A lush tropical jungle filled with a variety of plants, animals, and birds. The center of the jungle is thick and dark, with tall trees, thick foliage, and tangled vines.
A concept created to make creatures feel comfortable, to provide the false sense of safety, and most importantly, a place of habit one could return to at one's want and leisure. Home. A lie. A made up word. A myth. Home did not exist. It was an idea and nothing more. Ridley knew and understood this truth of the world. Home was not safe, nor comfortable. Anyone or anything could encroach on someone's 'home' and spread violence in its place. A 'home' could become engulfed in flames and swallowed alive, or it could become flooded, or it could be torn apart by the magical friction that was Akrasia.
Home. His heart longed for the comforts that such a place brought to a creature. He wanted a place to return to, a place to exist and belong, a place that offered him the false security of safety and temporary comfort. He could never have it, of course. His home had been ripped away from him at a young age, as did his life. It was a lesson learned and he wondered why Andromache had not educated him on it sooner.
The brute strolled through the jungle, ears rotating and twitching as song birds of his youth chirped and sang their merry tunes of the morning and rising sun. Light shafts split the canopy where it could reach it's long tendrils, illuminating and feeding the foliage with it's nourishment. He could hear the running of water as the river rocks disrupted the flow. It all sounded and felt so much like home that he wondered if he had traveled in time. No, he wanted to make himself believe that he had traveled through time. He wanted to believe that his siblings and beloved mother would come bursting through the undergrowth, enticing him with play, tricks, or an intriguing lesson.
The brute continued to stroll along, his posture casual as his tail and neck swung level with his back and accompanied each step. His silver gaze scanned the various foliage as he searched specifically for the yellow tops of the acmella oleracea. His supply was running low, and he needed its numbing properties to apply to his experiments. It was hard to focus with precision when they were squirming, after all.
It engulfed his being. He was not aware nor conscious to understand it. It was all darkness, darkness for some time, and he remained that way. Suspended in inanimation, not even a speck in the cosmos.
But then, suddenly, there was light.
It streamed down through the canopy, bright beams of light that made his yellow eyes narrow. He was covered in dirt, petalmane a crumpled mess from supposedly being on the ground for some time. Birds, however sparse from the autumn cold, chirped overhead, and he immediately felt a cool breeze wash over him. Despite this, he felt warm, as if he had been wrapped in a blanket, and he rose with a strength like he had just taken a very long, very pleasant nap.
Laying next to him was Aguipua, a cactus cat whose body was made entirely of cacti. He looked healthy and revitalized, unlike the state he had been when... “What happened to Dorath? Where did that barkless softhide go?” he demanded, his voice loud and angry. Solrentorro felt for the bleeding wounds along his flank and legs, and found that they were completely healed. How long had he been out?
"Well..." Aguipua began, immediately rising to his paws to face his King, "You might not believe me, but um... You died. He won."
“WHAAAAAT?” his voice boomed through the jungle, and a flock of birds overhead took flight in alarm. Aguipua was right. He didn't believe him.
And yet, Solrentorro could remember so clearly, his life force ebbing away from him, his throat slashed open, his latex and strength pouring out of him...
It didn't stop his anger from boiling over. In a fit of rage, the Dandylion struck out at the nearest sappling with claws outstretched. The blow didn't so much as shatter the tree as topple it over, and in anger at having not obliterated the tree like he intended, he leaped on it with feline fury, and toppled it over with tooth and claw, splinting the sappling into bits on the floor.
Aguipua kept his distance. He knew not to disturb the King when he was mad like this.
Though the rage still boiled in his belly, he composed himself enough to turn slowly to face Aguipua and say, “Tell me... If I'm dead... Where are we now... And how are you here?” every word was measured, slow. Aguipua cleared his throat, and smoothed out one of the petals of the pink cactus flower atop his head nervously. Carefully, he said, "After you died, he said he didn't need my service, and ah, I guess the Gods decided we should have a second chance." Aguipua had no idea what was happening, or why the Gods decided to take pity on them, if they did. For all he knew, this could actually just be the afterlife, and he'd be in a world of trouble if that were the truth after he had just suggested reincarnation.
After hearing his explanation, Solrentorro marched off without a word, a flicker of his tail beckoning Aguipua to follow, which he did without hesitation. "Where are we going, Your Highness?"
Without looking back, the plant beast announced, “I'm going to murder Golve Dorath like he murdered me.”
