Some more practical reasons for putting it off came to her mind as well.

The scent of the fire-horn was still all over her. It was a lot weaker, and she could smell her normal scent much more strongly at this point, but she should wash it off just to be safe. She started heading toward the outside stream, while doing her best to lick off the scent in the meantime.

Maybe acid spit would work better?

The thought brought her back to her interesting new... energy muscles? She had one for the acid spit, but she could vaguely feel others.

She could experiment as she walked. She wasn’t in a particular hurry but she wanted to make sure she got back before the… Back leg standers? Strap wearers? Thinkers. She wanted to get back before the thinker’s scent faded too much in case they’d moved on.

While they might have understood her intention to come back, she didn’t think it was very likely. Her current theory on their method of thought-sharing was the complex gibbering they did, not just somehow knowing what was being thought at them. She hadn’t had much success with that method so far.

She was a bit worried about that too, to be honest. Even if she could figure out how the gibbering turned into thoughts, the sounds involved vocalizations she was pretty sure she wasn’t capable of.

She made a few attempts.

“Eeerehhherrreee.”

“Ee Errrheh Hreee HSsssEre.”

“Ssseee Fffppfpfppppp.”

Yea things were not looking too hopeful on that front.

Ugg. She’d deal with it later.

On to testing the energy. She thought back to when she was… being accosted by the others. She had done something that had saved her from that situation. She thought back to the sensation she’d had and tensed those same ‘muscles’. The response was fast, with energy spreading out to her skin and then… into the world. She looked at her body and it was obscured by a layer of… what seemed like… shadow fluff?

It was like staring into a pitch-black corner, but only where her body was, and a little bit around it. It made her edges indistinct. She would probably be next to impossible to spot in the dark like this. Even with the light, she imagined it’d be hard to tell she was a living thing and not an oddly placed shadow.

She felt like she could push this further somehow. Like she could will herself in a direction and move there, but she was too ‘weak’. Her energy muscles weren’t strong enough to make it happen, not now. She must have only been able to do it out of desperation before.

Speaking of strength, keeping herself shadowed like this was tiring, almost like running, but it only tired this inner self. She could probably keep it up for a while but would need to stop eventually. It didn’t feel like that with the acid spit for some reason. Perhaps it was just easy enough that she could keep it up indefinitely?

She stopped with the shadow fluff and relaxed right about the same time as she made it to the stream. She set to rinsing herself off, keeping an eye out as a lot of animals seemed to frequent the stream. No need to get involved in another ambush.

She could feel that her inner energy was more tired than it had been, but was now recovering. It was strange. It was like having a whole different body in her body. It felt half asleep and weak like she only had a tentative grip on it, but perhaps with practice, it would get stronger, like her normal body?

Or maybe the crystal was the key? The first time she had felt the tingles had been when she touched it, and she had felt those tingles transition into this strange, quiet energy she had now. They must be related.

Her thoughts turned back to the cave.

No use putting it off any longer.