants was explained. “But- how do they help with pain? And how do those others make you feel better if you eat something bad? How can a plant make you sleepy?” Lior paused very briefly. “And- what do those other plants look like?” They sounded as if they might be useful maybe.

All other questions were quickly forgotten by the last bit, though. “You know an alligator?!” Lior’s squeaky voice exclaimed with delighted surprise. “Do you think he’d want to meet me?” They asked hopefully.

Then a pause. “...Where’s Cetus?”

@Oliver

Lior had many questions, and truth be told, Oliver didn't have all the answers. Why did the plants help? "I dunno" didn't seem like a very good answer. And why did some Gembounds just hatch out of a wall? He'd always assumed they had parents somewhere, but that wasn't possible, was it? He shrugged, a little, feeling unsettled--sad that he couldn't give the child the answers that it wanted. But he buckled down to answering as best he could, nonetheless.

"I'm not sure," he began, "I mean--about the plants, at least. See--a lot of Gembounds hatched a long time ago into the caves, but nobody else was alive, back then. So they don't really know how it all happened or where any of us come from? I think." That was how Black--his father, and one of the first to waken--had described it to him, anyway. "I think maybe they did all have parents, but for some reason it took a really long time for their stones to hatch-? But I don't know why," he added. And that was, at best, a wild guess. "Some of the Masters might know, though," he added, inspiration striking. "They're older and more powerful than any of us, and they know a lot of stuff we don't!"

He took a moment to describe the plants--"Anyway, the ones I use for pain are these," and he gestured to the poppy-looking plants again, "and these bushy plants that have roots that drip white if you cut them. And the ones for helping you if you're sick are little and white--white flowers, I mean," he went on, which didn't really narrow it down but he'd have been hard-pressed to describe them with words alone. There were a lot of similar flowers out there. "They have little yellow bits in the middle?" he suggested, a tad lost in his attempts.

Oh, but Dragon--"Probably? He's nice. He has family--they're called the Children of Rot. Cetus is... um," and here Oliver turned toward Tunnel H. He shuffled to face it, pointing gently with one feathered forelimb. "Do you see that tunnel off that way-?" he asked, glancing to the hatchling. "It's really cold, so you'd need some way to keep warm, maybe. I mean, I could come with you, if you want. But if you go that way, there's two right turns--right's, um, this side," and he turned to face the same way Lior was, gesturing to each of their rights. "Left's this side, so uh--the tunnel has two turns that go right, you take the second one and it goes to Cetus. It's really dark and full of mist and deep water, though. It can be hard to find your way around," he warned. "I think Dragon and the Children mostly live in the deeper area." It was lucky, he reflected, that he'd lived there himself--grown up there for a time, even. Otherwise, he'd never have known all this, because Dragon--and his Children--rarely left the dark cover of their swamp.

@Lior

This was all absolutely fascinating! Lior had no idea there had once been no gembounds in the cave until there suddenly was. Their pale yellow eyes sparkled with intrigued interest. “Who are the Masters?” Lior inquired. The answer of what seemed to have been already given- the masters were powerful and old. “Do they mind questions?”

“...Are they all as old as this big hatching that happened?” They added as the thought occurred to them.

Lior listened intently to the description of the plans, nodding along in understanding. They made a point of memorizing the appearance of the red flowers in particular, since those were the ones they best knew the look of at the moment. But they made a mental note to keep an eye out for the others. “Are all of these from that Eridanus place?” The baby alligator asked.

They turned with excitement in the direction that Oliver was pointing out for the location of the other alligator, this Dragon. Their excitement wilted somewhat at the mention of the cold, before they perked up.

“You look warm,” They spoke, thinking aloud. “Could I like… climb on your back and you could show me the way?” Lior turned hopeful eyes towards Oliver.

