"What's up with that thing about not intersecting people with it?"

"It's rude," says Thario. "Unless you have permission to do it, or like, you're a kid and using it for a game of tag or something."

"But why?"

He shrugs. "Why's putting up your middle finger at someone rude? … Or is it not in your culture, because it is in mine."

The lizard nudges Elleira's ankle.

"Okay."

Walking walking. Anything interesting about this river?

It's quite deep down. Somewhat sheer cliff, somewhat loud, but otherwise there doesn't appear to be anything of interest!

There's a bend up ahead. She might notice that she can detect a few small lifeforms around it, but they're probably just bats or something.

"Something alive up ahead. Don't let them bite you."

"Ha," he says.

The keriol tries to bury itself a bit closer to his neck, making itself less of a target and shoving its tail down the back of his shirt.

Does Thario squirm? A little.

Lightsaber in hand but not lit yet.

Here comes the bend.

It does indeed appear to be bats! When she goes around the bend… they do not move.

They seem to be sleeping or something. It's quite dark in here.

… Did it maybe get darker? Weird.

"I don't like this."

One of the bats starts moving in response to that, dropping down from the ceiling and flapping about a bit.

The others continue to sleep.

Thario signs something, stops mid-gesture, shakes his head and whispers, "Me neither."

Elleira glances down at her lizard.

It shakes its head from side to side in what might be a shrug.

She raises both hands and unleashes a barrage of lightning at all the bats.

That definitely lights up the place! And causes the bats to– well, actually to drop from their nest and scatter, not so much seem harmed by the lightning.

They don't seem to be attacking, at least? But a couple come towards them.

If the lightning's not working, she ceases it.

Are the bats aggressive now?

They are not! They seem to be rather frightened, actually, mainly by the weird light, and the couple that came towards them have now flown over their heads.

(Theo ducks.)

"Okay and– what was that?" asks Thario. "Lightning to try to kill the bats before they kill us?"

"Something like that."

"Mmh," he says. "Okay, well, anyway, I wanna test something so– looking at me?"

He proceeds to make some hand gestures. They apparently correspond to 'does this work?' and are… weirdly enough… in Basic…

"...It is really irksome to me that I am parsing your sign language as Basic."

"Yeah."

Then: How's this? he tries. It does not appear to be in a language, though is quite clearly understandable. Is this better?

"Still odd, but in a different way. I like this way better."

… What about this? he asks, in a way that seems very much like he has intruded her personal space, stolen information directly from her brain, and decided to pretend to be her so that he can imitate her as flawlessly as possible while also laughing at her from a distance.