Gemstone Gallivanting

Kairoh thinks that if there was one place he hated over anywhere else, it's Zevija.

Or, well. Vahl D'sari spits miasma like it's vomiting it's innards, so he supposes he'd rather take the dead catacombs of Zevija any day.

The caverns below the surface are moist with murky sweat, bubbling out of cracks and spitting at him. Kairoh grimaces as a bit of the festering wound of rock at his foot pops like a zit. It pulsates, and he staggers away as it crackles open and exposes a deep, red gash of volcanic rock.

Kairoh digs his paws into the ground. It's a bit petulant, really, but he needs to go further in. It's not like he dropped his shoddy map a couple turns back, either. Not at all.

Blundering on, Kairoh makes his way through the winding tunnels of Zevija. He occasionally passes an occupant, and he thinks that every one seems more shady than the last. Maybe it's just the encroaching madness of a future trapped indefinitely in this stupid set of long-forgotten paths, or maybe the miasma has reached this deep. Kairoh's heard that maybe it originates from wells within the earth, so coming down was just coming down for much longer than he first planned.

"Fuck!" Kairoh shouts as he catches on a rock. He trips ass over paw and onto his face, and even though there's no one around to see him he feels absolutely pathetic. "Fucking stupid tunnels, stupid rocks, stupid fucking Benji!"

Kicking the rock that tripped him kind of hurts, but at least it makes him feel better emotionally. It's stupid. He's stupid, really, for wanting to find a gem to remember a dead family of friends by. It won't do him any good. Certainly won't make him remember any more details that he's lost to time, or replace hate he feels towards them for making him suffer this way.

Kairoh finds no gems that night. Doesn't find any the next, either. But for a week he plunges deeper into the catacombs of a nearly-dead city, exploring the rotten roots of a forgotten tree of metal and earth.

Kairoh goes to Zevija to find ghosts of kits locked away in his fading memory. Goes to find a gemstone to help remember them by, if only for a fleeting, fantastical moment. Goes to receive a gift he knows he can never have.

Just because Kairoh knows he won't find it doesn't mean he can't wish for it. He reasons that that's the point of a gift, really. To become hopeful for something that is so much more achingly good in your mind than it is in real life. Because real life fucking sucks.

(And no one knows that better than Kairoh.)