A tricolor hunk of Mookaite is nestled upon one of the platforms along Monocero's outer edge. Its surface has been polished smooth by roughly a cycle of sand being pelted against it's surface. Within it stirs magicka and life, and restless creature itching to break free.

If the universe was kind, the creature that hatches would be a thing with wings- a bird or bat or one of those new-fangled 'dragons.' Or maybe a lizard, a gecko, anything that could easily and safely descend from this precarious perch.

However today, indifference reigns supreme. The little lamb that struggles free from their gemstone shell is by no means ill-suited to this terrain, but they certainly aren't going to have an easy time climbing down. The gembound peers curiously over the ledge, warm air buffeting them as they stare at the entirety of Monoceros, the wind-carved canyons and the magnificant whirlwind in the room's center. They do not know to fear the heights, yet, so all they feel is a quiet awe at their newfound existence. The world is big, the air is warm, and I am alive.

Indifference is definitely not a label Worm knows well. Indifference and himself perhaps shared one meaningful glance and very little else, because everything was horrifying. Including this awful place.

The air was too warm, it stung his paws on the rocks and made his pink skin, red and sore with irritation. And the wind. The wind whipped past his ears so quickly, he couldn't hear anything but the roar of it. That's without the towering, wind-thing, in the centre.

It was all a cruel, miserable affair.

Sheer luck is what causes Worm to look up at the cliffs above. He'd only managed to scrabble up a little way himself, but he could swear he could see something up there; it was challenging to tell what through eyes squinted against the buffeting winds.

"Who are you?" Worm shouts, if it were any other gembound, it may have come across as a threat to ward off an attacker. But, Worm's voice shook and carried too weakly to sound like anything more than a desperate plea.

@Velveteen

They are perhaps the exact opposite of the pitiful worm lurking somewhere below. This newly hatched gembound knew no dread, only wonder and excitement for a world had just met. Also, they were not bald.

It was hard to parse through the windstorm, but they recognized a voice. Although the words themselves were no more meaningless than the all-encompassing sound of the wind, the lamb was enamored by it regardless. Noises! Words, even! Could they also do that?

"Whh.. Whhah.. woo..." Experimental babbling, likely inaudible given the distance and the all-encompassing noise of the wind. Teeth clacked together, ears twitching and eyes squinting with focus. Their next attempt was a joyous bleat that was surely audible over the windstorm. "Whoooooo are yoooooou!!!!!"

They inched closer to the edge of the ledge- although luckily, some sort of survival instinct imbued caution in these movements- peering down at the wrinkly pink thing that had initiated this 'conversation'.

@Worm

The cat lurched back, his spine curving up into a hill-shape as he recoiled from the garbled sounds and clacking teeth noises this stranger made. Was it a threat? Was the stranger threatening him? His paws lifted to bolt before the bleated words finally reached his ears.

While he leaned back into his usual cower, his jaw clenched for a brief moment. "I asked first!" Worm called back with a huff, "copying isn't allowed!" He very graciously informs the stranger. It made perfect sense in his juvenile brain that this stranger was copying him! Which wasn't allowed, so he could just simply ask them to stop.

It didn't occur to the feline that perhaps they were just learning speech for the first time.

"I'm Worm!" He shouted back up after a beat. Apparently having immediately forgotten the gripe he had with the stranger. Instead he squinted up at the high perch the other gembound was balanced on the edge of. "Why are you up so high?" He yelled.

@Velveteen

It had taken some time for Ruse's consciousness to recoalesce. From the pitch light-darkness of hys angel aura quartz casing, bits of platinum rainbow spectra fizzled and popped into re-being. In some ways, Velveteen and Ruse were in the same boat, although neither of them knew it yet.

Feeling disoriented, fresh, and awakened, Ruse had been wandering. Why to Monoceros, one of the drabbest, least-wing-haver-friendly caves...? Well, the place always looked like it could use a bit of color. Ruse was an excellent start.

He was smart enough to know not to try flying in Monoceros's terminally irate weather. His beautiful butterfly woman (a real street name in California) wings remain as tucked as they feasibly could be, flattened to his rather ironically masculine back. (Can backs be masculine...? Discuss.) They were far enough from the storm that he might be able to manage flight for a little bit, but these wings were frail in their making, and the muscles already struggled with 275 pounds of 6-foot biped on a good day. He wouldn't be risking it.

Yet.

