She was tired, but not the kind of tired that would allow her to just keel over and fall asleep. "I dunno," she mumbled quietly. She opened her mouth to further object-- when she came to the realisation that the time she probably would keel over and fall asleep was on the way back to Orion. "I guess," she conceded.

She peeled away from Azure, half-collapsing over onto a bundle of old cloths and other Soft Things that made up her nest. She shifted, half-shut her eyes, and looked back over to the hybrid and she scooted about on the spot, getting comfortable. "It'll be fun," she assured.

And it probably would be. At least, Siren was fairly sure that Friend Time was Fun Time. As it happened, most week-old gembound didn't really have much of a concept of what friends did, either, but in Serendipity's experience, it usually involved having fun.

To Azure's question about Pride, her initial reaction would have been yeah, he's fine, he's a guardian, but she did, in fact, take a moment to think about it. Nothing, in particular, had struck out about him as mean-- in fact he was very nice. At least, Siren was fairly sure he was? He offered to show her magic and to train her and show her the caves, but his magic was... odd. That rock he blew up looked weird and it hurt to look at.

Siren wondered, briefly, if that was reason enough to doubt somebody's integrity.

"No," the child eventually replied. "He didn't seem very mean and I think, uhhh, he'd only really get violent if he really had to? Like if he were being attacked or something? I don't think he'd just-- hurt somebody just because he felt like it or something, you know?"

@Azure

Azure exhaled; this news was relieving, even if she wasn't quite sure she could trust it. It wasn't that she distrusted Dip, at all. It was more that she still feared. Even if totally illogical, the fear would still have remained--experience had taught her Bad Things. But it wasn't totally illogical, which somehow made it worse. She couldn't just dismiss the idea that Pride might be lying to draw her in.

But... she'd cross that bridge when she came to it. She had a plan--though that plan consisted entirely of "stay where he can't reach me, because I have wings and he does not."

"It will be fun," she said, rather than voicing literally any of this. Her tone was one of agreement. "Now sleep, Dip. When you wake up... then we can go."

She offered a brief and playful nudge to the kid to emphasize the good-natured motivation behind that insistence, then turned, settling her beak on her forelimbs to rest.

She wasn't sure she'd be able to sleep, though.

@Siren

"... okay," was all Serendipity said before she shut her eyes and tried to sleep.

She was still worried, of course-- about the lying and if Pride was lying and might actually end up hurting or killing Azure, or if Azure actually did bad things and was lying about that. But she was excited as well-- surely, if nothing else, it'd be fun to live with a friend for a little while?

Despite this, she did, in fact, fall asleep fairly quickly, drifting off into a dreamless sleep.

When she reawoke it was with a start, for no other reason other than she somehow startled herself opening her eyes and realising she was laying on the cave floor of her den. She lifted herself up to sit, blinking and rubbing her eyes before looking towards where Azure had been when she fell asleep. "Are you-- there?" She murmured.

'Awake' is what she meant, but 'there' at all might also be a fairly valid question.

@Azure

Azure was, in fact, "there." Azure was not, however, "awake."

Dip's voice woke her, her head jerking up and her antlers banging off the low rock of the side of the den entrance (and she didn't even remember crawling in there). She groaned a little, shaking herself, her feathers fluffing out as she yawned.

"Hey, Dip," she managed, after a long moment, though it came out more a sleepy mumble.

She lowered her head to rub her eyes on her feet, swiping them clean, then yawned again and looked around. She blinked a few times, trying to clear her mind and remember just where her consciousness had left off. ...Right. Orion. Pride. Den together. Lights.

She pushed up slowly, stretching. "You 'bout ready to go? I can carry some shit for you, carry it to Orion if you want. And uhh." She swallowed. She needed water--her throat was parched. Fuck, but Monoceros was dry. "Wanna go down to the river to drink before we go? --You ever been down in the Gorge?"

@Siren

Siren flinched as Azure bumped her head off against the side of the wall, scrambling over to make sure nothing was broken. Whenever she bumped things off rock, they tended to break anyway-- though, those things had been old, battered objects from tunnel J and not. Entire friends.

"Uh, hello. Are you okay?" she asked, then settled herself back down once ensuring that Azure was still mostly functional. "Water sounds good? There's a lot of stuff here." Might as well get a drink first, before hauling heavy things up towards Orion. She rolled her shoulders back, stretching, before pushing up.

"The gorge? Uhh, I don't think so-- but I think I... flew over it?" She considered. Siren's flight with Dread had been anything but coherent, and she hadn't gotten a very good look at the land below, but she did remember seeing vague shapes of the passing cave. "But, uh, not down it."

She took her satchel and hauled it up over her shoulder, spending a moment rubbing her eyes. "Lead the way?"

@Azure

"Huh? Oh--yeah, I'm fine," Azure answered, still groggy. She turned and eyed Dip critically. She, herself, was not all that large--Dip wasn't tiny, but she thought that she could carry her at least for a little bit. "The Gorge is like--a canyon. It might be easier if I carry you down--I can fly," she added, as if her four wings weren't enough of a clue. "It'd be faster? You just. Uhh. Hold on tight. Maybe to my necklace, and my feathers or my--antlers or something?" she offered uncertainly.

They could go get water, then come back for all the stuff, then head off. Azure felt herself--rather unexpectedly--excited about all of this.

@Siren

Serendipity eyed up Azure for a moment. She wasn't as big as Dread, but maybe that would be better. And make her feel less like she was going to get thrown off at any given moment.

