(Fucking hells.)

"What are they celebrating?"

She squints at him like he's asked a very strange question. "No idea. The details of motivations and why actions are being taken is really not the sort of things you can.... get out of birds? They're not stupid, well, most of them aren't, but they're also not really going to try and psychoanalyze the goblins."

"Well, how was I meant to know that," he says, a touch defensively. "Who knows what these adorable woodland creatures get up to."

"Mostly working to have comfortable lives with minimal danger and maximum amount of the things they like. Food, shelter, mates, that sort of thing."

"...huh. We may have more in common than I thought, me and them."

"I... honestly don't understand how it could seem like you didn't have anything in common with them? You have much more in common with birds and squirrels and rabbits than, say, illithid."

"Oh but you see they'll never have a fashion sense as good as mine and so they will forever be beneath me."

"Less prattle, we have goblins to kill."

"We can walk and prattle at the same time, thank you!" says Ivetrielle, cheerfully, getting to walking. "And, uh, no, birds in particular can be impressively vain. You know preening is a thing named for what they do, yes? Well, think if instead of wearing clothes you grew your own feathers and fussed at them endlessly to get them all perfect. And that if your feathers aren’t perfect and your nest is badly decorated you’ll never get anyone to love you. Birds therefore have excellent fashion sense.”

"Oh puhlease, feathers are so last decade, I would be the talk of Baldur's Gate for at least a year if I showed up anywhere with feathers."

"...would you really?"

"Yes. Countess Rennier thought she could change opinions on this two years ago. She was wrong, and she," and his voice grows lower, more solemn, "paid the ultimate price."

"...she was executed?"

"Her reputation was executed. Why, I'm still talking about it two years later!"

"What a dreadful state of affairs that surely has such lasting implications and gravity as execu... hm. Sorry, can you repeat that?"

The second sentence is not to any of them, it's to a squirrel. Her speak with animals spell is still up.

"Your woodland friends are very rude," he sniffles.

"You don't even know what she said," she snorts in an undertone to Astarion. Then at a more normal volume, to the squirrel: "When was this? Really. And... no, no, I understand, you have a family on the way to worry about, it's all right. Thank you for telling me. I'll look into it."

"She interrupted a very important conversation! That's rude."

"...I can't tell if you're being serious."

"And that's just how I like it."

"Everyone all right having a brief detour to investigate something that was sneaking near our camp while we were sleeping? She didn't know what it was and says it smelled like death. Which implies not a normal predator."

"Oh and she comments on people's smells, too? Terribly rude."

"How brief? We've had enough detours."

"Oh, don't be so wound up, darling, I think we've determined to everyone's satisfaction that this transformation is not advancing with time, we can take a small break to investigate whatever's terrifying the poor squirrels." To Ivy: "Do lead on, dear."

"Shouldn't be more than twenty minutes. I wouldn't want to impose at all, just that it was near our camp and was strange and with... everything... that puts me on edge. Squirrels get scared by normal predators all the time, but this... didn't sound like one."

Her immediate thought is clearly that a shadow druid might be following them.

But yes, she can start leading them in approximately the exact direction Astarion took his hunting.