She was up to her hocks in mud.

It would not, she knew, bode well for the thick and feathery fur around her ankles. No: it would take a day to even dry out, another to flake away... or she could soak them, she supposed. But the mud over here was always frustratingly thick.

It was not the first time Kai had gotten absolutely filthy in the pursuit of a plant that had caught her interest, and she wasn't even sure this one was particularly worth it. Not... to say that any plant wasn't worth a little mud, of course, but some were new and exotic and rare. Others just looked that way, from a distance, until she got a little closer. And then--well. She would get up to them, and feel the familiar huff of disappointment sigh from her beak. She would click it, a tsk tsk in owlish form, and stalk back away again.

She just had to hope that this one--it sort of looked like a purple pitcher plant--would be new enough to warrant all the muddy fur.

A long and careful few steps up a rolling hill (feeling carefully for rocky footing beneath the moss) and Kai had come to a little crest just below the strange new plant. From here she could now see that it was something new: fat and pale at the bottom, bright green at the top, a--wait-

...Are those eyes?

Kai froze for a beat, her instinct to jerk away and her curiosity warring to a momentary standstill. But then the pitcher plant decided things for her: it picked itself up and walked away.

She stared blankly after it, dripping mud, her beak hanging slack. "-Wait--what are you?!" she called after it, and broke into a few stumbling leaps. But it was gone into one of the little alcoves among the lichen, vanished, and she was left confused, filthy, and very much alone.

anyone is welcome to join!

Veil had not really lost the child-like curiosity and wonder at everything around it, he had been prodding at really everything there was to prod at. from the starry ceiling of orion to here, the damp stones and lush mosses of Pisces.

now, he too noticed the mud, and it was also not a favorable feeling, but there was a dull sense of fun to be had with the aimless slithering and squirming that can be done in a puddle of it, cooling the skin and scales.

Veil perked up at the noise. from its spot in the cave, dark and wet, it could see the deer-owl-beast (dowl beast?) chasing what looked to be a plant, scittering from his spot to get a better look. such interest, for this one! another creature! the plant had simply moved away, Kai distressed and attempting to follow.

as it moved closer, his eyes focused on Kai, every single one, glowing from the cracks in the dark.

"does it chase? what does it see? what does the dowl-beast see?" he spoke, voice near giddy yet still somehow quiet.

"does it see? does it see the void?? does it hear it?"

@Kai

It took Kai a moment to shift her focus: from the hole the plant had vanished into (why??) to the wall and its dark crevices.

Dark crevices now ignited with dim white spots.

She stumbled backward, emerald eyes widening, and one could have been forgiven for thinking they heard a softly-muttered swear of confusion. She fell back on her haunches as Veil skittered closer, as she heard a twisting voice shiver out of the cracks in the wall.

Kai stayed there, for a moment. Her rump in the wet moss, her forequarters still upright, her eyes staring in frightened surprise into the shadows of the wall. Whatever was in there--moving--it was big, but her brain just couldn't parse what she was seeing. But-... it was talking, at least. Even if it didn't make sense to her; but then again, not everything other Gembounds said often did. And... she wanted company. She did.

She just wasn't very good at it.

The owldeer cleared her throat, and made a valiant, tremulous attempt at conversation. "Um," was her first contribution.

This was followed by a long moment's silence as she reconsidered her approach.

"...No?" This was a hazarded guess, and she glanced uncertainly after the plant. Who was 'it?' What was the void? What was a dowl-beast?!

Hearing the void, too, sounded distinctly like something she wouldn't want to do.

As she stared into the dark, she realized that she was seeing--a face? Something pale, lit by the glowing... spots? Eyes? What are those-? Fear was met by curiosity, now, and she studied it. It had... antlers? And was the face a gemstone?! She couldn't tell from here. But... That did remind her, vaguely, of a description she'd once been given.

"...Are you Astraea?" she tried, still sitting in the moss.

Kai's second guess of the evening was no better than her first.

@Veil

Veil looked, letting out what could be considered a worried trill. he crawled, carefully, from the shadows, slinking down the stone to stare down at Kai.

