The Hunt for Home

[The Dreamer]

Continued from "This World is Wild, But is Not the Forest"

Emerald tumbled out of the portal, hitting the ground with a rather hefty thump. She took a few moments, trying to gain at least a sitting position with which to gather herself. That trip through gate was much rougher on her than she'd imagined.

Instant transportation huh? Not what i expected from portal between points such as this. She paused, spitting out a mouth full of dirt she'd collected during her spill out the gate. Then again, most everything I've seen so far isn't anything close to what i'd expect. While on Earth, there were plenty of teleportation pads across the planet, and the intra-planetary network was strong and well, it was nothing like the experience she had just had. All trips between pads, while much shorter in travel time than walking to your destination, still took a few minutes to transport you there. In between, you floated, more or less, through tunnel of sorts in the fabric of space. this was nothing like that though. Literally, near instant transportation. Quite a marvel in Emerald's eyes, as an instant teleportation between two points took so much more energy to perform than could practically be done, and yet, she had just herself experience it without exploding into the atoms that make up her being, or decimating the area around the target destination. Marvelous, she thought, turning towards the gate.

She looked the gate over again, closely. It looked nearly the same as it did on the other side, in the vast white space she'd essentially been dumped in when she enter this... world? Plane? Dimension? She still wasn't quite sure what this place was.

She put a hand to her forehead, a reaction to an intense pain she felt. Her head ached as she thought more about what this world might be. She could see a flash in her mind, a flash of white light and a memory, not a whole one, but of a small, child-like figure, and a word came to her tongue as her head throbbed.

"Omniverse."

Omniverse? Where did that come from? She thought, raising her hand to her head again as it ached. It must have something to do with that figure i remember... Fuck, i don't even remember what he looked like. Just as soon as the image had come to her, it had faded just as quick, along with the pain she was feeling.

"So, the Omniverse then," it felt very... correct as she said it, like it fit exactly in the place of all the confusion she felt about where exactly she had ended up. Although, the more she tried to remember, the deeper she dug to find that image she had seen, the further it seem to pull away from her grasp.

She wiped the sweat from her brow, Wow, that took more of a toll than I had thought. She was breathing a bit harder, harder than she should be for only sitting still. I suppose I will take that and put it near the top of my list of questions so far. Cause i'll be damned if I sit for long without know what force of nature, or man, dragged me from my forests and dumped me here. She looked around her at the greenery around her. She marveled at it's sight.

This is nothing like what I've seen on Earth. Holy Shit. It certainly wasn't even close to the forests on Earth, even the more tropical ones she had been to. It's so... She jumped up from her seated position, still a bit on the wobbly side from the trip though the gate, and moved towards a nearby tree at the edge of the clearing. Emerald awed in it presence. It was such much larger than anything like that on Earth, and she could feel with a touch to it's trunk how alive it was, and how many things lived in it's branches. At the same time, she could feel, even hear the humming of the tree from inside it. It rang with the same hum that she had experienced in the vast white space on the other side of the gate. Her skin began to shimmer with a rainbow color, just like earlier when she drank from the ever-changing fountain where she had awoke, and her gem began to hum as well, perfectly in sync with the tree.

"This place," she looked around at all the other trees that edged the clearing, and into the sky above, birds flying high in the sky, and then back at the tree she had her hand on still. "It's absolutely marvelous. Everything here is connected, as well as connected to all that I felt before, on the other side of that gate. She looked over the the gate again, and while similar in look to what it had been when she step into it, and when she arrived, it had changed. The vines that coiled around the sides continuously moved, loosened, and re-tightened themselves snugly around it again. It seems that things on this side of the gate are ever so slightly more alive that those on the other side of it.She found it intriguing how a plant could even stand the spatial ripping that occurred when transporting from one point to another like that, so much so that it could continue to grow and thrive thorough and on the other side of the gate. Amazing.

[The Dreamer]

A place so full and brimming with life such as this, it must be full of secrets and wonders, she thought, not to mention some exotic prey animals. She licked her lips at the thought of taking down an animal, and experiencing the taste of it's flesh and blood between her teeth. Gems like herself did not require any sort of food or nourishment, in any sense of the word, but that did not mean one was unable to eat, as well as enjoy, the food created by the races of this world. Emerald herself preferred to hunt for her own meals, it allowed her to feel closest to the natural cycle she had come to respect. Everything in this world had a purpose, including the animals that died everyday so that another may eat. Death was something that she understood and respected. Just because she, as a Gem, had no worries of ever dying like the humans or animals of Earth do, that did not mean it was to be trivialized. There had been humans in her past who seemed to completely disregard death, as though they themselves would never succumb to the end of their part in the cycle, and Emerald could never understand that; she could never understand how one would so abhorrently refuse to fulfill their role in the world's cycle, for without and end, how could there be new beginnings. Emerald felt lucky to be able to witness this over many years of her own life, and many complete cycles. She was grateful even.

