ORIGIN

Lichen makes a sound before giving it a little crunch. Enough for it to stop moving and not enough to mangle the poor thing, so Aurelle can take it without it wriggling in her bindle. With her jaws free of fish, she speaks. "That's a good start, I think." She hums approvingly.

What was it they needed again? Wood, fish, fruit, peppers, grains and bones? Lichen gives a thoughtful hum. "Perhaps another fruit? Or-- Bones? How fresh do they need to be? Maybe, er, something died nearby." Lichen offers thoughtfully. At least something the mycelia was good at finding was dead things.

She moved a few paces away to shake the water from herself before reaching towards the floor with her snout. Today was a new day, she reminded herself...

This time, the signals throughout the cave unfolded much, much more slowly. The growths on the ceiling were a given, but she was hoping the mycelia had been growing in other places too, somewhere with fruit or something that had perished recently. "There's a few trees, I think. Or perhaps bushes." She relayed with the tilt of her head.

"And something dead, but it's rotten. The mushrooms have already grown on it."

"Haw?" Lichen blurted without thinking, focused on leading the way to the carcass. After a moment of her brain rewinding through what Aurelle had said, she speaks again. " They won't mind." Lichen hums.

She settles next to the deer carcass, blindly touching through all the ick and nastiness as if it were just another day at the office. Working with rot so closely left very little to be upset about, especially as an opportunistic predator. "They eat anything. As long as it feeds them, dead skin, dead meat, dead leaves. Eventually it all returns to the soil or the network. Then allows them to create spores, so they can make more of themselves. I think."

With careful claws she plucks any mushrooms growing around the leg of the deer, the hats leaving pinky spore smears on her pads; not that either of them could probably see it. "But we shouldn't eat these." Lichen explains. Then, with a grunt of effort, yanks the leg bone free. She pauses to give it a sniff, before turning to Aurelle.

"Could you clean this?"

"Ah, no. Put it in the shawl." Lichen nodded, not that either could see the gesture. She quickly busied herself with retrieving a second thigh bone from the deer, as she assumed it had more than just a single leg. Removing the growths and relocating them within the ribs of the carcass. "Maybe they'll make it hot in the hot-food place." She added excitedly, her voice bright. Though apparently the irony of giving over the bones, just to buy them back but hot, was lost on her.

It took a little more, but once the other leg bone could be wrenched from the carcass, she turned around with it in hand. "And this one, too." She added, though her voice sounded wet, as if she was drooling.

All this tasty food and a lot of restraint not to eat it immediately.

Lichen herself, was still disgusting. It was for the best that Aurelle didn't try to sense anything. Her front claws covered in spores, bacteria and whatever else was living on that deer carcass. Absolutely nasty.

"What are we missing?"

Lichen lowered her head towards the carcass, surely with a connection right next to them opposed to slightly under the soil, it would be easier than ever to find the tree-bush-whatever it was's again. Her feelers reached out to gingerly tip-tap around the ground of the carcass.

Rising to her feet she thinks to ask, "how many coins does it cost for a hot-deer?" It hadn't crossed her mind that anything would cost more than one coin; or that they were trading these items in for more than one coin each...

The network was easy to tap into, but not so eager to please her after rudely relocating part of the network to elsewhere. However, it did light up with the same signals, something living, surrounded by lots of little dead tissues. A tree or shrub that had shed a few leaves, or fruit if they were lucky.

Thankfully, she had the foresight to figure out Aurelle probably didn't want her nasty, spore covered bits touching her. "This way," she said, wandering in the direction of the potential tree-bush. Making her feet scuff across the cave floor to make enough noise that her footfalls were easy enough to follow

Lichen's throat makes a low rumble of agreement. Then, up she goes, back up the tree to hunt for goodies. "How do they know when we've woken up?" Lichen asks from her treetop perch, feeling around for any fruits within the tree.

The whole thing seemed utterly ridiculous to her, new foods seemed wonderful, but it cost more depending on how long you've been awake seemed needlessly complicated. Wouldn't it be easier to let them choose from the selection or just switch when they ran out of that food?

This whole food business was a tougher thought to chew on than Lichen ever expected. Well, as long as Aurelle got what she wanted, how it happened was less of a concern to her.

Her feelers reach outwards towards the top of the tree, feeling branches for anything dangling from them...

...After passing over a few that didn't seem quite right, a few too small and not quite ready, she touched something of a decent size. After some more careful feeling around, the item had a smooth skin and smelled sickly sweet. It had to be some sort of fruit, she leaned up to carefully snip the stem of it with the tip of her beak. "I think we've found.. cave mango." Lichen called as she clutched the fruit against her chest. The uncertainty in her tone made it seem like she'd absolutely made that up on the spot.

With the fruit in claws, she began to descend from the tree.