ORIGIN

The baby orangutan pushed up as she listened, waddling around and prodding at the dirt and moss. It wasn't that she was losing interest--on the contrary, she was fascinated, but her attention was wandering. Perhaps surprisingly though, despite her newly hatched status, she looked up a moment later and proved that she'd been listening, too. "We... give new names," she suggested, with another bright grin. 'Caves' was a foreign concept to her, so she simply accepted it; likely, never would it seem strange, to her, that they were not beneath a sky.

Then she wandered a little, offering a hand to Nymph. "Step on?" she asked. Simple words, barely correct in their enunciation but their meaning was clear. "We... go?"

Where to wasn't clear--whether Lumut immediately planned a trek across the caves, or just to walk across this clearing. Maybe she just wanted to explore more than her immediate surroundings. But then she began to waddle, half crabbing, toward the nearest tree. Instinct prompted her and she squinted at the trunk, then craned her head back to stare into the canopy. "...Up?" she asked, and pointed up, peering to Nymph, questioningly.

She tried, softly, to emulate the question--feeling out the words and their meanings. "What should... Nymph... Lumut... name this... cave," she echoed slowly. And then she looked around. Nymph was fluttering up for a branch moments later; Lumut started off at a slow knuckle-walk, childishly awkward, for the tree.

She reached up, gripping the lowest branch, carefully pulling herself up--but it was clear she had no real strength yet. She was a fresh hatch, her muscles weak as if atrophied, and she paused on the second branch and hugged the tree, leaning in there and resting. "...Hard," she admitted, then squinted and tried a different word. "Diff... i... ful. Cul." She shrugged it off--close enough--then looked around.

"Mist... tree. Misttree." It was a thoughtful pairing of words, and she peered over at Nymph, questioning. One hand came loose from the tree, gesturing at Lumut's own chest, then off around them. "Misttree?" she suggested. "Name... cave? Misttree?" The fact that Mist-tree sounded like "mystery" seemed to be purely a coincidence.

At length she turned, ambling up the tree, clambering with an oblivious child's nature--forgetting she'd just had company.