Birds suddenly erupted in the canopy above as a roar shook the tranquility of the waking jungle. They screamed and squawked their alerts and complaints as they took wing, shuffling the canopy and swirling up into the sky as a hoard, only to move and resettle inches away from where they had taken off from. 'Birds' Ridley shook his head. 'So predictable'. Predictability is what got you killed. Ridley had not startled at the sudden outcry when it had occurred. He'd simply lifted his head, pointed it in the direction the sound had came from, and listened. A lion in a jungle was not unusual, so why did the birds seem so alarmed? Abnormal his mind whispered to him. Curious it suggested. Ridley resisted. He had a goal, a mission in mind. He was supposed to be looking for his herb to help his studies.
Irregular. Unexpected. It couldn't hurt to look in that general direction. He might find what he was looking for, or maybe the disrupter could aid him. The roar had been distant, too far for Ridley to witness the destruction of the sapling as it had undergone attack. He had also been too far away to hear the conversation between the two about the death not-death that they had endured. What Ridley hadn't been too far away from was overhearing how someone was going to murder someone for murdering them.
Ridley froze in his tracks, his silver eyes now filled with more curiosity than ever. A reborn? But, how could that be? He had not worked on Her behalf to deliver souls back to the living realm recently. Had it been one of the others? Curious his mind echoed within as the chance encounter grew more and more interesting with each passing breath.
Ridley stepped from underbrush and foliage as casually as one might walk up and greet a friend. Any indicator that he recognized personal space as a thing was absent as he approached and inspected the not one but two creatures before him. He eyed the creatures as they stood, unsure if animal was even an appropriate term to use for them. His head tilted as he studied them in silence, a silence that lingered into an uncomfortable amount of time. Whether the other interrupted his studies by talking or not, he would not respond to any of his questions. He would simply ask one single question of his own: "Who delivered your soul back to this realm?"
Solrentorro stomped his way through the jungle. He wanted his presence known, demanded it, indignant of his own death and wanting the world to feel the anger he felt at the injustice. The plant beast would never admit Golve Dorath won the challenge to his throne fair and square, but the intentional murder of both him and Aguipua disqualified him from any respect or dignified death of his own. What good did reincarnation do if he couldn't seek revenge on the one who got him killed?
It had taken him a moment to notice the peculiar beast that watched the duo, and he found himself staring back in silence in confusion and fascination. His face was scrunched up in a mix of both his anger and curiosity, likewise studying them as the foreign thing they looked. What was this strange fabric attached to their epidermis? Where are the flowers or bark or thorns or anything plant-like upon them? What was he looking at?
The curiosity strewn on his face dissipated the moment the creature spoke, its question blunt and unbecoming, “Where I come from, people address me as Your Highness, and introduce themself before they even think of asking questions. Regardless of what kind of creature they are,” he hissed. Bad-mannered it was, too. His head was high, the full regality of his petaled mane on display, despite half his mane being crimpled from his lay upon the ground, and the dirt that clung stubbornly to that same side of his body.
"Your Highness?" Sol would lean down to listen to Aguipua's whispered words, though he didn't take his eyes off the creature before him, "Perhaps it would be a good idea to be nice to the locals for more information?"“Oh, black water to that!” Sol rose back to his proper height, “I am a King, King Solrentorro, and it will address me as such. Or it gets nothing,” he says almost challengingly. Or I will be again once i get my paws on Golve Dorath.
Much to Ridley's disappointment, the other did not answer his question. Instead he huffed and puffed and made demands that he had no right to demand. As he put on a display and stood tall, making sure that Ridley knew that he was bigger, Ridley stood patiently waiting, his face unimpressed or bothered, only slightly tinted with the disappointment he felt inside. Instead of reacting to the other male's show, he simply continued to stare with curiosity lighting his eyes. He continued to ponder who might have restored his soul. Was it one of Her chosen ones, or a vagrant? Or, was it one of them?
His paws moved him closer and his gaze shifted away from the lion(?) to the cat(?) that hovered nearby and had spoken into his ear. Whatever he had said had set the creature off once more, only for him to proclaim himself King more than once and turn its wrath back onto Ridley, drawing Ridley's attention back to him as he noticed that it had referred to him as an it instead of a he.
"You are not the king here." Ridley spoke casually as his focus once more drifted from the lion back to the cat. His head tilted the opposite direction it had before as he compared the creature to the various sorts of cactus that existed. If he opened it up, would he find the same water inside this cat that he would a cactus in the desert? His reptilian tail twitched at the tip as his forked tongue snaked forward towards the cactus thing. "and I am not an it." He spoke to the lion, but moved his paws to attempt to make a circle and get a better look at the cactus cat and kept his attention on it. When he repositioned, he lowered his head and body to position himself in a lay, his hind legs tucked under him and his front limbs extended outwards in front. "Was it this that delivered your soul?" He tried again for an answer.