Emerald turned to the forest around her, looking at the trees that edged the clearing, examining anything that may guide her way through this vast, tangled green. There was not much to be seen, outside of the numerous trees of extraordinary size that lined the clearing's edge, and those that stood behind them. Many stood so close together, and grew so large and full, that it began hard to see deep into the forest past them, often no more than three to four trees deep. Emerald spun where she stood as she continued her examination of the tree line, and as she did, her eyes were drawn to a small divide between the trees that dotted the clearing's edge.

Making her way to the divide at the Southern most tip of the clearing, Emerald noticed that there was what seemed to be a pathway between the trees and brush. A trail in the forest? Quite an odd place to go hiking. Emerald had knowledge of hiking from her time in the forest on Earth, it was a leisurely activity some humans enjoyed. Although, she was confused as to why any human in their right mind would choose this place of all places to take a leisurely stroll. She could feel in the air and in the ground how alive this place was, and with an abundance of life always comes an abundance of predatory creatures. Most humans tend to get attack by them. Dumb humans.

She inspected the trail more closely, and could easily see that it was not used very often, or by any larger amount of travelers. The path was purely just dirt, and spots of grass and flowers dotted the trail as she looked down it. If there was any amount of sustained traffic, there would be no vegetation at all, even for a dirt path. Continued use of a trail by humans lead straight to the destruction of the vegetation that once lived along it. Humans could never respect the plants around them, not enough to even let some live, so this was an easy marker of traffic volume.

She continued down the trail, curious as to where it lead, and why it was the only one that lead away from what she assume was the entrance to this verse. She noticed how the trees around her were unmarked, no cuts or scratches or patches missing bark, and this warmed her heart. The people who travel this path must understand nature and respect it. Good. In her experience, she would witness humans trample through a unblemished part of nature, and tear it to shreds, as if it was there own home and property. They would show it no respect, and often mark the trees with words and tear the plants from the ground. This was disrespectful to the land that provided them life, and infuriated her to no end. She gripped her fists tight together at the thought. It truly was the one thing that made her lose control.

And the last time that happened... the flesh between her teeth was not that of a prey animal.

[The Dreamer]

The following is a flashback/memory of a previous time in Emerald's life, before her arrival in the Omniverse.

It happened a long time ago, not to long after her emergence from the Kindergarten. Emerald had spent a lot of time figure out how to live in this world, the only home she had and would ever know, but still a strange one to her, as this is not Homeworld, not that she had anything more than the name to label the place her creators had come from. Still very young, in terms of a Gem lifetime, Emerald was quite unstable at times, and did not see it necessary to practice much in the way of self-control. She live amongst animals, so why not act as one? As so she did. She roamed the land, acting as any predator of Earth would, killing prey animals and eating her fill, and she was happy with this life. If may have been the only lifestyle she knew, but it felt right. She knew this is how she wanted to live.

She continued on in this manner for many, many years, at least one to two lifespans of the average human, and as the times changed, so did the world around her. Forests began to shrink as Humans began to cut more and more, and encroach further into the places she and other animals called home. Humans even began to come into her homes and kill other animals. While this had always been something she had dealt with, it began more and more frequent at one time in her life, to the point that she had to actively avoid encountering the Humans in the forest she had be living in at the time.

While extremely frustrated with the Humans as they move further and further into the forests she called home, she felt no ill will towards them, as Earth was there world, and she was merely a guest on the planet, her species being born elsewhere in the stars. This was until one fatal day.

Most Human hunters only came for what they need to survive, taking a prey animal or two, then leaving not to return until the following year, if at all. Other times though, there would be Humans who came to kill creature purely for sport, leaving their victims to die painfully and slowly. Such disrespect for those she loved did not sit well with Emerald. It was more than that though, it caused feelings of anger and resentment to grow within her, and grow they did until the day she snapped.

There was a family of three traveling through the woods she called home at the time. The adult male toted 2 rifles strapped to his back, she presumed he was the husband of the adult female and the father of the young son that followed behind him. Emerald followed them in the form of a wolf from a good distance, as to not be noticed. She began this practice so that she may end the suffering of any animal the Humans may leave to die. the father eagerly went on and on to his son about the fun and joys of hunting, and how it would make him a man. Emerald disagreed strongly with this, no amount of killing would speed up a creatures development into maturity, it was such an arbitrary ideal.

