“Oh,” he answered idly, eyes pulling away from his mother and down to the grasses in the little clearing she’d been grazing on. He scrunched up his muzzle with shared disgust, though he had only just started snacking on solid vegetation recently and didn’t yet have a very high opinion of it. The milk his mother provided was tastiest and as he was getting ever older, he was rather sad he couldn’t keep living off it. As fun as it was to play adult and bend his knobby knees as he strained and reached to the ground and grazed with them, the bittersweet blades of grass never had the richness that his mother’s milk did.
His mother bumped him, and a smile spread wide and happy back across his pink lips. A little stifled squeal was caught somewhere in his throat, coming out more like a rumble than anything with loud noise. He bobbed his head and turned his neck, bumping her painted shoulder back with his forehead. What do you want to do next? His mother asked, and excitement brightened his eyes as he pulled his face away from her and grinned up at her, then looked around them. He was so joyful, in fact, that it took him a few moments of deliberation; he had too many ideas at once!
Since he was all seaweed popped out for the day, he decided not to suggest they go back to the beach and do more of that.
“Can we explore the caves?” He asked in a hushed voice, looking curiously up at his mother. The caves in Tinuvel’s mountains were said to be vast in some places, and his father had often advised him not to explore them alone or he might get lost among their tunnels. “Daddy said he heard there’s one that has glittering purple walls; I want to find it!” He paused only briefly before he brightened even more. “Ooo or see a bat up close! I want to see what a bat looks like.” He’d heard them squeaking at night and seen them swooping in the sky to catch bugs, but they were always too fast to study. “Do they really sleep upside down from the ceiling, Mama?”
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