hand crushed by a mallet

The ruckus that was being kicked up well behind him was impossible to miss, and the lanky youth paused. Who was shouting in a cave? Bad things happened if you attracted attention in caves, sometimes there were sleeping bears and wolverines that weren't keen to be awake at this hour. The quiet humming stopped, and the leggy male turned about to wander his way back to the entrance. The sounds that approached from ahead were very strange. In the pitch dark, whoever was coming this way wouldn't be able to see him, but if they'd been quiet they might have heard the click of his nails on the stone floor.

"Who's Nugget?" he crooned curiously as he finally caught the tail end of what the stranger was saying, tipping his narrow skull to one side quizzically. "Did you want help finding Nugget?" he asked next, with little time in between for whoever this was to respond. Standing still in the open, yawning cavern, he couldn't hear quite as well as he could in the catacomb of tunnels that lay behind him. However, it was still easy enough to make out the steady breathing of someone quite close. And the scent of... equine? It was different than the smell of sheep, and certainly wasn't the smell of cattle. Huh. Weird.

""