[Sarissa]

The sky was terribly open. Vast, eternal, and expansive. It was an eternal reminder of her smallness, of the lack of undeniable brilliance they carried as wolves, as living creatures. Here, upon the ground, they were finite. Life was not promised to them, it never had been, and even during her tenure as Gigantea she had known the undeniable truth that blood and bone were merely weak materials used to give power to the spirit. It was her spirit, tonight, that was caught ablaze and moving her forward. It was the rolling constant thumping of her being and the whispered secrets that reflected off the moon that caused her to splash and stomp her way through the flowing waters that spilled at the waterfall’s base. Not that she was trying to be quiet, no. The behemoth of a wolf held no reason or want for silence. What she wanted…

--Was the flickering gems that caught her gaze, the sparkling green that seemed to litter the water bed that she swam through. Where did they come from, exactly? She had her assumptions, some powered by the stench of something odd, sulfur was it? Smoky? It triggered a phantom memory, caused haunted wails to traverse her mentality, and then it was gone.

Alas, the memories of her godhood had no place here anyway. She had become so much more than she’d been previously, more in self than anything else.

So she swam and she huffed, invigorated by the chilling bite of the waters and the splashing sound of the falls as she approached. There was something so terribly tranquil about watching her reflection and bulk part the mirror image of the half-formed moon and stars above, but she wasn’t there to wax poetic romanticism. She was there to discover.

And discover she did. With barely any hesitation she would shove forward, grunting as her paws began to hit sand and rock right as the falls beat upon her body. The weight of it was jarring, but she was quick enough to smoothly pass the spilling waters until she was struck by an openness as vast as the skies that had watched her.

That and the slick odd dusty substance that coated most of the cavern, intersected with black dirty piles that were sprinkled and lined across the floor.

Well then.

With a soft exhale she moved further, embraced by a bit of the darkness, but grateful that the mouth of the cave had been illuminated by washed up sparkling gems and twinkling moonlight. It was when she lifted a paw to brush across the white film that covered some of the walls that she paused.

So, what was all of this?

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d i s c o v e r y | z o n e

unlocked: chalk/coal mines

[Sarissa]

The mind of a child was an incredible thing, something that surpassed the skies and beyond imagination. Sarissa was small in the scheme of things, even under everyone in the home she was born in, but within her minds eye, she was everything. She was large and nothing could stop her. She was growing, the world large but not as much as it was when she was younger. The ticking of time had drawn her close to a year now, her body filling into her bones, her mind, but she was so caged.

So she left the confines of her family den, venturing out under the veil of moonlight and stars, letting them guide her across the span of Alteron. Night was so much more interesting, the sounds and chirps foreign as she listened to her homeland sing. This could be hers, all hers, but the fight to gain ground was slipping. Sarissa was patient, her mind reeling with possibilities. The universe would praise her, she could feel it.

All she had to do was grasp with her teeth around those tiny strings of red.

The splash of something large did not go unnoticed, red eyes peering from the shadows as she watched her distant relative swim among the gleaming stones of emerald, distorting the image of the stars and moon as she moved forward to the waterfall. The girl tilted her head, curious as to why she had surpassed the raging falls and an even bigger question: how? Sarissa bolted forward, following the river's edge as she followed the invisible trail left behind the former God.

A stone path lead up to the cave, though it was obscure and not easy to venture. Paws became muddy as her coat was soaked from the spray of water misting down from the cascading falls. Sarissa pressed on, slipping and sliding, clawing clumps of dirt and rock in order to gain the upper ground and eventually crawling behind the rushing water that made her mind numb from all the noise.

The black figure was hard to spot, but Sarissa could sense them, her tired body strutting forward. "Should've just followed you." she said, rolling her eyes over the white, chalky substance.

What had they stumbled upon?

"Shall we go deeper into the rabbit hole?"

✦ ✦ Speech Text ✦ ✦

[Izanagi]

For a brief moment, alone in the cavern, she wondered at the machinations of Azuhel’s captured flame. While it wasn’t terribly dark, she felt that the crackling fire would have chased away the reaching shadows and the memory of pebble beaches. It was surprising, how willing she was to bow to the element that had haunted her mentality with whispers and phantom cries of loathing. But now, within the Dragon’s empire, it felt like a distant memory. Another life. A second skin she’d shed and dropped at the foot of the border when she’d been drawn in by what she’d thought was her husband’s scent.

Alas, she still hadn’t found him, her Dokuga, but she had faith that eventually...  

Well, her cousin would surely help her.

But just as began to ponder how she would voice the ask—

A child appeared, just as water logged as she was.

Izanagi’s first response was a grunt.

Her second was to shake her entire being and spray water practically everywhere moistening the chalk slick walls and relatively dry ground beneath their feet and it was only when she was a bit dryer that she’d turn to the child with gleaming gaze and smile a bit to wide.

“’ello,” she drawled, accented tone an odd mixture of some language that had died with her rule in the valley. For a moment she just stood there, breathing in the musky odd scent of the caves as she combed her mind for when she might have seen the child before. Had she ever come across her? Or, maybe something about her reminded her a lot of Ollie.

Either way, she had company now, and it would be rude not to entertain.

“This way, then.” The black wolf rumbled before she stepped forward, shifting chalk residue around the bottoms of her feet with the movement. Really, it’s not the twinkling pretty gems or the chalk that catch her attention. It’s the weird smelling rocks piled around walls and the various spiraling pathways that meant deeper tunnels and caverns.

Odd that.