“I apologize ahead of time about the quality of your food,” Scribe Swift-Paw said, setting down a cloth bundle and unwrapping it to reveal several freshly cut strips of raw meat. “You are a carnivore, so this should be suitable, but it is rather different from your usual diet of fish and aquatic arthropods. The Dieticians are going to attempt and procure something you are more familiar with from the next caravans bound for our home.”
“It’s… certainly different.” Song nudged the meat with her snout, cringing at it for reasons Black-Leap couldn’t quite figure out. “Where did they get this?”
“Feral bison roam the plains not too far from here. Hunting groups are regularly dispatched to bring some back to help feed the local carnivores. Mice and moles are also raised as livestock for smaller species, given their rapid reproduction and Darksoil’s abundance of grains from nearby farms. I can ask for some of those next time, if you would prefer eating something whole.”
“No!” Song shuddered at that, and this time even Black-Leap was struck by the image. There was barely any physical difference between herself and a mouse, as far as she could tell, meaning she was friends with something that could eat her. She wasn’t sure what to make of that. “No need to go that far. I’ll make do with this.” The salamander tentatively took up a slice of meat in her jaws and hesitated briefly before gulping it down, clearly not happy with the sensation of it. “Tastes okay at least. Could really use some seasonings.” As she moved on to the rest of her meal, Swift-Paw turned her attention to the kits.
“It is certainly a surprise to see you here, little ones, but not an unpleasant one. Can I help you with something?”
Black-Leap took the lead again, explaining everything she had explained to Song earlier. As she got to explaining her sibling’s plight, the Scribe’s posture visibly drooped.
“That is…” Swift-Paw trailed off at first, stopping to rethink her response before starting over. “Such pain is not unheard of, but I have not known anyone to suffer from it myself. Why do you feel this way?”
“Everyone is hurting. I don’t know why.” Her sibling finally spoke up, its voice a trembling murmur. “I didn’t know about it before. I don’t like knowing about it.” Black-Leap nuzzled the kit, trying to comfort it in any way she could. She was aware of the pain around them, certainly, but there had been a… sort of hopefulness about things recently. She couldn’t explain it, though. Maybe it was just in her mind.
“This hurt is temporary,” the raccoon chattered, lowering herself to the floor to look the distraught squirrel in the eyes. “Your entire life thus far is just a fraction of what you will experience. These two days of hurt have been all you know, but they are not all there is. I promise.” The kit’s posture grew just a little hopeful as it considered the idea.
“Besides,” Song chimed in with a small splash, having flicked the water behind her with her tail. “not everyone is struggling.”
“You’re hurting,” the gray kit squeaked, its mood immediately returning to where it had been. “So are you.” It placed a diminutive paw on the raccoon’s nose.
“...Only temporarily.” Swift-Paw repeated itself, drawing back from the kit, though Black-Leap could tell she was unsure. Even Song visibly flinched at the statement. “...Are you hurting? Not from others, but from yourself?” This seemed to get at the heart of things, and it took a while for the kit to respond.
“I remember something. From before I was aware. Recent. Right before the first time I opened my eyes.” It closed its eyes, as if trying to recreate that time. “Mother Quiet-Dream was angry at himself. All the noise scared me, and stuck in my memory. I Understood it once I was aware. He said his body was ‘a prison.’ I’m shaped the same. Am I trapped, too?”
“No!” Black-Leap squealed, surprising even herself with the outburst. But she couldn’t just stand there and watch. Not when the problem was this… stupid. Her sibling was wrong, and she needed to tell it. “Look at me! You’re like me! Am I trapped?”
“...Maybe?” The kit curled up on the floor, trying to make itself as small as possible. “Am I like you, or are you like me?”
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“I’m me, and you’re you. But we’re both different-than-different. Mother is only different.”
“...Should we stop them?” Song gestured at Swift-Paw, catching Black-Leap’s attention in her periphery. “They’re talking in circles of nonsense.”