The continued through the woods, and stumbled upon a small female deer in a clearing, accompanied by her young, both grazing without care in the world, and without noticing this family of Humans eyeing them for the deaths. It was one thing to end the life of a strong, fully grown male who had lived his life, but it was another thing altogether to end the life of a female, especially one with young to raise. Emerald hoped the family would only admired the deer, and not set to kill them.

She was wrong.

The father grabbed his son, pulling him quickly over to stand in front of him. Grabbing the rifles off his back, the father ready the gun to be fired, and quickly handed it to his son. The son looked at his father, seemingly unwilling to kill the animals, but the father had other ideas. He took the rifle from his son's hands, stood behind the son and gripped the rifle over his sons hands, making the son hold the weapon. He usher him to shoot the animals, anger in his expressions, but the boy would not. So, instead of pushing the boy any further, the father ripped the rifle from the boy's hands, took aim at the mother deer, and pulled the trigger. Shooting it in the side, not a fatal wound, but wound enough that the deer feel and could not move. It would surely die.

With excitement, the father hurried his family over the the dying deer, it's young still standing beside it over it's mother. He encourage excitement from the boy, but there was no to be had for him, so the father grabbed a knife from his belt and took his anger out on the deer. He brutalized and mutilated the still living deer, until it stopped struggling and fell limp.

Emerald watched this in horror, never having seen such unbridled brutality from a Human against a defenseless animal. It dredge up the darkness, most brutal feeling of hatred and anger the Gem had ever felt, pushing her to show the father exactly what he had done to the creature. She had never attacked a human before, but there was nothing stopping her this time. This human had pushed to far beyond what she could allow. Emerald bolted towards the father, snarling as a wolf, intent on payback for the creature he had just brutalized.

Darting past the woman and child, she pounced, mouth open and teeth bared, at the man. He swung his knife at her, striking her a number of times, cutting rather deep, but she did not care. She could not feel it. All she could feel was the blood pulsing in her ears, and the blood in her mouth as she tore open the mans neck, ripping flesh from bone as the other two humans screamed in terror. The life left the man's body, and he struggled no more.

Emerald turned to the other two members of this monster's family, still snarling and baring her teeth, but she saw no darkness in their eyes. She only saw fear and sadness. Sadness for the other member of their family. Neither one even had a gun in their hands, both weapons still laying on the ground next to a tree where the father had dropped them in excitement.

Emerald stopped. Her anger receded. All that was left was an empty feeling. She didn't rebalance the cycle with her actions, but instead perverted it, and changed the course of the lives of these two humans before her. She turned from them, seeing the young deer run to a male deer just in the distance, running off together.

She felt mortified and the destruction one action caused. She ran from that place. Ran and ran and ran.

She would no longer act as solely as an animal, as she was not one, she was more than that. She would act for the animals. She would do what she could to help the natural cycle continue unobstructed.

This is the end of the flashback/memory.

Emerald had summoned her emerald Beast Gloves mistakenly while she recalled that day. Flashing them away, she brought a hand to her eyes and wiped teardrops from them.

That was a very dark day for her. One she hopes never happens again.

[The Dreamer]

Emerald whipped her head up, looking forward and down the trail that wound through the forest ahead of her. No need to dwell on past mistakes. She cast the thoughts about that dark day from her mind, trying to rid herself of the overwhelming guilt that always followed flashbacks. Emerald was not one who liked to dwell on the past. Once on had learned what they needed from past mistakes, those dark moments could be thrown from daily thoughts, as they could not be changed and dwelling on them all the time would do nothing than cause more pain.

She wandered down the path more, taking in the forest around her and the life she felt from every direction. It brought a smile to her lips; places like this were what she lived for, they're what she chose to live in. No stress from the world the humans make for themselves, nothing but the quiet forest and the creatures that thrive within it. Places like this are where she belonged.

The path to wherever this trail was headed lead quite a ways, and after walking quite a distance from the portal that brought Emerald to this part of the world, she shifted into animal form to hasten her travel. She choose the form of a greyhound, one of the humans canine companies, and one she sometimes saw in the forests, chasing game with human masters in tow. While not one of her usual forms, she chose it to fit her needs. The strength of the average greyhound complimented her own in terms of speed, and this form allowed her to move down the path to her unknown destination at greater speed than she could in a humanoid form. Two extra legs does help.

She barreled down the trail full speed, putting most everything she had into her long, graceful greyhound legs, eager to reach the end of this trail and find what it was that lie ahead of her in her journey through this world.

[The Dreamer]

Continued to "Welcome to Ambrosia!"