Soon enough, Arlen has packed everything Nior deems necessary, and Harin has secured his adventure kit/combat bindle. They are ready for adventure.
"On the bright side, I can think of worse things than being turned to stone. Unless it's, like, conscious stone. That'd be awful."
He stops and clears his throat. "Sorry."
"'Eternal Winter'. How appropriate."
"Are you feeling like we should get out of here? Because I'm feeling a lot like we should get out of here," says Mir.
"I'm not. I'm feeling like there's some people in this place who need killing, and we seem to be the only people willing to do anything about it."
"Granted, absolutely, but right here seems like a really bad place to be standing around discussing that, who knows what kinds of traps they've set up or when they'll come back for another look. Let's at least try to find ourselves a slightly more anonymous patch of forest."
That bird is a robin, perched on a tree branch. It waits until everyone is looking at it, then departs its perch and flies to another branch some distance away.
"Who wants to follow the bird?"
"No? Mir, back me up on this, were we not just talking about obvious traps?"
Arlen appears to have already followed the bird to its next branch, and awaits the others.
"Nior will protect you," Mir assures him, patting him on the back as he follows the bird.
"The hell he will. I'm the size of a grown man and I have a quarterstaff, I'll protect myself."
The bird leads them quite a ways through the woods. It's cold. Caves are also often cold, though, so they're not dressed as badly as they could've been.
"I'm worried for you fragile little bastards. So stay close to me, I have a stick."
As they proceed, though, it begins to seem more and more appropriate to shut up. He does that.
Nior looks around. His eyes settle on a tree across the clearing.
(The other beaver, who appears to be her husband, is less talkative. He seems mostly to be along for moral support.)