do you think (fear the forest) cross’s time around humans and watching humans is what made him unconsciously develop the sense of “modesty” that leads him to wear the animal pelts around his pelvis. like he saw they wore clothes and kind of understood why they did and just, without thinking about it, felt drawn to kind of do the same in his own way. is that anything
NO YOU'RE SO REAL, i actually do think some of their behavoirs are learned from observing things around them, that's how they learned to do almost everything because they definitely didn't have like a parent raising them and teaching them how to be the creatures that they are
cross one hundred percent learned about the concept of clothing from humans; he learned about how to craft and maintain them from watching elder women sitting on their back porches and sewing, or watching people sew up their clothes and some of the methods for things
and it lead to him experimenting with the things he had access to, which was patches of moss and algae that he dried and sew together with a vine (or maybe he used a large tarp that had been blown into the woods by the wind, considering that he felt that the wind was his friend)
and he was already wearing this and had on the beginnings of his moss and fungi cloak already growing down his back when he reached killer's forest
and i think he tried to get killer to also wear something, because he'd also learned the notion of shame over displaying ones naked body, and tried to convince killer it was something embarrassing, or weird but killer hadn't really fucking cared what the humans were doing unless it was entertaining
that, and, when he tried to wear something, it felt weird and wrong on his bark and he tore it off in a week and proclaimed he didn't care if cross thought it was weird, this is what is natural to him
and cross kinda came to the conclusion that perhaps modesty is just a human thing, and it's only humans who should be ashamed or embarrassed of their bodies
but even so, after learning that, he still wears his thing because it's hard to shake what he'd learned and the embarrassment is kinda forever there, though having killer's careless attitude certainly helps him not worry so much about being seen as too exposed
