“Oh.” 

Their hoofsteps faltered and then slowed to a pause.  

Standing at the stone bank of a creek, Oolong cocked their head from one side to the other.  They did not use maps — they had been woken in the moment of their birthing from a tea canister, unfolding long spidery limbs out from ancient dust and the somewhat newer essence of their parents, and had learned to navigate the dungeons by feel — but they wondered if they should perhaps have gotten one the last time they had encountered the Ranger. 

“You aren’t supposed to be here.” 

The creek persisted. 

After a moment, Oolong folded themself down at its shore, coltish legs askew.  Its water trickled silver beneath nonexistent moonlight; glinted like the rainbow sheen of fish scales along its bends.  It smelled faintly sweet, faintly like rainwater.  

They had not tasted rainwater in a long time — not fresh, without the filtration of moss and stone. 

“Would you like to be drunk?” Oolong asked it.  They had learned very young that things in the Buried Kingdom often had opinions in ways that things above it did not.  The brickwork cracked and crumbled in their secret messages.  The moss crept up walls like signposts.  The fungi grew agitated when it was not listened to, all its little electrical signals moving invisibly along.  “Would you like to be a soup?  It’s fairly nice being soup, I think.” 

They dipped their front hooves gingerly into the creek, which sparkled at the contact, cool and light. 

“Oh.  Just company?” Oolong mourned the loss of soup, but privately.  “I can do that.” 

Their forelegs followed their hooves; then their chest and belly, with a reflexive little shiver at the contact, and at last their hind legs.  The water moved around them in little eddies, bright and glittering; the undercurrent sucked faintly at their pasterns, but without moving them. 

They stretched themself out, long and quiet, and remained until the creek no longer wanted them there.