"Because I go places like that, and if you found me before her she's probably even less findable."
"Suppose so. Do you want to be alone, when you do that, or is it something else?"
"Not alone, exactly," she says. "But out of the way. There can be other people there if I don't mind them."
And awander they go. Kerron lets her take the lead on the theory that the same sorts of places will look like appealing hideyholes.
"Then I'll look at flying places." She heads for the outside of the plant.
The bottom of the plant is much more promising; there are lots of little spaces amid the tangle of roots to tuck oneself into. Ariel investigates them.
"Hmm," says Ariel, contemplating such a gap.
Kerron starts listening for small breathing noises such as those a six-year-old human might make.
There are some! They are faint. Hyacinthe is somewhere very deep in the roots.
"How did you know?" she asks.
"You're little!" says Ariel.
Hyacinthe thinks for a moment, and nods gravely. And then thinks for another moment, and asks, "Do you think a mouse with wings would be happy?"
"...I don't know," says Ariel. She finds a dangling loop of root to perch in, since she'd get tired of hovering otherwise, and looks at Kerron. "What do you think?"
"Well, that'd probably depend on how it was made," he muses. "People with wings seem pretty happy, though." He pats Ariel illustratively on the head.
"Yeah," she says, "if I was a mouse I'd want to still have wings. But maybe if I was a mouse, I wouldn't want to if I hadn't ever."
Hyacinthe nods again. "Maman says she will make me a winged mouse if I want but I don't know if I do."