playing barbies with my friend, maybe they'll find something, maybe not

Lichen let her eyes squeeze shut, feeling the press relieved some of the stress that was building at the forefront of her brain. "You're right." She said, because Aurelle was, as usual. Cursed, sensible, Aurelle. "It smelled good, doesn't that usually mean it tastes good?" She asks, more so in the way of light conversation, opposed to a real question; she'd sniffed and eaten enough foods herself to know the answer to that was, it depends.

Yet, her mind cast back to their den. It was fine for her, but Aurelle would no doubt appreciate something nice for it. She couldn't exactly wrap her head around what, maybe one of those sitting things from the tavern. The chairs? Would Aurelle like a chair? Lichen hadn't noticed Aurelle using one before. "Perhaps, I am just worrying too much, after what happened yesterday." Lichen reasoned, more so for herself than Aurelle. That, was a fair kinder worry than jealousy. "I just don't want us to get hurt for these coins, even if it was just a fluke."

"That's fair, I think," Aurelle said. Yesterday was pretty bad for both of them. "I suppose we could ask if there are other things we could do for coins, if this is a lot of stress on us." It was a big place-- a whole room dedicated to money and eating and buying things. Surely there must be more things to do other than gather things from the surrounding caves.

To Lichen's other question, Aurelle had to think about it. "Sometimes," she answered. "But sometimes things that smell bad taste really good, and things that smell really good taste bad. But if people are going through all this effort to eat and drink there, and it smells good, then I think that must mean the things there taste good, too."

At this point, though, there was a little bit of a sunk cost fallacy going on. Maybe all those other gembound lingered around just because they were too stubborn to admit their effort had been for nothing.

People were like that, after all.

Crinkling her nose, Aurelle said, "there must be some kind of happy medium, otherwise no one would ever go there."

Lichen let out a short huff through her nostrils as she pondered the idea. The reasonable thing to say would be that they'd find out when they got there, but that was out of the question, because then Aurelle would talk to people. Then, Aurelle would possibly make new friends and decide that she didn't want some smelly dragon kicking around and--

No, no. Aurelle wasn't heartless like that. "We'll have to see for ourselves, I suppose." She settled on, reminding herself that Aurelle wasn't like the cruel pictures her mind had conjured.

"And maybe it'll get easier, as we get better at it." Lichen reasoned further, ignoring the other half of her thoughts that were throwing a tantrum over the possibility of Aurelle having to talk to someone. Despite how loud and irritating it was.

"Well, we won't be seeing very much," Aurelle joked, good-naturedly. They weren't exactly The Seers, after all. "But I think you're right. And I think it will get easier!"

"A lot of things are hard when you first do them. Like... it was hard finding fruit yesterday, but now look"-- (she was unaware of the unfortunate phrasing) --"at us now! We'll have more coins than we know what to do with. I bet we could buy breakfast, lunch and dinner at the same time with how many coins we'll have."

She gave Lichen a little nudge with her hip, careful not to throw the dragon too far off balance. "Come on. We'll eat so much tonight that we'll still be too full in the morning to eat."

And off she padded into tunnel N.

"But we can't look at us.." Lichen followed up, the stupid grin clear in her voice, as Aurelle walked into her own joke. But she continued her awful, off kilter toddler walk after Aurelle.

Back to Tunnel N, with the promise of dinner.