"Are you sure you're alright back there?" Inara called. "Those sounds that you're making don't seem too natural."

Mal shook his head, silently wishing that he'd decided to walk further into the woods to take care of a call of nature - but he hadn't wanted to get out of easy earshot of Inara just in case something horrible happened to her while he was - occupied. (Not that he'd have been in the best shape to charge out and save her even if he knew that she was in trouble, in the middle of this situation, but...) So now something reasonably horrible was happening to *him*. Oh well. "Yeah, I'm fine, and nearly done with what I've gotta do. Just stand by."

"Yeah, well, I wasn't really planning on anything else, just try to keep it down, okay? That is simply *not* attractive stuff." Mal shook his head and got on with it.

After finishing his business, and cleaning up as scrupulously as he could under the circumstances, (which were pretty good actually,) Mal emerged from the stand of trees clustering around a small stream and re-evaluated the situation. "Okay, I don't guess that we can circle around to stay further away from those folks any longer - we'd be just heading along the edge of that clifftop, and there's no easy way down. If we head directly for Kazia's place from here - it's not too far, and the caravan is still a lot of miles off."

"But they'll see us," Inara pointed out. "And they'll be able to come and investigate pretty quickly, if they have a mind to."

"Yes, that's true," Mal pointed out. "Is there any alternative, though??"

"I'd better keep the communicator close," Inara muttered. "Just in case we have nothing to lose by sending out a message."

"Hmm." Mal considered that. "Yeah, good enough. And let's go." So they headed out onto a wide plain, covered with engineered grass whose leaves were dark purple. "Need anything to munch on?"

"No, I don't think so. Grabbed a biscuit while you were... busy," she said. "Maybe we should talk about something else."

"Hmm." Mal considered that