Tema had been on her way to... somewhere, following some long-lost trail of memory and rumour. It would prove to be about as reliable as food scraps left unattended, but still- she had to know.
At some point in her journey, however, she decided against the idea. It could wait a day, if only a day. A home, a safe home, somewhere she could raise her children into beings of terror would take much longer than her intended task of the day.

And so she was here, in Eridanus.

She was really beginning to wonder why she still felt so drawn to the place, why she felt like she needed it. Needed to cleanse it, to remake it, to erase whatever was left of her past. To erase whatever was left of the lies, and the liars, should she come across them again. Were they all in on it?

It didn't matter now.

This... rot, this mold, this stench needed to go. She needed room to work, room to grow, to sprout new, untainted seeds from the earth and form them into a home. There was no better place than the edge of the fern trench and all its greenery, which is where she set to work, a flurry of claws tearing plants out from the root and swiping order-mold off of trees.

The job wasn't to her standard yet, but big claws meant big damage, and she had definitely pulled at least some of the foul-smelling mould-covered plants out of the ground. The fern trench was a great place to live in somewhat peace given its dense foliage, but dense foliage also meant dense mould. It would take her the better part of the day, if not multiple, to really make a difference here.

Her efforts, unfortunately, did not kill much of the mould, but at the very least she piled the infected foliage out of her way. She hoped it would die off naturally if she smothered it, but she could always find someone with the right magic for the job if she had to. She had time, of course, though she did not want to waste it. The Void was waiting for her, waiting for her to convert and to provide. She needed to prove herself, and quickly.

She set back to work again, fighting the urge to use her teeth as she clawed and slashed her way through white and green.

While it would still take more clawing and more magic, at the very least she had cleared some small section. It was barely large enough for her, let alone the children she was building it for, but it gave her some room to work. She would cut more plants down in a minute, but considering how much time and energy it took to grow what she had planned, it was best that she at least get it started before she started tearing up a larger area.

Besides, she was trying to keep the place hidden! A little hard to do when all of a sudden there was a big barren spot in an otherwise lush cave, and a massive pile of mouldy plants not 5 feet away! She really would have to do something about those.

For now she would start some seeds, encouraging fresh, untainted growth up from the torn soil to replace that which she had destroyed. Well, Order had destroyed it first, she was just... cleaning. Yes. She was cleaning up after them, reclaiming that which was natural and replacing it with something... better. Something useful.

Her magic seemed to agree with the idea, and sure enough, sprouts began to poke through. They unfurled slowly, reaching up, searching for the sun, searching for... her. Had it always felt so nice to call upon her birth element? Had her gemstone always glowed as it did? But why was it so... Disgusting.?

It had always been easy for her to get lost. In the caves, in her mind... Time passed strangely when it came to the bear, drifting in and out of consciousness, almost, as she pondered her magic. It had always come so easily, it had always headed her call, except... Well, slimespace. It had only responded to her once, that she remembered, and had failed another three or more times before then. Of course, the spell that came from the combined magic of the Voidcrawlers failed her. Of course it had.

She set another flurry of attacks on the mould, ignoring how awful the smell was that now stuck to her fur. She would have to clean it off, and well, but for now she was more concerned about her home. It would be a tiring task, not just to clean out the rot-smell but to regrow an entire den from seed. Plenty of time to find her prize, however, assuming... Well, Sunny had to be dead, didn't she? Why else would she be gone? Because she abandoned you.

Right. Because even if Sunny was gone, what were the chances that all of them were? She would have had kids by now, and surely they would be recognizable. Surely if Carja or Madhukar or the Voidseer or any of them were still around she would not have woken up alone? But they couldn't all be gone. It just wasn't possible. They left you. It was the only option.

How many times did she say that it didn't matter now? How many times would she have to repeat herself, mentally, to convince herself? It was over. Gone. She had nothing to do with them anymore except to try and find out what happened to Sunny, to face her, to confront her, to remake her.

Now, what mattered in this very moment was to make a safe home for the future generations she should have had with Sunny. She was taking over as the Voidmother, remaking herself, remaking the title and all it stood for. She was no mother to the Void, only a mother for it. She would give herself to it, and she would give that which was not hers to give, because she could. Because the Void had not lied to her. Because... What else was there? She would give honesty to her children just as she had been given, and she would raise them as Voidchildren more than her own.

But first, they needed a home.

She was making good progress, tearing up what plants she could and clearing mould off of what plants she couldn't. She couldn't uproot trees, but she could rid them of bark and leaves. It was about as effective as one might expect, and her pile of uprooted plants was growing considerably.

With more room to work with, she returned to her freshly sprouted seedlings and focused on them again. She tried to shape them as they grew, twisting and moulding them vaguely into a sphere with one open side. She would have to grow some vines to cover the entrance, and she would have to clear out some of the unruly ones, but for the most part, the plants were taking the right shape. They still had plenty to grow, though, and she still needed more room.

Happy with her progress so far, and glad for something else to draw her attention, Tema set back to work without delay. She would clear some more space, first, before she called for more seeds to sprout and grow. If her children were to be anything like her, they would need much more space. The current growth would fit her, maybe, once the plants finished growing, but they would not fit much else.

The fern trench, or at least the part she had been working in, was beginning to look quite barren. It was emptier than she had ever seen it, and she hoped that her 'garden' would grow quickly to cover her tracks. She did not want to have to do all this work a second time.

Eager to complete her task, another series of clawing attacks were targetted at the foul mould. She felt a sense of pride in how much she had managed to clear so far.

With ample space to work with, Tema set out to actually make her home now. With the entrance started, she just needed to shape the main room and cover up her tracks with some more foliage. She was going to have quite the headache after this. It would be worth it, though, to have somewhere to call home other than the altar.

She called out to some hidden seeds again, summoning a variety to the surface to see the orb-light. She would use ivy to cover the entrance, ferns to hide the silhouette of her work, and whatever else came forward to actually build the structure.

Despite her eagerness to part with it, her magic did not seem to realize its time was nearly done as it headed her calls. Repeatedly it summoned itself, creating and growing at her command. It had proved easier than she had thought to build a home. Sure it was nothing special in terms of looks, but that was for the best. An organic-looking structure was less likely to be discovered easily.

Now she had to shape them again, to grow them into a sturdy foundation. They responded well, once more her magic feeding them, pulling them up and up as her paws guided them into the right spots. They began to flower, some of them, and she trimmed up the stragglers.

He was on his own mold-clearing journey, in his comfort-space high up in the trees. Even up here, the spores had gone far enough that even the tops of the trees were sprouting fruiting bodies. But it was quick work to press paws against the bark and force the roots of the spores up and out and then promptly slice them clean off, ridding the tree of the infection - at least part of it.

He heard shuffling below, and peered through the bottom of the canopy. He saw a brown shape and a number of uprooted plants. At first, he was filled with anger - someone was harming the forest!! - but a second look closer and he saw that all the plants that had been destroyed had all been thoroughly infected. And, as he watched, new plants grew in their place, shaping and forming into something new.

He watched it for a while, intrigued, before he decided to approach. A few more well-placed tree-hops and he was directly over them. He climbed down carefully to a lower-hanging branch, carefully balancing above and gently called out, "That's good work you're doing there."

@Tema