the son of sunflowers - straw

[Straw]

  [font=trebuchet ms]Mountain climbing was not the sort of sport most people would teach kids. If you really needed to get to the other side of a mountain, it was usually more practical to walk around it. Those who took the time to actually climb usually did so for fun, or for self-discovery, or because they were just built to do well in mountains. Straw was primarily the first two, but she did have some adaptations that were helpful when scaling cliffs. Pseudo-thumbs, used by other red pandas to hang onto bamboo, could be used to find purchase on steep mountainsides. She was also built to scale trees quickly, which could help with getting over small ledges.

  All that said, the cliff that Straw noticed Sanzu trying to climb was large- large enough that Straw had never tried to scale it directly, opting to go around it each time she came up here. The winged reptile probably wasn't used to traversing sheer cliffs, either. "Cliff's too steep," Straw said softly as she approached, casting her gaze up at the top of the cliff. Pointing at the gentler slope in the other direction, she added, "I always go around."