A soft croon, almost a hum, poured from the creat... no, poured from Croix's lips.  A happy sigh.  Not alone.  Croix was not alone anymore.  There were other creatures like herself.  Maybe not here, maybe not now, but somewhere.
        And they stood upright.  And spoke.  Covered themselves with ... clothing. As thoughts continued to swirl in Croix's mind, she absentmindedly reached out, ightning fast, catching the mice unawares.  Croix nibbled on them delicately before moving on to the vreech beetles.  All the while thinking, thinking.  She didn't know how it was happening but she felt the shape of her thoughts losing their animal instincts, their 'in the present' intensity, their.... savage innocence.  In their place, organized structures were being built upon the foundation of Thari.  Croix stood... and bumped her head on the roof of her den.
        Green eyes looked around.  Before, the place had been a secure tight zone of safety.  Now it seemed small and ramshackle.  Haphazard.  Not right for the new being that stood inside it.  Restlessness grabbed her.  Croix felt that she would choke if she spent another minute inside the confining animal spaces of her former home.
        In a burst of energy, Croix sped out of the den and into the world.  The girl stood perched upon a tall stack of unbelievably filthy litter.  Her new eyes took in the reaches of her existence with astonishment.
        Before -- darkness, light, heat, cold, scents, dangers, threats, food, and things of no interest had been the entirety of her universe.  Now new eyes beheld the shape of the world.  The girl's world was a garbage pit.
        Croix's growing understanding shaped the geography around herself into piles of rubbish and refuse.  Discarded, decaying, broken and useless.  Poisons and toxins flowed and filtered in the air.  Predators and prey both were swarming scavengers, scuttling through the twilight of an abandoned world.
        But even as realization brought horror, Croix's more civilized mind also picked out the strange eerie beauty of the scene before her.  Phosphorescent insects danced in the colored eddies.  Occasional flashes from chemical reactions or malfunctioning circuitry brightened the dimness with quixotic fancy.
        And above, where her animal eyes had never looked, above in the sky hung enormous magnificent jewels.  No, not jewels: cities.  Fantastic arabesques of colored crystal, shaped with intelligence and artistry.  They were everywhere,
catching the sun in glinting rainbows -- and denying that very light to Croix's world.  Even as Croix watched she picked out a scattering of tumbling shapes falling from the rim of a far city... and knew how her world of garbage had been
created.
        That meant.... that meant that all the things that were broken and filthy around her.  They all existed up there, new, clean and perhaps... wonderful.  Croix's new mind gave her new emotions -- curiosity, desire... and ambition.
        Perhaps creat... beings like Mandor, and Merlin... and herself.  Perhaps beings like that did not live down here among the detritus but up there, in the heavens.  If that was true, then Croix could not remain here among the animals, the creatures and the crawling insects.  If that was true, then Croix too belonged among the clouds.
        Yearning filled Croix with an intensity that brought tears to her emerald eyes.  She didn't want to be alone anymore.  The tie with Merlin, Croix tested it.  It was still there.  A miracle and a wonder to her.  But now she wanted more.  She wanted to talk to other beings, other peoples.  She wanted to share the thoughts and mind that Mandor had given her.  She wanted... so much that she didn't even know what.
        The girl squirmed uncomfortably.  Her emotions felt strange to her.  And they were doing strange things to her -- physically.  Croix had always been adaptive.  There was no other way to survive in her hostile world.  Need had brought responses from her body.  Hunger had given her the ability to eat... anything.  Fear had brought legs and speed.  Ferocity -- claws, teeth, mandibles.  Croix was used to that.  Her body would change to meet her needs.  But now, now her body was changing to meet her desires.
        Croix felt her wings grow once more.  Usually they only grew in fight or flight situations, but she was not threatened now.  Merely.... longing.  Mandor's words returned to her.  The ability to create servants of blood.  The ability to change into others to gain their abilities.  The ability to change into a ... creature of power.  With language and desire, he had also given her power.  But that power was as new to her as her thoughts.  While she knew that she could fly to the cities on wings of white, she also knew that she didn't yet know how.
        Croix cried her frustration aloud.  Her howl a return to the animal within her.  The sound, echoing weirdly off of the stratus of debris around her, frightened the girl, badly.  And she bit the cry off.  No, she wouldn't howl anymore.  She would speak.  Like a person.
        And would solve her own dilemma.  Like a person.
        Croix's bright green eyes looked at the floating cities once more.  This time with intelligent cunning, taking in all their details and nature.  Quickly she picked out that the cities did not indeed float free, but were -- in fact -- guyed to the very earth she stood on.  Long, delicate, filamented cables reached down from the shining and ethereal cities to plunge beneath the debris.  Indeed, one cable was anchored fairly nearby, perhaps just a day's walk from where the girl stood.
        Croix looked up at the city it reached toward.  A confection of sapphires and cobalts, blue against a blue sky.  Shaped like a cloud stretched in a high wind.  Very well, the city of sapphire would be her first.  With a determined tread, Croix set out for the anchor and the destiny that awaited her at the top of the cable.
 
 

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