The man seems a bit unnerved to have a lion walking beside him, turns to Nicholae and says something entirely unintelligible. it sounds vaguely Semitic.
Can Vulpus make any of it out? He is fluent in both Arabic (a 6) and Aramaic (a 5), both semitic derived languages.
The relationship is extremely distant, he can make out that a question is being asked, and that Nicholae is being addressed with an honorific, probably referring to some kind of spirit or magical being which the man must assume he is.
Vulpus will continue to shadow Nicolae, but will hand off contact duties to him. Humans are better at learning languages "in the wild" anyways. Give him a good book on it anyday!
The man stand still, apparently waiting for a response.
Nicolae will drop the chicken at the man's feet, and then morph into a dog and then start to walk towards the grotto.
He will bark at Vulpus:
"Hey, why dont you come over here with us Vulpus ? I might have frightened that man; in retrospect maybe a lion was not the best idea; anyway if he doesnt go into the cave, maybe we can explore it ourselve. What do you say ? At this point he probably think we are some magical animals, well, me at least, you already are one." He laugh/barks,
"Well, he is right in your case."
The man falls to his knees, apparently distraught at this turn of events and begins rambling in the same unintelligible language.
Vulpus will mumble under his breath, "Sheesh, I'm going to regret this." He drops his hide in shadow affect, and approaches the man. He stares him in the eye until he has his attention, then deliberately leads him back towards the cave.
The man starts, grabs the chicken and scrambles for the cave ahead of Vulpus.
Interestingly the cave he scrambles for is not the one you were watching, but is in fact hidden a short ways away by some brush.
Surprised, Nicolae will say to Vulpus before following the man into the tunnel:
"Did you just saw that ? I would have totally missed it, and in fact i must have missed it a lot of this during the summer, as I could never pinpoint were these lads would come from. Hopefully, the keen sense of smell of dogs will help us tracks him in the tunnels. "
Inside the cave is even darker than the night outside, though the vision and smell of the two canines can navigate with little difficulty. The cave only goes a short ways in before it turns in a slow "S" shaped turn, and beyond that you see the man with his family, mats of woven grass lie on the floor and a fire warms the cave carved stone utensils are being used to eat the food from the sack which was left outside, seven children of various ages play with hand carved toys, and an ancient copper pot hangs over the fire.
"Hey fox, you'll need to help me there, you are the one who knows the language of the dead people after all. I'll be the mouth and you'll be the brain. Does that sound like a plan to you ?"
Nicolae will wave his tail, and tap the ground with one of his front paw.
"But you know what ? Change of plan. I've had this damn chicken in my mouth for so long that I am hungry now. Let's try to beg for a piece of it before we attempt anything out extraordinary, okay?"
"All right, all right. Tell you what - get them taking, you know basic stuff, like 'good doggie', 'fetch' and the like. If I can hear them speaking enough, I'll get their lingo soon enough. And then their 'spirit animals' can start giving them instructions."
Nicolae will beg for food, waiting for Vulpus to get some language basics. He will also smell the primitives to see if he detects any odours of domestic animals.
Terra will approach the area where the man disappeared and then do her best to figure out exactly what it looks like and see if she can make out any words. She asks Vita to head back to the covenant and see if she can procure some food, then sits down proping up the Atlas so it has a good view of the area too. "Let's try and get a good look, see if we can cut down on searching time." In particular she looks for any signs of what might be human activity.
The man feeds Nicholae, but istead of talking to him is talking with his wife, or companion.
Terra and Atlas are able to spot the signs of where the man got the bag of food, but there is no sign of where he went.
There are however footprints from two canines that are equally fresh. (per+hunt roll)
"I always like free meals, Vulpus; well technically it's our food, but hey! We didnt have to cook it, and let me tell you that her wife knows how to cook chicken I'll tell you that. Lucky lad."
says Nicolae after licking his chops.
"So Vulpus, making any headways into understanding their gibberish ?"
He will then starts to play with the children to pass time, if the man let him do so.
"Not yet, although the verb tense structure appears to be derivitive of the various Semitic dialects. I have a few words here and there, both mostly it just sounds like gibberish still. I have to disagree on the chicken, but then I vastly prefer mine raw. Most cooks just char the meat, and use spices to cover up meat already gone bad. Give me good, strong, and pure meat flavor anyday.
It was nice having it plucked, though. Yesterday I thought I was going to cough up a lung."
With that, Vulpus will do his best impression of a lazy fox and pretend to sleep, the only telltale being the tufts on his silver ears point straight up into the air.
You notice as they feed Nicolae that they are also taking pains to keep their children as far away as possible, and oddly even place a blackish-silver stone in front of him.
"Clearly, that poor guy is still shocked by my appearance as a lion and I dont blame him; you know me Vulpus, sometimes I get carried away. Anyway, what is he thinking ? I am not going to eat his babies..."
He sighs: "I don't think this is going anywhere. I'll go back to the covenant and grab some more food to maybe get them talking more with gifts, while you learn the basics of their language."
He will then say jokingly:
"Hey, try not to be killed while I am away."
While outside, he will stumble accross Terra and direct her to the cavern, where Vulpus stayed.