Their instructor moved with no further comment it seemed. Baird tilted his head, more to himself than anything, and followed the older castilian. Whereas Sleekwing’s ears appeared to be the primary source of obvious information, Baird kept his nose to the ground. He was to be smaller than either of his companions and could very possibly need to learn a different sense of skills. Smaller in stature, he tended to look at a bigger picture. Eyes roving around he noticed that a tree that had been dying had finally fallen. The first thought in his mind was to jump on it and see how rotted through it would be. He even stopped his treck with the old warrior to sniff the air of the log, to see if he could scent the reek of mold on the wood. At last he deemed it solid enough to stand on, but not rotten enough to be a trap. Sleekwing’s receeding form brought him back to focus, and the boy loped to catch back up.

Baird heard just the tail end of the older male’s speech and question. Things change. He answered, padding beside the other two now. A trail floods, rocks fall, trees die. When the snow melts it could wash away an anchor holding a stone in place. That stone can move and an avalanche begin. Pan’s intelligence had not been completely lost on the young lad. He merely gave his words in a far different way and chose to move his focus and life away from academics. If you don’t know how things are changing, you will not be able to notice a danger before it hits. Bigger picture, the shifts and changes of the tones and tunes of the world around them. The movement of the earth caused shifts in the land. Those where what Baird noticed. The nearly scentless pile of scat was not.