Note: Please ignore the spell cast, I didn't realize until afterwards that since she already has a banana, the first one from the egg, she doesn't need to cast the spell to summon one.

Red had found a cramped cave in which to store her egg that she had taken some days ago from the pile that everyone had been standing around. She could sleep in that cave, too, if she wanted, but she called it cramped because it was barely big enough to fit her. She usually slept outside it, guarding the entrance. When she awoke that morning (not that Origin Cave had mornings), she turned and poked her head into the cave, intending to check on her egg. She froze. There was no egg. In its place sat a curved yellow… fruit?

She leaned farther into the cave and sniffed at it. She assumed it was fruit because there was a sweet smell to it. Puzzled, the coywolf picked the fruit up in her jaws and backed out of the cave and then plopped the fruit between her paws and stared down at it. So… so the egg had hatched into a fruit? She had thought… Well, she had thought that it might hatch into a Gembound, like her. No words could describe how disappointed she was that the egg had merely housed food.

Feeling a little cheated, she bit into the fruit, thinking that she might as well enjoy the free food. It was indeed sweet, and she rather liked it, though even being a coywolf, she still mainly ate meat. Probably, a banana wouldn’t be digested very well. Coywolves, like coyotes, usually stuck with berries when they ate fruit.

Halfway through her small meal, Red began to notice a change coming over her. She was… sparkling? And kind of glowing? What the hell? She stood up quickly and began spinning in circles and looking at her body. Why was she glowing? Was… was the fruit poisonous? She swallowed nervously, but a brief pause to see how she was feeling revealed that she didn’t physically feel any different, besides being pretty full already. Was the fruit… Magic?

The cave’s tunnel system appeared massive to the springbok calf. Since hatching from her chrysalis not too long ago, Enka had slowly taken up exploring the various pathways in an attempt to orient herself. Despite the accretion of experience this lent her it still took much effort to remember which way she came from and which way to get back home (as she had starting to think of the mossy jungle area she had hatched from as). This had proven some use, though, as she had stumbled onto a discarded yellow … thing that smelled nice.

Then the clicking of hooves against stone stopped. Enka nearly dropped the yellow fruit she had been carrying in her mouth in surprise. The tunnel she had been traveling suddenly opened up into a massive chamber. Like the Eridanus cavern, this area too was covered in moss. But it’s was stunning in a completely different way. The room was lit from the ceiling and walls with small lights of fungi. The greys of the stones had shifted into a swirl of browns and purples like the twilight of a sky she has never known. It was mesmerizing.

Eridanus gave her a sense of peace and tranquility that was pleasuring to her senses. This cavern too gave a pleasure to her senses but in an entirely different manner. Deep in her core and in her long wiry legs the antelope felt the strange instinct to pronk, a sudden leap she found both irresistible as well as pleasurable.

With a spring, the brown crept leapt into the air sending her ears wagging with the motion. Then she trotted forward with a bit more spring in her step, the clinking of hooves lighter than previously. But it wasn’t long before the springbok was stunned into stillness again. While the creature was still very young and therefore everything was new and exciting, the scene before her was particularly intriguing.

Without realizing it, she had stumbled across a strange creature not too terribly far from her. It was red, slightly shorter from what she could tell at this distance, but larger built overall. But what struck her was the fur. Red was not an accurate way to describe it. No, it was crimson and red and sparkled like flames in the twilight of the cave. Dark wide eyes watched as the creature spun in circles, twirling and engulfing itself again.

“Oh wow,” She breathed slowly, taking a few tentative steps forward. “What are you? You’re …. You’re beautiful.”

Tag: @Red
Notes:

For a while, Enka simply watched the red creature who sparkled. It was mesmerizing. Then slowly, she made a mental note of the creature and continued her exploration of the cavern that tickled her senses in a strange way. What other kinds of creatures and plants and things lived here, she wondered while moving along.

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Notes: Enka has left the thread