@Oliver

Content Warning
This post contains potentially sensitive material:

gore

in black font

Oliver considered. Lior's question was a good one, but it was so general and the Masters, so far as Oliver knew, were each quite unique. He hadn't met that many of them, but Aquarian had been just about food, and Astraea seemed... well. Friendly on the surface, 'will send assassins to kill you after demanding you murder someone' deep down. So-... He struggled to find his answer. "I don't know that many of them," he began, slowly. "But they're older than us all, more powerful. They--own? Or--run? the caves. They, ah--they're more focused on their own goals than on us. But they're each unique. Some might answer your questions? Others might not, I don't know. But be careful with them," he warned.

He hesitated further--he didn't want to detail out the horrors he'd seen for what looked like a new child, though Lior seemed pretty tough. And he didn't want to leave him with just 'be careful,' either. So Oliver took a breath, wincing a little, and said: "They've killed, sometimes. They don't do that always... usually they just talk but-... Yeah. Be careful."

Warning delivered, he glanced to the flowers. "Some are! But some are from a new friend of mine who grows them too, not in Eridanus but really far away."

The request to be carried, though, triggered that deep-seated need to help. And he realized at once that there was a faster, and indeed warmer, way to get Lior where they wanted to go. It would... hurt--hurt Oliver--but who was he to say no?

Fear threatened to grip him, to drive him to paralysis but that blank intensity--that madness that sometimes took him, now--drove it away with that strange refrain. They need help. I can help. I have to do this. They need help-

"Um. I can carry you better in another way, but--turn around, okay? Don't look. And cover your--do you have ears?" He gave Lior a weak, empty smile--his mind, his eyes, were elsewhere--and turned away.

Then--the transformation. Something he hadn't dared do since the first time--the agony of it had driven him back into his gemstone, but a deeper instinct told him that now, it wouldn't. That it'd hurt just a little less. That didn't mean it wouldn't hurt, and when--a moment later--the transformation began, it became clear why he'd asked Lior to look away.

Fur began to tumble free from his skin. His body shrank dramatically, bones popping and twisting, and a hoarse cry of agony escaped the bird-dog's jaws as toenails were pushed from his feet by long and curving talons. He fell to the rock, writhing, as his face shrank down, his snout folding beneath an emerging beak. And his eyes swelled a little, growing large and round. The sound of it all--a mess of cracks and squelches--was overwhelmed by his choked scream; but after another moment it was done.

Oliver was now an owl--far smaller a creature than he'd been just moments before, his chest heaving with weak and rapid breaths, a five foot wingspan splayed out to either side. He lay on his back for a long moment, blinking weakly, his beak clicking. Then his head twisted back to search for Lior. "...Lior?" he asked, past the beak, his voice breathy with fading pain. The agony had passed; he'd been carried through it on the buoyancy of his growing madness, his need to serve. His words came with sharp intakes of breath between them. "I can... carry you, this way. Very-... fast. Just-... let me sit a minute..."

With a weak flap and folding of his wings he came upright, shivering for a moment with his eyes closed, hunched and ruffled on the rock.

@Lior

“Oh,” Lior softly, if still high-pitched, exhaled the sound. It had never occurred to them that a gembound might kill another gembound that had the intelligence to speak. “I’ll be careful,” They tell Oliver sincerely. The idea of murder, of the death of gembounds that were like them, it was frightening. Enough to curb their usual recklessness.

They tried to focus on the change of subject, but the baby alligator was unusually quiet, still stuck on the idea of dying. If they were not as disturbed as they were, they might have asked about this really far away friend. But they remained silent.

In this disoriented state, they easily listened to Oliver’s request. They couldn’t exactly cover their ears, but they could turn around and so they did. When the sound of extreme pain began, though, they desperately wanted to turn around to look and run far away, both.

It was scarier when the sounds stopped, but Lior remained turned away, waiting until the other called out much to their relief. As they turned, they were startled to find the other’s form changed, but more than that, they felt another emotion entirely instead of their usual curiosity. “You’re not dying, are you?” Concerned pale yellow eyes accompanied the worried question.

@Oliver