“This is normal,” the raccoon murmured. “Let them, they have to work through it.”
“Right! We’re working through it!” Black-Leap declared, pouncing on her sibling in a forceful attempt to get its attention. “I decided to be Black-Leap, you also get to decide to be things! I’m not going to let you decide to be sad, because that’s stupid!”
“I choose not choosing!” Her sibling squirmed around, reversing the grapple and biting her ear.
“Wrong choice!”
“My choice!”
“Choose better!”
“I choose for you to stop!”
“You can’t!”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s my choice!”
Black-Leap disengaged briefly and locked eyes with her sibling. They were both breathing heavily, hackles raised, poised to continue the battle. She wasn’t going to back down, though. She was going to make it choose something not-stupid, no matter what.
“Ready to give up giving up?”
“Make me!”
So Black-Leap did what she did best. She leapt.
----------------------------------------
“They’re… really going at it. You sure it’s okay?” All Song could see from where she was standing was a whirling ball of black and gray tumbling across the floor, but the squeaks and growls made what was going on more than obvious enough.
“What they’re fighting over is odd, but yes. Children will fight, especially ones that develop so fast in close proximity.” Swift-Paw chattered casually, clearly unconcerned. Noticing that the salamander was still bothered, they quickly added: “Think of it like a debate.”
“It’s so… violent, though. Won’t they get hurt?”
“At worst, they may come away from it with a few scratches. They aren’t fighting to survive.” The raccoon regarded Song with an unusual curiosity. “Did you not have siblings you fought with?”
“I fought with my brothers all the time when I was growing up.” Song swished her tail as she reminisced, unable to shake an odd, uneasy feeling towards the memory that she couldn’t figure out the origin of. “But if any of us ever physically hit one another, our parents would punish us. We learned to stick to vocal arguments and insults pretty quick.”
“I see…” It was clear from Swift-Paw’s demeanor that they did not like what they just heard, but they declined to pry further, letting the conversation end in awkward silence.
“Oh, actually,” Song perked up, realizing that she could actually try and sort something out. “Swift-Paw, would you have described Stream-Drifter as forgiving, or trusting?”
“Only of those who earned it. You… Stream-Drifter is infamously bad at talking to strangers.” The Scribe examined Song closely, considering something. “Song, why did you ask about that?”
The salamander explained what had happened while they were gone, about the spider, and the way she had treated them. And then after she was done, Swift-Paw did something strange. They laughed. It wasn’t literal laughter, it was more like a long, drawn-out sigh, but it carried the same meaning. She’d just done something funny.
“That is absolutely the Stream-Drifter I know. Especially the part where you threatened to eat the Physician.”
“That’s one mystery solved, at least.” Song tapped the floor, not entirely sure how she felt about that. There was something melancholy about the idea that the part of her she knew the least about was so strongly dominant in a conflict. “I… felt opposite ways about what happened, and I couldn’t tell whose impulses were whose. I know I’m not entirely one person or the other, but I’d hoped I’d be able to… keep the parts distinct if a conflict like that ever happened.” Song’s rumination was cut short when she felt something fuzzy press up against her side, as Swift-Paw had settled down next to the salamander without her noticing.
“Would you like to know more about Stream-Drifter?” The raccoon was quite warm, something she realized she had taken for granted as a mammal. She hadn’t felt proper warmth since ending up like this. “It could help you better distinguish these things, and I would like to keep its memory intact. It deserves to be remembered.”
“I’d like that, thanks.”
“Stream-Drifter was feral-born, having hatched just barely outside the borders of the Lost Lands…” As Swift-Paw began their tale, their chattering caught the attention of the squabbling kits, who had tired themselves out enough to stop fighting and just lay on top of each other in a tangled heap. They quickly untied themselves and turned to listen, bringing the size of the audience up to a respectable three. “It did not like to talk about its youth, for obvious reasons, insisting that its life began when it first discovered other Gifted creatures living nearby. At the time, I was just a kit myself…”