"A tree! -Uhh," he went on, still trying out this whole unfamiliar "conversation" thing, "they're... nice? They teach me things! Like how to find food and use magic and what the caves are like?" He was a little questioning, as if wondering if he'd missed anything. He'd hate to do that; his strange little family was beloved!

"An algator?" Wicker tried, slightly botching the pronunciation. "What's that? -I'm a horse!" which was wildly incorrect, but he didn't know that.

Lior's assurances that Wicker was special bloomed an unfamiliar sort of warmth in his chest, one he'd never experienced before and didn't quite know what to do with. Nobody'd really come up and just complimented him; it felt nice, he supposed, if a little awkward. "-Thanks! You're special too! You're green," he went on, which wasn't entirely right either, but it was close enough; "and you have lots of teeth!"

That was a compliment--right?

Then he blurted the other thing that'd been trailing along in his mind ever since he'd wandered off from Eridanus--"Do you wanna go on an adventure!?"

Lior made an excellent point--Wicker found himself frozen in place as his blank mind raced to remember what a 'horse' was. "It's me," he agreed, at last. But he didn't give up that easily; his vague mental image was given a jumpstart with one single fact: "Horses have hooves!" He lifted up one foot, which ended in a small, sort-of-hooflike wooden-hybrid stub. "So... if it has hooves, it's a horse!"

It was just logical.

And as for adventure-?

Excitement sped the beat of his heart as he considered. "Oh... we could... find a new cave! Or poke around in the holes, here?" (He'd seen some divots in the moss, and wondered if anything good might be hidden inside.) "Or we could... see if there's anything in that water... or climb the ledges back there! Or find a monster to defeat?!" he added, prancing in place now.

He left it up to Lior to pick, or even to veto them all; he'd never done an adventure before, himself!

'Horses are so diverse!' Lior's sentiment lingered in Wicker's faintly confused mind. Diverse was a word that, for whatever reason, didn't spark recognition; so he assumed--given the alligator's cheerful tone--that it must be some kind of compliment. So, without asking, he just blurted out what seemed a polite response: "I bet alligators are diverse, too!" -and blithely moved on.

Lior's question was more important. Where should they look?

"Um," he started, which wasn't exactly decisive.

Then he closed his eyes, mischief taking him, and pranced in a circle. And kept circling, until he was dizzy and laughing. When he opened his eyes, staggering a little (his head was swimming!) he found himself facing the south wall of the cave and its many ridges.

"-Maybe there's something hidden in those?" he suggested, and took a few (stumbling) steps before turning to peer hopefully at Lior.

Once they'd made their way to the wall, Wicker fell still to watch Lior try (and fail) to climb. "Oh, wait!" he cried, shaking his fibrous mane. "There might not be a monster in there. I have, uh, magic--I can use it to check!" he insisted.

Wicker buckled down a little, concentrating, tiny foal tail swishing behind him.

His magic picked something out--something, but he wasn't sure what it was--higher up on the ledges. Most likely it was just some small bug, or spider, or even a bat; it wasn't big, in any case. But Wicker was a child on an adventure, so-

"There is a monster up there," he told Lior, tone hushed and eyes wide.

Wicker'd never planned an ambush, before--he'd never done much of anything, really; he was just too young. So at Lior's suggestion, he sort of nodded in a wise (but very dumb) way, as if fully agreeing that this was the best approach.

He had no idea if it might be, or not, and he definitely had no other plans.

"Okay," he whispered loudly, the rasp to his voice far more pronounced.

He glanced at Lior, eyes widening a little as the alligator seemed to just vanish. "Whoa," he said, but then blinked as he remembered the plan. "Oh, right! -Uh. Hey!" he called up, stepping a few paces away to give Lior some space to come in from behind when the fearsome monster surely showed itself.

"Hey! You, up there, come down! Uh, come and fight us-?" he glanced toward Lior uncertainly, as if to ask if he were doing all this right.