ORIGIN

The dog considered Pride's words for a moment, but she remained largely unconcerned. "But we are... smaller, than they are," she said quietly, hobbling after Pride. "We can... hide, and they.. might not notice us, or we might... notice them before they see us."

As the came to the trench, Aster's attention was gripped by the skeleton laying inside. Slowly, the borzoi sat herself down to stare directly at it. It didn't look like what she expected it to, but that didn't mean she wasn't wildly interested.

"Was it.. a thing, once?" She asked Pride, as if thinking, somehow, he would actually know. "How long ago? What did it look like?"

She craned her neck forward, sniffing quietly for a moment, then flicked an ear. She didn't smell much more than ferns and nature and, distantly, prey. She turned her head briefly to Pride, then forward again, staring at the skeleton.

Pride stared down, hide twitching in mild irritation. It bothered him that Aster wasn't taking his words seriously. Anything could leap out, and take them down. It bothered him, too, that the only way she would be proven wrong would be if one of them were genuinely hurt.

Neither ending to this little scenario was good.

With a soft huff he stepped forward, looking down into the trench; he then stepped aside, past Aster and into the thick cover of undergrowth, hiding himself as best he could before lying down in the shade, idly chewing on a few leaves.

"I do not know," he answered, peering over at her. "I have never asked, or known anyone to ask, really." He was just as young as Aster was. He did not have all these answers, any more than she did.

Or perhaps she is... wondering aloud?

He looked out, peering through the gently-shifting leaves into the trench, and considered. "Old enough to have decayed and sunk into the earth. And I suppose larger than its bones, by a little bit. I believe it was a thing."

He pondered, looking it over once more. "How do you think it died?"

She did not, however, respond; and after a time Pride went back to gazing off at the skeleton himself, in distant thought. Aster did this, now and again; he'd give her time.

They were, after all, in no rush.