Samboliin leads you through a thicket, out onto a pebbly beach and begins wading out along a causeway to another small island about a hundred meters from this one.
You hesitate on the shore but Samboliin looks over his shoulder and assures you it doesn't get deeper than two feet at any point along the ford so you hoist your leggings up over your knees and follow.
This island is decidedly deciduous from a distance and looks almost like fire sitting on the water. You trot up the beach following Sambliin and through a light forest into another open glade. This one has been touched by Autumn and the deciduous trees are scattering their vibrantly coloured leaves while the gums and acacias are still strikingly green.
"What's here?" You ask curiously, noticing many swallow like bottle-shaped nests of woven fluff and grasses hanging from the trees.
Samboliin opens his mouth to reply and is cut off by a small bright shape that snaps past your nose, brushing the tip of it with a wing.
"What was that?!?" You yelp, leaping backwards.
"What was what?" Samboliin asks. You point at the shape that has become a speck of colour in the sky.
"Oh that..." The unicorn ducks suddenly as the shape dives again. "Drat!"
The small creature circles and lands on Samboliin's horn and you can see it is a tiny winged red cat.
"A what?" You press.
Samboliin whuffs a laugh and the cat-creature blinks at you.
"A Drat. They're really called draeat, many of them looking part dragon part cat but the slur of the name stuck."
The drat scurries up Samboliins horn and onto his neck and begins playing with his mane as though it is wool, chewing and batting it with a paw.

The unicorn stalwartly ignores it.
"Drats group in small to large flocks or in 'pests'"
At your unbelieving expression Samboliin wiggles his ears in laughter.
"No really! From what we know they were made by mistake and the elders couldn't get rid of them. A pest is made up of a mated pair of drats though they occassionally form a 'fool' of three or a 'twit' of four."
During your conversation the drat in Samboliins mane has been getting more and more ensnared in the locks until it lets out a pathetic trill, tangled completely. Sighing Samboliin asks your aid in releasing it.
It takes the two of you several minutes to extract the helpless drat from his mane, in the meantime another of the creatures has appeared and you keep batting it out of the way as you attempt to plait Samboliin's long locks out of the way for him. As you do so he continues.
"Allani found them in a hibernation unit vat under a crop of stones that mark the edge of the wasted lands. I was on the hauling team, shifting rock by harness. From the look of the rubble the outcrop might have once been a large building before the mage storms crumbled the stone walls like cheese."
He bobs his head in thanks, almost dislodging the drat who was cleaning its paw on his back, as you finish the plait.
Another two Drats poke their heads out of the nests in the trees and swoop down to buzz you and Samboliin before perching in nearby trees and watching you curiously.
"From the record in the data banks we found it would seem an Elder attempted to make a special cat for a mage: one to keep his home free of mice, birds, bats and moths. Something went wrong and he ended up with two dozen or so cats the size of mice with bird or bat wings and all the self preservation of a moth near an open flame. Most of them were put into hibernation. Perhaps Allanon intended to bring them to the Tir but ran out of time or never knew of their existance...
"Now and then we find fragments of the Elder race and some of the marvels and utterly foolish things they created."
Samboliin tosses his head and laughs. "They're a nuisance but one can't help liking the little wretches. These six are some of the offspring of the original few we found in the stasis capsule. Darkhorse did some tests and found that they genetic variability between individuals is so great, even between offspring that their small numbers shouldn't be too much of a problem. At some stage we're hoping to foster them out. Two have already been gifted to Jaysen and Coyolxauhqui. Another Drat spirals down to land on a log and looks at you both, you notice a glister of gold in one of it's ears. Samboliin bobs his head and explains that she is the first-born of the generation.
"Come we'd better go before they get too curious and decide to investigate us closer." Without a backwards glance Samboliin shakes the Drats from his coat and strides from the clearing. You hastily follow, looking back you see mostof the Drats watching you intently with bright but not very intelligent eyes.
You recross the ford back to the main island.