>Nod.
>Once she seems ready to go, resume course. Keep a particular eye out for mice.
>Once the two of you finish your lunches, you get back up and resume your course westward, through yet more tangled and rocky thickets that conspire to make the journey unpleasant. Progress remains slow, and your casual appraisal for mouse activity turns up little, unless you were willing to move even
more slowly. Your trail does stumble upon
one poorly-concealed mouse hole within the first hour, but the occupant - even upon being woken and then placated - is not especially bright, and also unable to tell you anything beyond what your map already does. Kagerou watches the exchange with a kind of faintly amused curiosity; you're not sure how much of it she can actually hear - a human would hear almost nothing at that pitch, but those ears aren't very human. You've no doubt you've passed a dozen other mouse dwellings by now, but in a wood this dense and knotted, it would take a concentrated search to uncover them while their owners were all asleep.
>Eventually the trees start to thin, and while the terrain remains rocky and uneven, their absence does a great deal to ease your journey. There are fewer obstacles to avoid and better sight lines to plot the easiest path; it's not exactly
light walking, but after the last few hours, you'd take it in a heartbeat.
>More time passes. The bright sun of midday slowly wanes and the very first twinges of red are starting to grow visible on the horizon, if one looks for them. Over the last couple of hours, Kagerou seems to have grown increasingly... pensive. It's hard to put your finger on for certain, and she wasn't exactly comfortable around you from the outset, but it felt like there was an easing in her manner for a while that seems to be thinning out again, your companion's thoughts turning inward more frequently. Once or twice she seems almost a little despondent. Perhaps it's because she no longer has leading the way to preoccupy her; the further you've gotten from familiar territory, the more navigational decisions have fallen to you to make, and she simply follows. She makes a visible effort to mask her unease if you appear to be looking, but she honestly has a pretty terrible poker face. Something is bothering her.
