The bear's eyes certainly peered up, small and dark under heavy brows, to look at the other fish. The cub had caught his own, and Sergei was tempted by it, but didn't try to take it. He had his own, and his was his, and Almos' was Almos'.

Still chewing on bits of his own, he spoke.

"Hold tight. Sometimes they flop. Flop back into the water, away." Another strip of meat from his dead fish, carefully-pinned between incisors. Then he pulled the entire remaining scrap into his jaws, chewing, his ears rotating idly as he looked back along the shore. Everything was still calm, empty but for the two of them, so he glanced back to the cub--and then turned back to the water.

"Some are big. Some are smaller. Small. These are small." Sergei had little in the way of any parental instinct, and felt no responsibility for Almos or his training. But he spoke nonetheless, indifferently, of what he knew. He had no reason to be hostile, and had already forgotten the cub's attempt to take his food.

He lowered his head, lifting a forepaw to slowly scratch behind one ear, and licked his lips. Dark eyes travelled back out over the water.

Slowly he waded back in, standing chest-deep and watching the depths for any sign of fish.

Many Gembound could have given Almos more direction. Most would have, perhaps, encountered groups, or even call themselves part of a family in some part of the cave or other.

Almos was unfortunate in this regard, with Sergei. The bear had had exactly three encounters with other Gembound in his life. The first was a horse who had helped him a little, helped him learn to fish when first he hatched. The second, however, had been a black creature approaching him in a wall of whispering shadows--and he'd fled; the third had been a white snake who promised him safety, but vanished he knew not where.

After that he had made his own way--reason enough, perhaps, for his reticent and somewhat feral behavior. It wasn't that he was aggressive, exactly (though of course an adult, male brown bear would be a little snappy, from time to time). He just had little experience with others.

For awhile, standing staring at the water, he thought about Almos' question. His gaze drifted.

"No," he answered, at last. Then seemed to change his mind, hesitating. As if confused. "Yes? Met a--horse, once. Far from here," he added, and then--perhaps the only guidance the cub was liable to receive--he nodded his shaggy head off toward the tunnel that led from Fornax.

"Long tunnel. Hard to climb. It can kill you. Cold. Hard." He remembered Tunnel M, remembered traversing it as a half-grown bear. It was a mile or more long, steeply-sloped, bitter cold and full of jagged outcrops and overhangs. It had been quite like climbing a mountain, and it was the reason--well, that and the warm water and plentiful fish--that he hadn't left Fornax since.

"Other caves, past there," he went on. Then he seemed to become distracted, lowering his head again to nudge around in the water.

The bear shook himself, water spraying from his thick coat as he pulled himself fully onto shore. The strange, white cub hadn't answered, and so--with little more than a half-absent glance back--Sergei turned and made his way off.

He felt no need to force conversation, and if the cat did not want to speak, well, so be it. He had food to find. With a thoughtful rumble he paced away, loose stones shifting underfoot, water streaming from his fur.

The brown bear ambled slowly away, off over the shore of the island, and out of sight.