"it hears it! it hears the void, it speaks to it!" he almost cooed, oh he hasn't spoken to another in so long!! "does it startle? what does it fear? what do- what do you fear?" he asked. yes, refer to others as "you", the death horse taught him that, its polite. "the void speaks to you!"

he tilted his head. astraea? was he astraea? he'd never been called astraea before, so he was going to go with no.

"no, no, no, it is not astraea! i am the void. the darkness and blackness and a veil! it is veil!" he replied, tilting his head curiously, scooting closer to inspect further. "is it astraea? is the dowl-beast astraea? are you, are you?" he said, hopefully clarifying the dowl-beast was supposed to be kai.

"what do you seek? does it chase?"

@Kai

Kai was just considering standing back up again--was, in fact, just starting to push upward from her haunches--when the shadows detached from the wall and descended.

Slowly, she sat back down.

This thing was huge, and she stared in pensive silence as it approached. Its shoulder alone was taller than the top of her head, and it slinked... and it was black and covered in eyes. It was hard to look at Veil and think, "ah! a new friend!"

Kai tried. She closed her beak and tried to remind herself that this Veil was speaking to her. Introducing itself... sort of? She'd spent a long time alone, but she was pretty sure this speech wasn't how people normally talked.

But not... entirely sure.

She took a breath, and pushed herself upright properly, pushing back her fear. "Ahh... I was for a little while. Now I am Kai," she explained. She didn't answer the 'fear' thing. It didn't seem wise to admit that she was frightened of the enormous creature crawling toward her. "Do you have a name?" she tried. "...Ah, Void, maybe? The Veil?"

She paused.

She could explain what she'd heard of Astraea, but it had been so long ago that she wasn't sure she remembered it all, or that it'd even make sense. "I used to be Astraea" hadn't even made sense. Well--it did to her, but that was neither here nor there. "I was... ahh, seeking-" (the muddy owl-deer turned, nodding delicately for the hole--she tried again to see it, but her magic faded before it even became a trickle) "...a new plant, but it... ahh. Ran away."

Again, Kai paused. She looked slowly back to Veil. "...They don't normally do that," she explained.

@Veil

Veil looked at kai with what could be described as the curiosity of a puppy. "kai! a good name!! you are Kai!" he said.

"the veil!! i am the veil, the void, it- you! you may use either!" he said. he really was actively trying. this was hard!

it looked into the hole kai looked at, tilting his head. he didn't have the magic to reach out, but maybe he could try and stick his head in and look for it?? maybe he could, if he could just sniff it out, bring it back for this new friend??? is kai a friend?? surely, right?? boy he was excited!! this is new!

"the plant moved, it ran in here?" he asked. no, plants didn't usually do that! they usually stay in place, not alot of them just up and walk away.

"veil can go find it for kai! find the plant, bring it back?" he offered, getting down onto his chest to look smaller. "plant for kai!"

@Kai

Okay.

...Okay.

This was going well.

Kai took a deep breath, steadying herself. Socializing was hard, but she wanted to do this. She didn't want to blow it. And despite its... skullface... and thousand or so (she wasn't very good at counting under pressure) eyes, The Veil The Veil The Void seemed perfectly friendly, for now.

It struck her that maybe this was a trick. She was not sure what sort of trick it might be, though. Surely if it wanted to eat her, it would have already done so? One mental shrug later, Kai was kicking mud from her ankles and delicately stepping toward the hole. "Ah... it went in there, yes," she agreed, but she herself even looked rather puzzled. "I didn't need it. I simply... like new plants," she tried to explain.

It might have been clear based on all the plants she had intertwined and growing in her coat.

"I've never had one just-... Up and run away, before," she added, a doubtful tone to her voice.

Once again, she tried to reach out with her magic-... It wasn't something she'd practiced with, not nearly enough. Usually she was content to just grow flowers on her back and leave it at that, but right now she was curious. "I don't want to hurt it," she added, softly, "...but I sort of wonder why..."

Kai trailed off, wondering how to phrase this.

"...I sort of wonder why this plant ran away," she finished, firm and brave against her own confused doubts. (She had seen that right, hadn't she?)

