"Could be a mongrelfolk! They usually live underground, but, well, angels usually live in another plane altogether, sometimes things are just determined to crossbreed. Once as a boy I saw a half-lion, half-tiger."

...Kaitiaki has already gotten the thing she was looking for out of this interaction, but it is continuing, apparently. 

She's doing her best to be a Good Apprentice but she doesn't actually have anything to add, here.

Zisel actually wants to hear all about the half-lion half-tiger but they don't need Kait to be involved in that.

She is actually happy to listen to that, though she lets herself recede into the background and pet Damisa when Zisel shows interest. She's more comfortable at the edges, even here. 

In the end about twelve druids show up. One other is an apprentice, like her, a halfling boy who doesn't seem to want to talk much and does not obviously have his own animal companion.

Not talking is totally fine with her! (She does stare a fair bit, though, both at him and the other druids here.)

That's fine because a main point of this meeting is to make sure they all know what each other look like. Somebody wants to report an invasive weed. Somebody else wants to report that some townie wizard's crow familiar has been knocking up half the female crows in the forest in his downtime and they're starting to come out inbred and inappropriately interested in learning languages and recommends culling crows that answer to the following description that makes more sense if you have spent a whole fuck of a lot of time learning to distinguish crows by appearance, and maybe shooting the familiar if it comes around again. Somebody has a no-news-is-good-news update about the hernes and their patch. There's a druid missing, and they piece together a tentative story about her death (probably it was asshole adventurers between this and that day of some particular month) and an adjacent druid says he'll lean in that direction to keep the area covered in case they come back and the halfling apprentice can maybe move into the area he'll deemphasize in so doing. They all have Goodberries for supper and camp out and do group spell prep and then adjourn for the year.

Oh! She... really really likes this, actually? Group camping... sharing stories... figuring out how to tend to the Forest together...

The group spell prep is really nice, too. She's glad she got to experience that. 

And then back to Zisel's general area. If she's wondering he's expecting her to wind up parking long term in this approximate range, mostly carved out from his which is a little big, but they don't have really strict territories.

She nods. (...she doesn't ask when they'll split up or how often they'll see each other once though they do, though she is a bit anxious about these things.)

She's looking at her feathers a bit more often than she used to, and differently - more curious, less bothered. 

Seems like her business, since they're her feathers, and all. There's new plants to learn about this time of year.

New plants! Yay :)

Damisa catches a squirrel and she helps him get all the meat out. She sings him a lullaby that's definitely not in Druidic or Halit as he sleeps off the meal. 

zzzz <3

Lullabies? Lullabies for Norur also??

Yes, definitely! (She starts to reach out a hand to pet Norur, then glances at Zisel questioningly)

"That's between you and her," he says, raising an eyebrow. "If you're not sure you should be petting a bear, look at the bear, not at me."

...okay, yeah, extremely good advice, that.

She will continue to lullaby at Norur and very slowly reach out a hand towards her, watching carefully. (She's not any better at singing in this strange tonal language, but it clearly matters to her, and it's something she's familiar with it.)

Norur allows pets and drifts off to the lullaby.

She continues to sing to and pet her friends until she ends up falling asleep between the two of them.

There's lots to learn in the autumn, and then again in the winter. Druids always have the fallback of Goodberries, but there's plenty of hunting to do and some harvesting of winter plants, too, as well as whatever they preserved and successfully kept the mice out of long enough. Also it's cold. Here's how to turn fur into cold weather wear.

She's delighted by how much Goodberries make foraging a useful skill and not a matter of life or death every day, but she takes to winter foraging eagerly. She asks questions about mouse proofing and has some ideas once she's thought about it.

She's very glad for endure elements, while she works on her first set of warm weather gear. Damisa doesn't seem to need one, though he definitely loves to be close to the fire at night. 

Norur, of course, sleeps through the winter like a sensible bear.

Zisel is finally willing to let Kait see where that is, since he's going there every night to sleep on Norur.

!! She's honored and excited about this, though in her usual muted way.

(Hibernation is interesting! Norur breathes incredibly slowly, so long between breaths that she has to count her own heartbeats in between to compare it to hers and Damisa's.)

She is the best pillow. This is the best reason to have a bear, in his opinion. But Kait and Damisa should make their own arrangements, additional parties in the cave might disturb her.