"Yeah," he agrees. "Um, anyway, purple rock apparently does that, red one was the really kind of ridiculously sharp one, yellow makes you high for, like, an hour, blue makes everything seem really slow but I'm pretty sure it's because it makes your body slow instead of because it speeds your mind up, and green one… doesn't seem to do anything. The clear one doesn't seem to do anything either, which is kinda fortunate." He looks down at the ground they stand on.

Shrug.

"How do you know this?"

"Trial and error? No-one was around so…" Shrug.

"Right. Can you clarify exactly how you and he fit together?"

"I appeared after, uh– I don't actually know how long, something like a few hours though. I'm not really sure how, since it only happened the once, but I remember stuff up 'til I appeared."

Thario shudders a little.

"So Thario was experiencing the longer time as well."

"Yep," says the new guy. "Fortunately we don't seem to get hungry so he hasn't died of starvation."

Thario moves his head closer to his keriol.

"But his animal was in the shorter time. There are adverse effects when they are separated from us by distance, it is reasonable to assume that the temporal desynch could do something similar."

"Yeah. I mean, I think that's probably why he's acting like– well, like that," he says, indicating Thario, still lying down quietly. "It could be another effect of the crystal though."

"It sounds like having these animals is mainly a weakness," says Tyler, looking at his osprey.

The osprey does not seem particularly offended.

Blue translates.

"Not something I would have chosen to have. He may recover, given sufficient time and continued proximity to the keriol."

"He seems to be showing more signs of activity than most of the time we were there."

Well, apparently 'slowly moving closer to the keriol and curling up a little' is more activity than most of the time, in that case.

"See if the book says anything about the green or clear crystals, otherwise I think we should move on."

The book: does not say anything about them.

Tyler relays this information and agrees that they should probably leave.

Will they be taking the flying water pads?

They will!

Thario will be lifted up and placed into a bubble, left to snuggle with his keriol or whatever.

He will do that.

Off they go, then.

After a relatively short while, they're flying over a patch of relatively unremarkable forest when they stumble across: a few bits of stone planted in the dirt, covered by moss.

There are quite a few bits of stone.

They're dotted around the place.

It's somewhat curious.

Elleira wishes to land and investigate.

So they– well, most of them – land!