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Hue had always been drawn to the north, by a pull lodged solidly in his chest. Wherever he walked, his feet turned north -- so north he went, listening, ever listening. When he stopped to rest at night, he listened, but there was always something missing.

The drone of the cicadas was, he had come to learn, a pale mist of blue at the lower edge of his vision, buzzing like the sound itself. The song of a lonely songbird was sometimes blue, sometimes yellow, and sometimes those foreign colors, pinwheeling brightly across his vision. The stories he heard were foreign colors, too, words and song rising and falling in time with the starbursts he saw. He listened to the stories, and the news, and the rumors -- the whispers of something up north, something coming, something lost, something found, and he knew that he was being called.

One day, after however many days it had taken for him to wind his way north, he found that the ground went up. Up he went, climbing steadily, and at the top, he finally found that lonely songbird. To him, she appeared to be different shades of the same color -- so he named her Monochrome, as he stood on top of the hill and cast his eyes north, over the bleak land, seeking, straining, struggling to see.

Anticipation stirred in his bones, some hope both ancient and new yearning to surface.

Not yet. He climbed back down, slowly, back to the great tree he had picked to rest in. It wasn't ready yet.

But the next morning, for the first time, he sang songs of his own, creating the strange colors that others had always inspired in him. He sang of fierce, wild joy, and of friends lost, and friends found, and let his voice roll over the waking swamp.

With the last words rolling through the branches and over the sands, Hue stills, watching the northern hills with his pale eyes. To him, his eyes are the same color as the rest of him, ivory -- but when he turns his head, pale green eyes fix on the doe moving up towards him. He can distinguish orange hair and fur, but the rest of her seems much like him -- bands of pale yellow.

Perhaps she is merely passing through. He remains still but for his eyes, tracking her as she approaches. "What news from the south?" he asks, once it becomes clear that she isn't just on her way.

Perhaps Hue will even be beginning to open his mouth to reply--that is how close the next event cuts into the statement the doe had made.

From the clustered treeline at Kismet's back a shape erupts, driven into a frenzy by some unknowable fear or motivation. In general form it is something like a Kimeti--but different, and with startling, unglowing eyes like a wild animal. Surely its behaviour seems animalistic as well, given that the sight of the strangers makes it--her, it appears--check in sudden terror. At its heels is a beautiful feline creature that moves as smoothly as a snake in water. The doe--if doe it is--speaks, and it speaks in the language of the Kimeti, filtered through a strange accent that makes the words hard to decipher.

"You. I have to tell them you are here."

And then it bolts past them with an astonishing speed--a speed even the most fleet-footed Kimeti would have trouble matching--and a surefootedness that would put the most nimble cat to shame, and when it reaches the lip of Hue's outcropping it leaps from it as though there were no drop at all, with all the confidence of a foal leaping from a log, the cat following neatly. From the sound of it, it lands securely, as well, and then there is the sound of hoofbeats and paws fading into the cracked mudflats below. Should the pair be pursued, they will already be dimishing into the horizon.

At the sudden commotion behind her, Kismet whirls on her feet, turning to look at the strange creature before her, brows drawing sharply together as it, she, speaks. There is no time to reply at all, for just as quickly as the creature is there, it is already leaving.

She chases to the edge of the outcropping behind Hue, watching the shape of it and her feline companion disappear into the distance. For a few moments, she is too shocked to reply to Hue's seemingly calm response to what just happened.

"I.." she falters, stepping back from the edge of the rock, "What was that? Did you see her eyes? They didn't glow like ours-- I've never seen anything like her before. And that cat she had with her, too." She blinks, shuddering a little at the thought of the un-glowing eyes.

Still a little shaken from the whole experience, Kismet remains quiet for a few moments as she stares off into the direction of the dry sands where the creature had disappeared to. So, it wasn't true that it was empty wasteland out there, after all. If those others lived out there somewhere, then there had to be food and water for them to live off of. But why had she seemed so afraid, indeed?

"..I don't know. Something's going on, though... I can feel it. I'm not sure that I like it, though. What has caused these creatures to suddenly appear in the Swamp? They look a lot like us.. and yet not. Distant ancestors, perhaps? Who knows..." She trails off, almost thinking more to herself than speaking to the buck. Her gaze is thoughtful, her mouth pinched slightly in thought before she turns away from the dust and sand to gaze at the other Kimeti. "I'm Kismet, my swan there is Mystic. Perhaps.... when the sun starts to go down, I'd like to head out there-- see if we might find anything. It won't be so damn hot out, then."

Kismet nods, faintly, but it seems distracted as she looks out over the plains. What was that strange creature? It had spoken a mere spattering of words, and then rushed off in a hurry before either of them could so much as blink.

She shakes her head to clear it, and turns to regard Hue more fully, her attention once more focused.

"We'll go when the moon rises, then. It'll be too dark, otherwise, and by then it will have cooled off some." She sighs softly, and lies down there on the bluff overlooking the land which seems much more.. empty than the swamp. A shiver courses through her at the thought of all that emptiness, and for a moment she doubts her plan to travel there. Then, before the doubt can take root, she shoves it aside with all her stubborness of will.

"...Perhaps more of them will come, eventually. She spoke... of telling others. About us, I presume. Though why she was in such a hurry..."