"Okay," she agreed, moving to carefully clamber up onto Azure's back. Granted, this much was easier than trying to climb up onto Dread to begin with. Perhaps because she wasn't maybe three times her size, and there wasn't a lot of limbs all over the ground to try to climb up.

Though, she did have more wings than Dread.

Serendipity wasn't particularly heavy, but she did spend a moment wriggling on Azure's back, trying to get comfortable, trying to find something to hang onto. Dread had spines, but Azure was.. fairly smooth. She settled for clutching her neck, wrapping her arms around the hybrid's head.

"Uh, I think I'm ready," she announced, eventually.

@Azure

Azure nodded. "Okay. Hold on." As if Dip wasn't already clinging to her throat.

She shoved into a slow run, then jumped into the air, all four wings beating. They toiled to lift both her weight and Dip's into the sky--the added weight was unsettling, really. She felt clumsier, lopsided, like she might topple one way or the other any second, and this spiked a little fear into her. "Lean down close to my neck," she warned--if she had to turn abruptly, and Dip was sitting tall, her center of balance would throw Azure into a spin and, likely, a free-fall.

She... really didn't want that.

She flew low, barely over the rock, and shot toward the edge of the Gorge. She maneuvered to one of the trails that led down into it, dropping over the lip and sticking close to that, just in case one or both of them took a tumble. One of the rivers that fed through the base of the canyon lay ahead, and she flew to its shore, landing a little roughly--stumbling some, but not too badly--at the edge.

Then Azure stood there panting a little, catching her breath--black feathers, intense heat, flying, and a passenger didn't really leave her fresh and cheerful. Especially not after just waking up.

Then, staring at the water, beak parted to pant off the heat, she paused. "...Wait. When you say you flew over this-..?" She craned her head back, peering quizzically sidelong at her friend.

@Siren

Although some creatures who aren't able to fly might dream of it, Serendipity most certainly wasn't among them. It's not that she was afraid of it, or straight up didn't like it, but she was... mildly unsettled by the whole ordeal.

She tended to freeze up; she numbly and obediently listened to Azure's orders, leaning in closer to her neck and holding. The child's stomach was lodged in her throat as Monoceros sped past below her, though she didn't have the time nor the mind to watch it pass.

When Azure landed, she moved to climb back off the hybrid before she died. "Yeah, uh," she blinked back, stepping down barefoot to the shore and crouching down by the waters. "There's this big dragon around here called Dread. Like-- huge, and he took me flying across the place to find somebody called Glory."

She half-expected Azure to know who she was talking about, at least-- a giant black dragon wasn't exactly easy to miss in the caves.

Serendipity dunked her hands into the water before tossing it over her head, cooling herself down. Then, she drank.

For a few beats she was quiet, though a thought had occurred to her that, in the last twenty seconds, had begun to trouble her. "I, uh, know you don't really wanna talk about it too much," she began carefully. "But, uh, does everyone have a family? And like, a mom and stuff? Brothers and sisters?"

@Azure

Azure watched Dip as she began to talk. And as she listened, she dipped her own beak into the cool currents, tilting her head back to gulp down water. At the mention of the dragon, she very nearly choked it out.

"That thing's friendly?!" she asked in shock--once she'd finished hacking and coughing all the river she'd breathed in. Her blue eyes were wide. She'd seen Dread, circling, hunting, in the distance. His monstrous silhouette was half the reason she'd stuck to the quiet outer edges of the cave. She'd just assumed he was some sort of feral predator--best to assume that, and not get eaten, than assume the opposite and end up lunch. So long had she just accepted this assumption that she'd forgotten there was any other possibility. "I had no idea. And you got to RIDE on him? That's cool," she went on, admiringly.

...Something tickled the back of her mind, though. Something about the word "dragon," about the Gorge, the idea of a dragon in Monoceros. For a moment, other memories flickered through her mind, threatening to surface: another dragon, silver-white. Angry words, half-remembered, shouted at her. Cold--she wasn't sure why she'd have been cold in Monoceros, but she remembered cold, now--and pain, and then--... uhh. Nothing? She remembered... falling?

Azure stood silent for a long moment, face scrunched up, trying to figure out what this was. Had it been a dream..? She remembered bits and pieces, but she couldn't fit it all together yet.

At length, she just shrugged, and went on to more pressing matters: Dip's conversation--despite the unease that lurked with the barely-remembered images.

"Uhhh," she began, truly a paragon of the caves' wisdom and knowledge; "I think no? I think like, half of Gembound just appear from the cave walls and shit. And then like, if you want, you can find stones that belonged to dead Gembound. Or well--they belonged to live ones, right, but when they died, the stones got left. And you can make new Gembound outta those, and then they're family. I don't know how it works, exactly. I know I look like my mother, who's an asshole and a goose, and I don't know what else. Some kinda blue bird, I think, and then. Maybe a moose? I think my brother is half moose and half goose, so we're like... similar. But I'd been told I was half goose and half... other-bird. But that's how it works--if you give life to a rock I guess it kinda looks like you, but not completely." She trailed off, uncertain, before looking to Dip and adding--"...I think."

For a long moment she went back to drinking--actually drinking, this time, rather than trying to inhale water--and, when she was done, glanced at the sky. For a moment she was lost in thought--thinking of the dark silhouettes of dragons, and why she would have memories of such a vivid dream.

@Siren