[b]"Wrong answer. If incubation began after the last one arrived, all the eggs received the same amount of heat, meaning that they should all hatch at the same time. If one hatches earliest than the rest, at a time it is not supposed to, it means it's a parasite, like the cuckoo bird. The chick will then push the rest out. So, there will be no more eggs in the nest."[/b]

Leila listened as the boy corrected her and explained the reasoning behind the correct answer. Alas, she knew terribly little regarding the topic of birds. She did, however, find this concept rather intriguing - and now being reminded, she remembered reading about something similar somewhere, sometime in the past. A species developing tactics that allows it to access the resources gathered by someone else - free lunch. A clever, although not necessarily agreeable, strategy.

[b]"Ah...it does seem so."[/b] She said in response, smiling. She never did particularly mind being wrong.

*	*	*	*

Leila did not know for sure when exactly she realized she was tired. But once she did, it was very hard to ignore that fact.

The road to their destination was far from without obstacles. The rocks of which their path was composed were greatly uneven, with many sudden increases and decreases in height, and several places where jumps were required for the gaps to be cleared. The moss - a simple life form that happily flourished on the humid surfaces of the various formations of rock - covered the originally rough surface of the rocks with a dangerous slime-ish texture.

Leila’s shoes didn’t happen to provide decent traction. That didn’t bother her much - the exact positions of footholds on rocks, even completely neglecting friction, could be quickly calculated. The major obstacle in her ascension along the path was, instead, the random variable that produces the unsightly probabilistic error margin to each and every part of the results; adding the dread of uncertainty every time before a footstep was secured or after a leap was taken - even with the operations being carried out being supposedly completely deterministic.

That random variable we speak of was, of course, no other than Leila herself.

The jaggedness of the terrain increased as the group proceeded, making the success of each step more thanks to luck and chance instead of caution, or skill - not like she had any, that. Every time she didn’t slip and topple over into the mud seemed more like a miracle. And just as the configuration of the stones became more and more peculiarly unpredictable, so did the level of illumination drop. It was truly discomforting for the girl - less light, more chunks of black in her sight, less information provided, fewer clues to base her actions upon. The group still carried on, and so did Leila’s predictions of possible courses to be taken, with data gathered from a combination of what was left of the visible cues and the trial-and-error of extending her palms in random directions in hope of getting a grasp on something. And the longer she stayed under such a state, the harder it was to fight the dread and anxiousness continuously brewing inside.

Leila did not like that feeling at all. Already screaming internally, she resisted considering the option of making it known to the others, as well as the urge to just cling onto someone or something and refuse to move until the environment changed - though, she would find it utterly unpleasant to have to do either. Instead, to distract herself, she focused on listening to the chirping of the creatures that resided in the area around them, although it did not account for much effect for she was far less adept in gathering clues through hearing as compared to eyesight, which she practically lacked at the moment; and she couldn’t really tell much from the sounds except the fact that they did contribute to a rather spooky background noise (the kind she would usually find comforting, and would have now if it were not for all the nervousness building up from not being able to see properly). She did, however, also overhear a slightly reassuring conversation that took place elsewhere in the group, slightly in front of her - signalling both that she had somehow not fallen too far behind, and that the journey was to come to a temporary end briefly.

[b]”...Hakuren-san, how much farther?”[/b]
[b]”...A bit more.”[/b]

*	*	*	*

The caves were a wondrous sight. Great arches of stone, almost miraculously supported by their own structure. Flora - grass, fungi, and other shorter leaved plants on the ground, moss and vines where the walls extended upwards - provided a tint of life for the cave that would otherwise be devoid of it. Above them was the ceiling of the cave, constructed at a great height unreachable by all except the most simple, stubborn plants, whose trails winded some distance before halting, sometimes into unwilling dangling threads pointing, again, downwards. Sunlight - sunlight from outside of the mountain -showered in from an area where the composition of the cave had seemingly failed, where stones and rocks had crumbled and fallen to the ground of the cave, leaving a gaping hole that allows lighting to be provided; the mist in the moisture-saturated air revealed the course of beams of sunlight as they poured through the gaps between dangling vines. 

Leila walked along the group behaving like a child entering an electronic arcade - turning around frantically, desperately trying to take in everything at once, gasping between her stammers to marvel at the surroundings.

In front of the group, at the centre of the cave approximately beneath the source of light, was the mirror surface of a lake. It was not large in size - some might argue it was not worthy yet of being called a lake. The water was clear - almost unreally clear, a blue-green crystal lens through which the underlying structure of the bed was revealed. And if this was a pond and not a lake, then it sure was a very, very deep pond; the solid surface beneath the waters extending downwards and downwards towards the centre until all light from below was absorbed by the dampening layers of water before they could reach the surface, or any nearby human eye. It almost reminded her of something else that light did not escape, but she abandoned that thought in defiance of bringing back any memories from the Fisher. Instead she stared at the centre of the lake as the group wandered on along the gravel ground - the abyss that invoked that unique feeling that was a mix of fear, mystery, uncertainty,excitement, admiration, and something that was almost plain happiness.

[b]‘Extraordinarily beautiful.”[/b]

It was one of the few times Leila spoke out loud what was going through her mind. That she remarked in a whisper, as if anything her voice would add to the scene would disrupt its perfectness. A whisper, almost as faint as the one coming from one of the caves, the one Leila did not hear.

She was never particularly good at picking up cues with her ears.