When she used her magic, it lit up the world with green: all the mosses and ferns and grassy hills of the Warrens lighting in pale emerald fire, to her eyes. But she could see no sign of the plant-that-ran (little did she know, it was not a plant at all).

Even more puzzled, she shook her head.

"I don't see it with my magic. Did-... Did you see a plant run away?" she asked, turning back to The-Veil-The-Void.

...Come to think of it, was she imagining Veil, too-? With all of his eyes, and starry spots? Kai's brow furrowed. "Ahh, Mister The-Veil-The-Void?" she asked, politely; "Are you real?" It couldn't hurt to ask, right?

@Veil

veil tilted his head once more. "yes, liking plants, that is good." he seemed to twitter. odd sounds!

veil looked into the hole nonetheless, sticking his head it, only to realize thats as far as he could go before his antlers forbade any further passage. how sad. he seemed to deflate, huffing and dramatically flopping onto its side.

veil turned to kai, thinking. "plants don't run. it saw it run, but it does not know of plants that run. was it a plant at all? was it simply illusion, mirage? curious, ever curious.." he hummed into the dirt. "the-veil-the-void is very real, as real as you, and it too saw the plant. is kai real? surely, if it asks, it is." odd reassurance but in his head it worked. kai was real, as real as he was, so he was sure he was real, and that kai was in turn!

"...maybe neither of us are real, the-veil-the-void isn't sure. too deep, too pressing, hurts its mind to consider." it mumbled, mostly to himself, but kai would probably be able to hear.

@Kai

Liking plants was good-? Kai pondered this, a moment, but honestly she agreed, so she couldn't have said why she found it a slightly odd statement. A more suspicious creature might have wondered if Veil were trying to pick herbivores out through dialogue, but she simply reminisced on flowers for a moment.

The rest of his words-... well. Let it be known that Kai had never encountered a monster with an existential crisis, before. Or even a monster alone, for that matter. And so she stood bemused as Veil dug a logical hole in which it found the disturbing conclusion: maybe nothing and nobody existed.

Kai wondered if this were a normal conversation. She was doing well, right? She gave herself a mental pat on the back and buckled down to the task of taking up her next half of the dialogue, wondering how, exactly, to address such a topic.

"...Well," she suggested, "I can feel the moss under my hooves, and the mud on my legs, so we know the world around us is real." Seemed logical to her. "So if the world is real, and we can move things in it, then we must be real, too--right?"

Umm... She was fairly certain she had magic that could demonstrate something of the sort. Not something she'd really practiced with, but no time better than the present, right-? She cast her emerald gaze to the ground, scrutinizing the plants and mosses with a critical eye, and then paced over to a fern.

Her intention, for the moment, was to try and grow up a few of the spores, or grasses, or whatever, probably clustered around its base. But nothing happened, and Kai studied the indifferent earth with a new and brimming worry. "...Maybe we don't exist," she half-whispered--like Veil's own murmurs, just loud enough to hear.

This was... concerning.

@Veil

Veil pawed at the ground, claws flexing. the thoughts stirring through its head at its sudden life-changing existentialism were... quite something. but logic surely applied here, correct? if kai were right, then they had already proven they were real! though, if nothing was real, then what difference did it make that they knew? they spoke these thoughts, although... maybe a little more confusing, in the way he chose to word it.

"Kai can move the mud, its on its fur! it was not always, it was once part of the ground, and now it is not! kai moved the mud, so perhaps we are real, or the world is just as un-real as it is. as we are! what has changed, now that we think of it?" he squawked, stomping the ground to further accentuate his point. the dirt scuffed into a cloud beneath his feat.

he crawled closer to kai, to observe, mostly. "kai seems real, does kai feel real? does it breathe? is it aware of its own breathing?" he asked. now while in any other situation saying "be aware of your breathing" would be the biggest asshole move of the century, it served a philosophical point here.

veil breathed, quite heavily infact, directly in kai's vicinity, sweet smells filling the air as he did so. "can kai feel the-veil-the-void breathing? does it believe i am real? or, at the least, there enough to be felt?" he asked. the pupil-less voids in their mask blinking for a moment. this question mightve sounded creepy but it came from a place of innocent, genuine curiosity.

@Kai