- you know what, she's not in the mood to have that fight right now. Fine.

The horse is so floral. Segda tastes a flower and spits it out, hissing.

"What does hissing mean?"

"Trying to make a thing be less."

"Huh. Okay."

"It doesn't work."

"Then why do it?"

"I don't decide to."

"Okay. If we go to other towns of strangers, would they have you or decide you're probably mad?"

"I've been alone."

"What am I, chopped dragon liver?"

"What does that mean?"

"It's, like - you say it if someone's acting like you don't count. I don't know the origins actually."

"You don't count. And before you found me there wasn't you anyway."

"I don't count 'cuz I'm human?"

"Yeah."

"Do you feel different than when you went away?"

"No."

She bites her lip and drops the subject.

After they've been riding along a while longer Segda starts singing.

It's a weird song. It's not totally unmusical in the way that crickets chirping and birds singing isn't unmusical, but it uses weird parameters to determine what notes are tuneful and which are not. It might be a lullaby. The lyrics are mostly "night is coming" with verses like "tuck in your nest with your parents around you" and "shutter all the windows now".

Awwwww.

After Segda runs into a verse it has forgotten the words to it mumbles through more "night is coming night is coming night is coming" and flops backwards against Iris asleep.

Iris pats her, adjusts her riding to accommodate this, and debates for a moment whether to keep going to Yarisong. She's not actually all that tired yet, and she doesn't strongly fancy sleeping in the woods with a possibly-vulnerable-to-madness person of an unfamiliar race -

- but she's out of Comprehend Languages and Yarisong is going to be a lot harder to navigate without that. 

She finds a place and lifts Segda gently off the horse and curls up on the ground and sleeps.

When she wakes up Segda is up, digging a hole in the ground with its hands and a stick.

"Morning, kiddo, what're you doing?"