"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

While it would have been cool to have others that could teach them magic, it sounded as if Lior wasn’t missing out too much by not having parents. After all, they’d figured out how to find food and they knew what caves were like. Caves were caves. It was as simple as that.

“Close enough,” Lior decided as the other attempted to pronounce the word alligator.

“An alligator is an alligator,” They answered matter of factly, only a little bit because Lior didn’t want to show their own ignorance regarding what they are, mostly because it was that straightforward to them. “What else would it be? I mean, what would you say a horse is?” While they figured the other probably didn’t have a proper answer, they would be curious to hear it if he did.

Wicker's first compliment attempt towards them fell flat, but Lior practically preened at the comment regarding their teeth. “I do, don’t I,” They proudly declared to their new friend.

While the blurted out question caught Lior a bit by surprise, they were quick to respond. “Yeah, for sure! An adventure sounds absolutely amazing!” They announced their agreement eagerly.

“What kind of adventure?” They inquired innocently.

@Wicker

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!

@Lior

Lior was happy with Wicker’s agreement regarding what made each of them what they were. But, then the foal came up with a more specific answer. Rather than bothered, Lior was intrigued. “Maybe I have seen a horse before- I think I’ve seen feet- Hooves?- kinda like that around on a couple critters. Horses are so diverse!” They chirped with fascination.

The visible excitement of Wicker got Lior all the more excited as well. As each option was stated, Lior pondered the possibilities with delight. Then came the last- “Defeat a monster?! That would be epic!” The hatchling squeaked enthusiastically.

“We should do that for sure! Which way do you want to start looking first?”

@Wicker

'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.

@Lior

Rather than recognize the reply as politeness, Lior mentally paused instead. What if alligators were diverse? What if they had skittered past another alligator before without ever realizing it?

If horses could look so different from each other, why couldn’t alligators, after all? It made so much sense why they had thought they’d never seen an alligator before. But, Lior considered, like horses, alligators must have one defining feature surely. Immediately, Lior knew the answer. Alligators had many sharp teeth! Just like they did!

Oh, they didn’t know the answer, not like they’d known other knowledge instinctively when they had emerged. Like how to talk and hunt.

But, it felt absolutely right to them. Next time they met a gembound with sharp teeth, they’d be sure to check if that gembound was an alligator! And if they met another alligator, they’d know even more about alligators than they did right now! It was an exciting idea.

Though, not quite as exciting as defeating monsters, of course. Lior watched curiously as their new friend spun around and gave a chirp of excitement themself. At the question, Lior perked up further, somehow. “Yeah, maybe!”

They tried to climb the wall, trying to use their small size to their advantage, looking for grooves and bumps to aid the attempt. But, it was a very slipper wall, and even though they could swim well enough in water and walk well enough on land, apparently combining the two made for some difficult terrain.

"Oof!" Lior got a short distance before falling down, stuck on their back for a second before they quickly righted themselves. "I don't think either of us can climb this- if I can't your feet, hooves, probably can't either. Unless- can hooves stick to surfaces? I've seen some critters that can do that!"

But, no, that didn't seem very likely. None of the other hooved critters they had seen yet had ever been hanging around sideways on walls or upside down on the roof of any caves.

Then Lior had an idea. "Maybe we can summon the monster, somehow? Like, get it out from wherever it is up there?" They were so certain there had to be something up there now. They'd committed to this idea. "How do you think we can lure it out, if we can't just climb up there?"

Lior didn't want to admit they had not a clue about getting a monster to come out.

@Wicker

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.

@Lior

Equally wide eyes regarded Wicker at his hushed statement. Sure, Lior had committed to the idea of there being a monster, but at the same time they’d never actually encountered a real monster. The idea that there was one up there, for real, was almost scary if it wasn’t so exciting.

The two of them definitely needed to defeat the monster, and Lior suddenly had an idea inspired by Wicker’s earlier words. “I have magic too!” They squeakily announced with pride. “I can hide really well!”

“What if I hid and then you made lots of noise, to try and lure the monster out? Then I could sneak up on it!” Before they even got an answer, Lior was already attempting to shroud themself in shadows, set on this idea and not thinking that Wicker might prefer a different approach.

Lior mostly successfully drew the light away from themself, casting darkness where they were.

@Wicker

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.

Flying Pitch Rat

A moment later, a head poked over the lip of one of the higher ledges. It'd have been unsurprising, maybe, to those who knew that bats liked high up, dark places--but this was a bat's head.

Well, it looked more like a weird, alien rat's; it was long and black, with long whiskers and six black eyes that blinked down quizzically. The creature was maybe two feet long, and it didn't look particularly aggressive.

It looked... confused, really, about all of the commotion!

@Lior