Pondering...

As he was walking back to his cave, Dree mumbled, "What am I missing?" as he pondered what the Oracle had said.  "To save us all?," he murmured to himself.  The meeting was still going on in the Baron's Mansion with the others, but Dree needed a few minutes to himself to think without the others around. 

He knew that somehow he would be the one having to make the final decisions about his kin, the Dragons.  "To save us all," he murmurs again. ​

As he continued thinking about what the Oracle had said, he almost opened the bag IT was carried in to ask more questions. "No.  I need to think this more on my own,"  he decided trying to wrap his Dragon brain about all that he had just learned.  "We must first keep Siate' and Aralt from discovering the Wishing Well's importance," Dree knew.  But there was something else in what the Oracle had said that made him uncomfortable.  Something that was hanging just out of reach as he still had not quite grasped it fully yet.  "It's tickling my brain so what am I missing?" he said out loud.

It was then he heard in his head a response.  "Master, are you asking me a question?" the Oracle asked him.  "How may I be of assistance?" A minute or two passed before Dree made his decision.  "Yes Oracle.  I need one more question to be answered.  You say I went to the Sacred Tree to protect the realms but you did not say why it was necessary.  What do you remember of that?"

After only a short delay, the Oracle telepathically responded.  "Master,  the Guardian of the Sacred Tree was perishing.  You went there to help defend the tree.  You must have been successful as we are all still here and you have returned."  Dree thought about the response for a while.  "Thank you.  I will not be asking any more questions for now.  Please disregard me unless I addresses you directly," Dree told the Oracle.  "Very good Master," was IT's reply. 

Dree now knew what had eluded him before.  "To save us all," he muttered again as he started down the caves and back to the Mansion.  "Since the Moon Dragon did not return, I must assume that something happened to him. 

"He didn't fail because otherwise the Oracle wouldn't have said that we are all still here.  But what happened to him that didn't allow him to return?  I must talk to the others, but I think I know where we need to start," Dree decided.  "The problem is I don't know what we need to do about Siate' and Aralt, especially if they unite the other Dragons against us."  Arriving at the door connecting the caves to the Baron's Mansion, Dree stopped.

​"I need to do something else first," he told himself as he turned around and headed for the cave exit that would take him closest to the Wishing Well.