"Cool. I mean, great. Thanks again." He's not really particularly artsy; some basic art classes failed to evoke any strong painting or sculpture spirit in him. But maybe some ideas will come to him while he looks for unique rocks or flowers.

He heads for the forest, stopping any appropriately armbanded person he sees along the way to ask if they're Blenn, or know where to find him.

"Blenn is a man's name."

"I'm not sure he's even awake right now."

"He was headed back to the ship last I spotted him."

Whelp, maybe he'll find him tomorrow. He'll head for the forest with an initial plan to look out for any birds nests in branches above him as he makes his way to the river.

Birds nest a normal amount around here. There's a lot of variety of birds - there are only a few species of mammals he's spotted evidence of but there are easily a few hundred kinds of birds. Maybe they fly between rounds sometimes.

Exactly what he was hoping for. Animals that evolved on an earth-like round might be similar to animals that evolved on earth (though his hypotheses are  fairly doubtful that much evolving has happened at all here relative to earth, and most of these animals' great ancestors were just grabbed and put here the way humans were), but for birds this world holds a lot more room for divergence. He has no idea if a bird's default way of navigating on Earth would work in this world's space—would electromagnetic fields be detectable between rounds?—but zero-G flight has to be less tiring, and so long as they can find some clouds to fly through (and maybe snatch some space bugs out of?) bird ecology would be pretty wild to study here...

He'll climb a few trees to check out nests, looking in particular for any eggs that are unusually pretty.

He can find some freckly blue eggs!

Score. If no protective bird parents swoop in to attack him, he'll carefully reach out to take a couple.

A bird sure yells at him but doesn't seem brave enough to go peck his eyes out.

Oh.

It is sure nice knowing on an intellectual level that he's not in a place where that bird is going to spin a web of glass music around him or grow to match his size or anything, but uh...

The rest of his body is not as convinced.

Freeze or Flight instincts war inside him, and he's got sufficient control to know he's safe enough to close his eyes and take a few deep breaths, despite the bird's aural assault.

The feeling of being exposed from his conversation earlier never really went away; it just sort of faded into the background of his awareness. He tries to remind himself that the misinteretations he "allowed" her to have wouldn't count as lies back on Earth, and that he's not in the Hedge anymore, so he shouldn't feel like he's left a massive gap in his armor, one which a fae could use to trap him, or that would give their magic better hold over him...

Yeah, the feeling isn't buying it.

Luckily, he has plenty of experience acting through feelings of fear and exposure. He just has to lean into the adrenaline instead.

He snatches three eggs and half drops his way down the tree instead of carefully climbing, holding them carefully against his chest as he lets his legs collapse and rolling to absorb the impact.

He comes up against the tree trunk and lies still, letting his pulse slow with deep breaths as he scans his body for injury and checks the eggs (some part of him also still convinced that the bird is going to attack him via some magic bullshit any second now...).

One egg has cracked in the excitement, but only a little, and the albumin is still holding it together underneath. The other two are intact.

He lets out a long, slow breath, then carefully transfer the eggs into his empty pockets before going to pick up his bag and bow, then continue toward the river, searching for any cool feathers or rocks on the way to the river.

The exposed feeling is slow to fade. He checks back over his shoulder often, even after the angry cries of the bird-parent are lost in the other noises of the woods, guilt a hard ball in his lower stomach.

There are feathers, but not cool ones, and rocks, but they're even less cool.

He'll walk downstream for a bit, gaze searching the river bed for any rocks that might sparkle through the water. There also might be some nice flowers along the riverbed.

Flowers exist; there's something loosestrife-y that's particularly abundant. The river's not super clear and the visible rocks are boring.

The abundant stuff is unlikely to be rare, but he'll take what he can find, spending a few extra minutes to extract some by their roots, bringing moist soil in clumps along with him. If there are multiple colors, he'll take some of each.

And then, feeling the fatigue of a long day settling in, he'll head back toward his barnyard bed, still looking out for anything pretty that might catch his attention. He'll even take unusually symmetrical pinecones or richly colored acorns, if he spots the forest has anything like that.

There's a bright blue thing that turns out to be a scrap of somebody's clothes, and the best pinecone he sees is pretty good.

Alright. He'll have to hope one of these is good enough.

He dreams of the Hedge again, as he's come to expect. The sky-islands are full of racious birds, chasing him down no matter where he tries to hide, able to sense his vulnerability. He takes a number of wounds trying to escape their claws and beaks and razorsharp feathers, and wakea with a gasp, drenched in cold sweat.

It takes him a while to realize he's not physically harmed, feeling ghostly pains from the dream wounds. When they finally fade, he knows he won't be able to sleep again, and he finally gets up to prepare for his day, eating some leftover forest forage and heading for the docks to see if any appropriately armbanded sailoes could point him to their captain, or Blenn, or Kasnta.

Blenn is getting food over there. Kasnta is aboard; so's the captain.

He goes over to Blenn and smiles. It feels a bit forced, as the walk here was not enough to totally shake off the dream.

"Hi, I'm Danny. I might be joining your crew for the trip to Rabbitround, and heard you might be able to help me. I've never been there before, or really heard much about it, but I'm looking to meet a lot of researchers of various kinds, and wouldn't know where to start looking for them."

"Oh, well, there's the research institutes, that's presumably where you'd want to go, but you'll need to know more than 'various' to get anywhere!"

"Right. I'm also still learning the language, so may not have words for certain things... if you could describe a few of the things that you know are researched there, and tell me what they're called, I'd be happy to buy you a drink."

"Sure, why not. You're an interesting fellow, huh! Well, languages are one thing they study, how they change and how accents work and suchlike. Some of the better traveled researchers there."