Kimera shook her head, "It doesn't. Not after it comes away from the bird, though they do get worn out after a while."

She looked up into the trees, tail flicking idly, "My father taught me about most of this. He lives mostly in comfort, but me? I like it out here in the sort of... I dunno, wilds? Yeah I go back to him because I love him, he's my dad, but I've never been anybody to settle down."

Yeah she was oversharing whoops.

Kimera stood and started to pace, restless, the complete opposite of Kala, not very content to just stand or sit around. She needed to move, to do stuff!

"So uh... do you do anything for fun?", she asked, watching bird fly overhead.

@Kala

In the least malicious way possible, Kala did not care about Kimera rambling and oversharing. It did as any half-mute creature liked to do; it listened instead, silent, ears flicking quietly.

It had no concept of what the wilds were versus what living in comfort was supposed to be, and it decided it did not care to know, either. When it did speak it was to correct-- they was not what it had meant. "The skin," it rumbled, drawing the last syllable out for no reason. "Not... the feathers. Skin... rots."

Briefly, it stretched, readjusting its body, getting comfortable in the mud. It only had the vaguest idea of what a father was and that Kala themselves did not have one, and it had an even vaguer idea of what 'settling down' was, which was what Kala was doing-- relaxing, almost napping.

And it knew that Kimera was definitely doing whatever the opposite of that was as it watched her pace back and forth. The feeling of curiosity finally found itself prickling down the kaiju's back. "Why are you... moving?" Surely, she was wasting energy she could be using for hunting?

Then, a new concept. Fun. It had no idea what the fuck this was supposed to mean.

Its mind twisted this word-- this whole sentence --through its mind for a while. It tried to grasp the definition through the words around it, but 'fun' was not 'survival.'

Unless it could be.

"I hunt," it said. "I... swim. And I sleep." This was, in essence, an exact list of everything it did-- all of it was for the sake of survival. Surely, there was something fun to be found in there.

@Kimera

Kimera peered over, "Yeah they do. Feather-rot, nasty thing. Sometimes if you get wet or muddy and don't clean off you get these nasty patches of sickness that spread all over and make your feathers rot. I've seen it on birds and I've made sure to keep mine as clean as possible."

She brushed at the rooster feathers on her chest, white with bands of black, a sliver of her gemstone peeking through. She'd never had feather-rot herself but it didn't look very nice judging by the lessers she'd found with it.

Kimera stopped pacing and looked at Kala, head slightly cocked, "Uh... I just like moving. It bugs me and makes my skin itch when I'm not. Like metaphorically."

Did Kala know what metaphors were? She was afraid to ask, not wanting to be rude.

"But uh... I got too much energy and not enough ways to use it," she explained, "If I don't use it up I get agitated and grumpy and nobody likes a grumpy Kimera."

She began to pace again, tail flicking idly, not stressed, just energized, "So why do you live in Cetus?"

@Kala