Welcome to Gaia! ::

The sun was starting to set on the cliffs of the Onyx Hills, but that didn't really matter to the creatures that inhabited the mysterious system of caves. All except one, whose insatiable curiosity and lack of supervision had him drawing nearer and nearer to the entrances of his kind's vast subterranean playground. Left to his own devices during the unusually long absence of his mother, Noc had adapted well enough to being alone. Of course he could see just fine in the pitch blackness. But the sounds of the outside were alluring to his young ears, which were so used to the flutter and chirp of bats, the drip-drip of water seeping through the earth and out of cracks in the ceilings of the caverns, and the skitter of skinny insectoid legs on the rocks.

Not even after the sun set, his mother had said, was it safe for someone as young as he to go out into the world. But, he was older now, yes? The little buiokynd set one glowing paw after the other, squinting at the far-off pinprick of light that was the entrance to the cave he called home. Tonight was the night he would explore the outside world!

The orange female wouldn't hear much until it was too late, because the next thing either cat would be aware of was the collision, courtesy of Noc himself.

The kitten had waited until the right moment to set foot outside of his cave, when the sun had disappeared far enough beneath the horizon, behind the cliffs, so that the outside light would not hurt his eyes. It was twilight when that happened, the horizon was a soft blue that faded up into the swiftly darkening night sky, a few stars beginning to twinkle up at the very top.

The sight of the sky and the stars and the smell of the outside air had so energized the little creature that he had taken off down the hillside without a second thought, bouncing nimbly off of the rocks as he went, laughing softly to himself, glowing eyes lifted towards the stars. Oh, what a wonderful new place this was! He raced along until, quite abruptly, he collided with something large, and quite soft, letting out a yowl as he sent both of them tumbling down the hillside. Thankfully, there weren't nearly as many rocks so far down, and he rolled to a stop in the grass a ways down, laughing a little as he looked up to see what exactly it was that he'd run into.