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"Likely," Aragost said softly, standing with his back to the children, gazing out at the surrounding land. "We may be a few hundred feet above the land, but we are only a few miles from the ranch. This is not a very high mountain, I believe you would be able to see the ranch and the valley both from the top."

"I can see my house from the top!" Adan agreed cheerfully. "And a really really long way away, I can even see a city! But Ara-kun doesn't let us stay up there too long most times, at least not in a certain area, 'cos he says there's a dragon up there."

"Dragons that are large enough to be a threat to children, but no one bigger," Aragost replied, turning to face the children again. "Only one or two on this mountain. I find it doubtful that Ulani or Ulrich even know if their existence, and they have lived here for nearly their entire lives."

Adan kept bouncing around excitedly. "Ara-kun says he won't take me to see them 'til I'm bigger," he grinned at Lin, "but someday I will! I wanted one for a pet but Mama said no way, never in my life."

He giggled.

Adan appeared to be quite delighted at Lin's suggestion.

"I think it would be neat to have a moor cat as a pet," he agreed. "Neko and Nako used to have one, a long long time ago, they say, and even when Mama was little they had one, but Nako said it got old and died when Mama was just little."

Aragost glanced down at the boy. "That would be dangerous, getting a moor cat," he murmured. "You would have to find one that whose mother had been killed ... or else abandoned it ... otherwise you would have a very angry adult moor cat on your hands, and that is something that even I have the sense to fear."

Adan shrugged. "Mama says he slept on her bed with her at night," he offered, "so he was a house cat, wasn't he?"

Aragost chuckled softly. "I believe Lin is trying to say ... a small cat ... like the size of Saki," he told the boy amusedly. Then he turned back to Lin. "I'm afraid that we have no such creatures in our world," he said apologetically. "But caught young enough, and tamed, they make loyal and very protective pets that will guard over you for their entire lives."

And if you had a moor cat protecting you, you really didn't need to worry about anything else.

Aragost smiled. "They can be quite nice," he assured her, "but I do understand that everyone has an animal that they are afraid of, and in your case the fear has a solid foundation. I have seen a full-grown moor cat take down an adult medium-sized dragon before. They are fierce creatures, indeed."

Adan pursed his lips thoughtfully. "I guess you know a lot of things, don't you, Ara-kun," he murmured, more as a statement than a question.

"Trust me," Aragost replied dryly. "Even I could be swallowed by one ... not in one bite ... but I could easily be eaten by one ... if I were to let it kill me."

Not something he would do voluntarily, of course.

Adan frowned, then hopped over to Aragost and slapped him on the arm.

"Don't you go let one kill you," he lectured the tall, dark man - and one almost had to find the situation funny, a small, skinny kid like him telling someone as frightening as Aragost what to do in such a serious, stern tone. "'Cos if you do then you're gonna be in trouble!"

Adan stopped in the middle of his sentence and looked at Lin perplexedly.

"I don't know," he admitted, scratching his head in confusion. "Does your papa get in trouble with your mama a lot? What does she do to him?"

"Adult words?" Adanedhel repeated curiously. "What are adult words?"

That was a concept he had never heard of before - words for adults. If a word was good for one age group, why not for all of them? Then again, elvish was a language that was difficult to swear in - it was just the nature of the language. If he were to ask his grandmother about it, however, she might have a few things to teach him - in other languages, though.