Swamped

"Well, he responded to dangerous, so maybe he saw something dangerous that he doesn't know any words for," you muse. "Or a sign of something dangerous. A corpse, perhaps?" You glance at the little lizard. "A corpse is a dead body."

"No, he knows corpse. Bit of a story there, but there isn't really time to get into it."

"Corpse," says Mortimer halfheartedly.

"Oh, but you're on the right track. Something like a corpse, then."

You think about this.

"I'm sure you don't want to get into this story, but was the body intact? Had it decayed much?"

"Couldn't have been more than an hour old when we found it, so more or less intact. Why?"

"Just wondered if he might have seen a skeleton. That's just the bones, no flesh, so it's not a corpse. But he might realize that's the same sort of thing."

"Skeleton! Skeleton!" Mortimer exclaims.

"Well. That's not much of an immediate concern," Sunflower says. "Shame about whoever it was, but they would have died some time ago. It's unlikely we have to worry about whatever killed them."

"He seems to think it's important, though. Maybe he can explain better now?"

"Fair enough. Mortimer, what are you trying to say?"

"Skeleton! Restrain!" Mortimer seems to pause, as though he's trying to clarify the concept. "Capture? Steal?"

"Someone stole a skeleton?" you ask. Mortimer starts dancing excitedly.

"That's a bit odder. Still not sure how important it is to our situation, but it might be something to investigate when things calm down."

You have a strange feeling it won't wait for that.

"Is there anything more you can tell us about it?" you ask Mortimer.

SpoilerShow

I used a random word generator until I got a word that gave me an idea.