They, by the way, seemed to be more than just hym. Hy overheard the voices—petite and tinny things—barely cut through the backdrop of swirling winds. From the moment they came within earshot, he tucked himself into the uplifted wall of a nearby plateau. He nestled in so incredibly comfortable, it was almost like the bright pink and the children's birthday confetti color spotting on his hide faded right into Monoceros's dull and monotonous yellow-brown. HAH! Could you imagine?

No, but seriously, you'd think it was opposite day with how unseeable this man was making himself. Maybe it was the fact that he appeared to be dealing with literal children, but from Ruse's perspective, it felt like he could get practically up underneath that goat-thing's nose and no one would notice. From this vantage, he dared a survey of the tiny things mewling and bleating at each other. He very non-conspicuously stifled his laughter at the dialogue. It appeared he wasn't the only pink thing or the only daredevil around.

His mood almost clattered to the floor when he realized the little goat-guy wasn't going to naively and hilariously off themself with a long walk off a short cliff. What a pity, to lose the inherent comedy of learning the hard way that Gembound are functionally immortal. Oh, why are you looking at hym like that? It's true! Everything hy said! And you're not even supposed to be seeing him right now. Shoo! Scram!

Ruse is staying hidden to listen in like a creep. You can ignore hym lol. Including posting order; don't wait for me! Unless something interesting happens and you want Ruse to show hymself.

Their head tilted at the cat's strange movements. While his distress was likely overwhelming obvious to anyone older than a couple minutes, the lamb didn't really glean such meaning from his squiggly pose. Fear was foreign, and they themself were far from scary. Except to Worm, apparently.

The kitten's next words were enough for their understanding of language to click into place. The beginnings of it, anyways. They were 'copying,' which was bad, or at least 'not allowed.' They trusted the pink thing was an expert on this, given that he was the only other being they'd ever met. "Whats allowed?" Were they asking for a list of acceptable activities? A definition of a word? Both? Neither? Who knows!

"Worm! Hi Worm!" A name! Probably! Or maybe it was a categorization, and all wrinkly, squiggle pink things were 'worm.' Wait. They know what names are, and that they are pretty important. Do they have a name? Should they have a name? How do they get a name? Just before their brain could muster up a thought that wasn't bubbly wonder at a brain-new world, Worm asked them a question that absolutely stumped them.

"Uhhhmmm...." They wrack their minuscule brain for any explanation and come up empty. They simply hadn't been anywhere else, before coming 'here.' "I dunno. Was in the dark. Now I'm not."

@Worm @Audland

He paused at that. Worm had been caught up so much so in his own opinions that he didn't know what was allowed. So, he settles on the lesson he'd been taught, "I think you can do anything, as long as it's nice!"

That sounded right.

Worm squints up at the fellow gembound with a quizzical look, trying to decipher their last words. In the dark then not? He briefly recalls his own emergence; it was difficult to forget it when it'd be a truly awful experience. Had this one just gone through the same?

Well, he'd certainly remembered it being scary. Perhaps tired of shouting, or simply out of pity, Worm leaps up towards the nearest rock. The kitten hits it clumsily, then slips back down the first time, his claws not finding purchase on the stone. The second attempt is more successful, he doesn't make it up, but he scrabbles his way until he is.

"Aren't you scared?" Worm shouts on his new perch. Then, slowly and clumsily, leaps from rock to rock; progress is extremely slow as he scrabbles his way up higher and higher...

@Velveteen @Ruse

"Oh! Ok!" Being nice sounded- well- nice. Especially compared to the alternative, which Wasn't Allowed, anyways. Although their concept of such things was vague at best, given how their brain was still saturated in naive bliss. For better or worse, cruelty simply wasn't in their mental dictionary.

The little pink thing jumps, clamors against a rock, manages to climb atop it after a second try. It's just now they're made aware of the other little cliffs and platforms jutting from the cave wall, the long and winding path one must take to go up or down. Opportunity! A world to explore! How exciting!

"Why would I be scared?" And then, as though to emphasize their point, they leap for a ledge just below them.

And then, they find the answer to their own question.

The ledge wasn't as stable as they first thought. Rock crumbles under their clumsy hooves, and they loose footing before they even properly land, skidding and stumbling and then falling.

The lamb screams. They just got here. They don't want to die. Not now.

