He merely nodded in silence to the explanation, ears flickering and eyes thoughtful, veiled by his unruly forelock. She seemed hesitant in the beginning, as if unsure of how to phrase it, and in dutiful silence he listened. War did not seem to sit too well with her, and he could share the sentiment - in the air, he was quite able, but on the ground? He was a crap fighter, and all the blood and pain... No, it was too icky for him, and he grimaced. He could understand her dilemma somewhat, but not wholly; he still wasn't entirely sure what was going on, what she owed him... Perhaps her healing magic, since it was of light and fire, but he wasn't entirely certain. "He's probably just misunderstood," Moth said in a light voice, knowing the feeling all too well. It was pretty much what had happened back in Anarore, how he'd managed to end up being rude and snappy to pretty much everyone without meaning to. Still, it was a stupid a justification as he'd ever heard, and offered nothing on how to solve it. Feeling rather stupid, he didn't elaborate on it, just shut his mouth and looked in another direction. It just wasn't in his nature to brood. He wanted everyone to be happy all the time, deal with sorrow, loss and hardship with a smile, and he wondered briefly if he'd been grinning while delusional up on that mountainside. It probably wouldn't have surprised him if he had.

As they walked towards his randomly chosen cave, Onni laughed and said something utterly confusing. Moth paused in his stride and peered over his shoulder as the finch trilled. It sounded just like any other finch, but it seemed to please his friend. He frowned at her for a moment, then shrugged. He knew dragons in Anarore had bonded to equines. Maybe finches in Helovia bonded to pegasi. With his usual thoughtless manner he proceeded into the dark, Onni's anxious call rolling off his shoulders. "It's okay," he called back, not pausing to think what her hesitation really meant. Not even when her voice trembled across the darkness a second time did it really strike him how odd he was behaving, gallivanting off into the unknown dark like that. His travels north had cured him of his fear of the night, for clearly the shades weren't there, and in his customary fashion he'd attributed that conclusion to everyone, not stopping to think they might still be traumatized by it. "Of course it is," he told her. No strange creature had made itself known or swallowed him whole, and he'd been in there for a good total of what, a minute? Stellar statistics. As her hooves clattered on the damp rock floor he mused about the cave system's size. The moist air hinted at water somewhere deeper, but he was in no mood to get lost in there.

Then suddenly Onni crashed into him and he flinched, bracing himself against her weight and nearly toppling over. After all, Moth had all the grace of a lame elephant on the ground, but she hadn't had enough momentum to seriously unbalance him. He blinked in the darkness, wishing he could make out her features, but the faint light did nothing but blind him to what was in the dark. Squinting he turned around again, putting his back against it. Onni stood beside him, but something was just .. off, about her. Her breathing sounded nervous and ragged, her sides heaving perhaps a little too rapidly... As usual, he'd just acted without thinking, but now he stilled the instinctive rush of words, which likely just would've been something insensitive and useless anyway. His pulse was sending a faint hammering into his head, something similar to exhaustion trying to creep up on him again. It made his thoughts sluggish, but he frowned deeper, tried all the harder. She wasn't happy, something wasn't right, but he couldn't, for the love of everything, figure it out. It was, however, enough to occupy his attention and still the fluttering of his heart.

"What's wrong, Onni?" he finally asked in a low, worried voice, barely louder than a whisper. Had he done something? Was she hurt? Sad? Plagued by something horrible? Sick? Dying? Just plain unhappy? Did she know the way his heart sped up, the way his gut fluttered, that he wanted to give her flowers, was she about to tell him that it was suspicious to be in a cave with a stallion, or that she had someone else? He ground his jaws together to not ramble out a thousand sudden worries, tried to school himself to patience, and if he hadn't been so tired he probably would've fidgeted until he broke a feather or three. His heart picked up again, but this time out of anxiety and fear and not that other emotion; his gut wound itself into a tight, poisonous knot, and he felt sick listening to the drip-broken silence, waiting for her words. Waiting for something that would potentially rip the floor from under his hooves, metaphorically. Time seemed agonizingly slow, his breath a moist cloud in front of his face, and he wondered if he'd even hear her reply over the thunder of his frantic heart.