All had seemed to be going splendid on this foray into the dungeons, until it very much seemed like a problem. "Well drat," muttered the grullo as she took stock of the situation. She stood, not quite alone, in the middle of a chamber with multiple exits, trying to figure out which one had been the one she'd entered from. This wouldn't be so hard, but she'd gotten distracted by the ceiling.

You see, when she had looked up (to check for potential dangers such as bats or loose stalactites) her gaze had been met with something peculiar. The roof was smooth, a gradual curve across the entire space... a dome?... and had been done over with another material that was now cracking and coming apart. But it was what was on that secondary material that had captured her attention and her imagination.

Transcribed across the ceiling was a cracked and faded mural of the sky at noon, with a stylized sun at its zenith and puffy white clouds scattered across the almost too pale to distinguish blue of the sky itself. So immersed in the mural was she that her path had circled around the room at least twice, gazing upward as her mind whirled with questions. Who had made this? When? How had they captured the exact qualities of the clouds? Why hadn't they done the same with the sun?

And then she'd looked down, and realized that there were four openings in the walls, equidistant from one another around the room... and she had no idea which way to go. For several long moments she stood there, motionless except for the thoughtful twitch and flick of her ears. And then the white rat that normally rode just behind her withers slid off her back and landed with a soft thump on the ground.

Smoke glanced down to see what Mischief was getting himself up to, and could have kicked herself. Disregarding the rat who was chasing an isopod toward the wall behind her (she soon heard tiny crunching noises interspersed with happy rat squeaks), the ground was not clean. Recalling how the ceiling was disintegrating explained the dirt upon the ground. Dirt which held the fresh imprint of her hooves, crisp and clean and easily distinguishable. It also was worn away in a path across the room, marking the trail. And a further visual scouring of the room showed where her awed circling had split from the main path.

"Glad I made this mistake up here, where the path is, instead of where no one else has been." Relieved, she turned to fetch Mischief who was even now trundling toward her, pleased with his snack. Delicately she picked him up, craned her neck around, and held the position while he climbed from her mouth to her back. Once he'd settled in, strands of her mane clutched in his paws, Smoke turned to rejoin the path. There was still exploring to be done.