"—the zoo in Umberlight? There are some pretty cool creatures there, if I do say so myself! One time, I was there and—"

Kevin couldn't help but zone in and out of listening to Gloss talk on and on about the wide array of things he was talking about. It wasn't like the pony was droning either; no, he seemed very excited to talk about these things, animatedly waving a hoof when appropriate or even occasionally stopping them to draw a crude diagram in the mulch. Kevin would have zoned out completely if not for the fact that he didn't want to seem totally rude to this pony who was nice enough to walk with him.

"—an escape! Turns out somepony was a bit of a trickster and removed the hinges so it was trivial for—"

It wasn't like Gloss would really have noticed, though; most of the questions the stallion asked were rhetorical, or at least he never seemed to wait for an answer before launching into something else. The few times Kevin did answer, it felt more like an interruption than a conversation, and Gloss even had to stop himself and seemed confused why Kevin was answering him in the first place. Quickly Kevin learned to just let the stallion talk.

"Of course, it would've been a lot crazier if the zookeeper hadn't been there to—"

He looked around at the underbrush that surrounded the path. It hadn't changed much from the forest around the crash site or even where he had fought the ravens... or thought he had fought raves. He wasn't sure what to make of the whole thing, but he mentally cast it aside. Wouldn't do him much good to worry about questions he had no answers for.

"—and I'm pretty sure they gave the medal to their family, bless their soul. Anyway, what's more important is—"

Kevin gazed ahead at the path in front of them, attempting to see if he could recognise anything in front of them. They had already been walking for a few hours, he guessed; a quick look upwards indicated that the sun was already low in the sky. If they didn't get to Dienna soon, they'd have to set up camp in the forest.

Kevin's stomach rumbled. Luckily, this seemed to coincide with the end of one of Gloss's anecdotes. "Hey, Gloss," Kevin said to the lime green stallion, eyeing the bulgy brown saddlebags that lined his slender form. "You got anything in there that I could eat?"

Gloss stopped and blinked. "Oh! Um, yeah, hold on." He slid the saddlebags off and started rummaging through them.

Kevin raised an eyebrow. "How come you took them off first?"

Gloss looked up. "It's a lot harder to look through these without a horn, kid. A lot of ponies struggle through it, but I don't really see any reason to do that." He looked back down. "Aha! Here it is!" He held a hoofful of leafy greens out in front of him; Kevin magically lifted them from his grasp.

"Thank you." Kevin lifted them to his mouth and took a bite. They had no strong flavour—maybe bitter more than anything else—but he was content with anything to fill his belly. After a few more bites, the food was gone.

"Of course! I think we're almost there, anyway. See that rock?" Gloss asked, pointing to a large rock on the left with a white splatter on the top. "Pretty sure I saw that going the other way, just a few minutes before the fork in the path. And it said Dienna was less than an hour from there."

"Oh, awesome," Kevin replied. "Guess we've gotta just keep going."

And so they did, this time walking in silence. A few times, Gloss seemed like he was about to say something, taking an odd gasp of air only to let it out once again. Kevin hoped that the pony in Dienna who he thought he knew was still there and willing to help... otherwise, he didn't know what he was going to do.