@Ruse

Watching the pink binguslet and the little lamb welp yip at each other was mildly amusing. Ruse particularly enjoyed watching the bald binglet move. That constant anxiety, and the weird way its little baby musculature was visible under its pink, wrinkly flesh. The similarity of its weird little paw-hands in comparison to hys own. Ruse privately delighted in watching its tendons and wringles pull and squish as it propelled itself up the cliff face. Skies above, this thing was so weird. Did it know that? Anyways.

The conversation was markedly less entertaining. Maybe that should have been expected. They were two literal children after all. It was becoming more and more apparent from the way they spoke. Ruse did a big, dramatic eyeroll that no one could appreciate at Worm's insinuation that only nice things were allowed. "Allowed", in and of itself, was such a drab, presumptuous concept. Who decides what's allowed? The customer? The service? The bingus? Psh. How absurd!

But, far be it from Ruse to argue with a toddler. Hy'd rather smooch a piano.

At long last, all the tempting of fate finally paid off. Ruse had had no desire to stop the wriggling pink thing from its precarious ascent. But now, the little lamb was finally pulling Chekhov's gun on itself, and with the most hilariously ironic little quip to boot. Why be afraid? What of?

Ruse might have contented himself with providing his own personal laugh track to the lamb-thing's first taste of death, but a better idea presented itself. A more dramatic idea. Yes, it appeared that Ruse was oldest here (debatably), and these poor Gembound lacked a tall, handsome stranger to impart wisdom upon them. Well, no need to look further; Ruse would be here.

In a moment, though. If the lamb was not to lick the salt lamp of death today, it could at least learn the pungent scent of danger.

Just before it truly fell—or rather, finished falling—Ruse would reveal himself, a pink and swirly paladin in shining, technicolor fur.

With a few elegant strides, the motley devil would waltz hymself up to where the baby had been fated to go splat. Hy braced hys magnanimously outstretched arms to support the lamb child's body weight at juuuust the right moment before their imminent doom.

Were they to check Ruse's face at this point, Velveteen would be met with a devious grin.

"Bravo, little pinklet!" Worm would hear the boisterous voice of Ruse cutting through the whipping winds of Monoceros, growing ever closer as the devil's furious wingbeats carried hym up the cliff face. "You were right to be afraid," Ruse would say at a more reasonable volume once he was closer to the top.

"Though I can't say I agree with the rest of your ideology. Who gave you the right, to allow and disallow? Are you a Master?" Upon landing on the topside of the cliff, Ruse would snap his wings shut and approach Worm with Velveteen still held to Ruse's side, resting on his hip (a standard lamb carry). Their remarkable simian-to-feline height difference would likely dawn on the poor kitten at this point, if it hadn't already.

"Ah, well. It fails to matter. I'll give you a choice! Take back what you said, and I won't tell this one how you..." Ruse would attempt to lean in close: "pushed them off." The back of Ruse's unoccupied hand would serve as hys sole, secret mousketool to shield hys flagrant accusation from reaching Velveteen's sweet, innocent ears. Worm might be able to catch the mischievous glint in Ruse's eye—or they might not. Either way, the ball was in "pinklet" 's court now, and Ruse couldn't wait to see what they would do with it.

@Worm

Worm had looked up as he heard the movement, and barely had time to register that this new-gembound was falling. It felt like in the time it took for Worm to blink, they'd been caught and now this equally pink stranger was yelling at him.

The kitten looked over Ruse with wide-eyes and cowed immediately, letting out an honest to god whimper as the massive bipedal person scolded him. He couldn't flee without risking a tumble himself, so Worm pressed himself against the rocky ledge he'd found himself on and simply covered his eyes with his paws; as if not seeing hym would make hym disappear.

"I don't know what any of that is!" Perhaps Worm hadn't intended to shout those words, but the panic was certainly pumping his system full of adrenaline.

Then the accusation came, the lie that fell like the guillotine's edge. Nothing worse has ever happened in Worm's whole first cycle of being alive. Worm hadn't pushed them! He wouldn't even if he could've reached them! Yet, this person was saying he had! He stomach fell through his guts, his heart hammered in his chest, he couldn't think of a single thing to prove his innocence and he'd be a killer forever. It was absolutely lunacy!

"I don't know what I did wrong! I didn't push them!" Worm yowls in protest, with all the conviction of a child arguing his case on the playground. As if this were life or death, that he'd be forever tarnished. "Why are you saying these things!?"

Turns out, the pinklet didn't know what the ball is, or why it'd been thrown at him; and looked as if he'd rather cower and duck away from it than do anything with it. This may not have been the caves' brightest gembound.

@Ruse @Velveteen