Ash's enthusiasm is infectious; Elan walks bouncily.

"Ooh, a pet shop! Or maybe a familiar shop?"

"That's Grams's pet shop! She's super nice, and she's really good at training pets. She pays me to help out with the animals sometimes, and some of them are really cool and rare! She even has a pit grinder that's, like, incredibly tame, even though they're supposed to be impossible to train. I got to pet it once, and look, I still have all my fingers!" He displays them proudly. 

"Ooooh, what's a pit grinder?"

Elan is imagining something that lives in pits and has a lot of teeth. Maybe it's a kind of really big creature that has a pit-like mouth and hides in holes in the ground? Or maybe it's a kind of really small creature that lives in pits in huge groups and they all gnaw on people who fall in, like piranhas.

"Uhhhh...I guess they're sorta like a hare crossed with a wolf? Except they have even bigger teeth and claws than that and they want to bite your face off!" 

Unfortunately, Elan's mental image of a hare is A Rabbit, But Bigger, so he literally imagines the dreaded bunnywolf. But with bigger teeth and claws and wanting to bite his face off.

"I'll make sure to not try and pet any until I know more about animals, then!"

One of the first lessons in Animal Handling is respect for the animals, which includes the very real possibility of hurting (or causing the animal to hurt) yourself or the animal or both.

They pass through the eastern gate, manned by a pair of Guardians like its western counterpart. In the daylight, without an impending invasion, they're a lot more relaxed, and just wave the party on through. 

The road beyond the gate forks almost immediately. The main road runs along the southern edge of a forest, and a path branching off to the left heads into the forest itself. To the right, lush farmlands and fields stretch away south. The shadowy forest of Doomwood is hazily visible in the distance.

A signpost proclaims that the left fork goes to "Surewould Forest" and the right fork goes to "That a' Way". 

Elan waves right back.

"What's in That a' Way?" he asks as they turn towards the Surewould Forest.

"It used to just be a crossroads, where the Great Sandsea Road meets the road to Doomwood, but nowadays it's a popular place for travellers to stop and rest. You can meet all sortsa merchants and travellers from far-off places!" 

"Ooh, sounds deserty! Unless Sandsea means the beach? Ooh, beachy…"

"Yep, the Sandsea is a big desert! Twillies not sure where the sea part of the name comes from, I's never been there." 

The woods around them are pleasant and green and not at all desert-like. The road bends around to the left, heading further north, but pretty soon Twilly steps confidently off the road onto a grassy path that seems to lead deeper into the forest. 

"That road goes to where Warlic lives, up in the Elemental Foothills! But we's got to go this way to find Robina." 

"Well, dunes kinda look like waves, and deserts are usually big and flat like the ocean, so maybe that? Ooh, or maybe there are people who live there and invented something to travel across the desert that look like sailboats. I'm pretty sure I've heard of that somewhere."

When they turn onto the smaller forest path, Elan makes sure to pay extra attention for things like plant monsters, aggressive mushrooms, or regular monsters.

"Warlic's one of those smart magic people, right?"

The name sounds kinda like warlock, except a lot of magic users who aren't warlocks get really mad if you compare them at all for some reason. Magic users that aren't bards seem to do kind of a lot of that with each other, actually. It seems kind of silly…

Wait he was supposed to be paying attention to his surroundings.

"Yep! Warlic is the Blue Mage. He knows loads and loads about magic!" 

They startle a squirrrel, which runs up a tree. The area seems clear of monsters so far.

"Ooh, how many colors are there? Is it a whole rainbow of mages?"

"I doesn't know of any other mages with colour names! Maybes you could call Cysero the Green Mage? But he doesn't call himself that, so it would be a little bit sillies." 

Elan nods.

"Is Warlic really good at Water magic and Cysero at Light magic? Or do they have blue and green hair? Or maybe they wear blue and green robes…"

"They wears blue and green robes! Warlic is good at ALL the magics, and Cysero is good at making magic weapons. And explosions!" 

"Cysero has a magic shop in Falconreach," Ash adds. "I can show you wher it is next time we're in town, if you want to meet him?"