Ask all you want. I like the game a lot and thus like talking about the game. :)
"one dead, one alive" sounds broken. If you free the bird, it kills the slavetrader. An exact repro or just a screenshot of it would be nice, but I'll investigate and try to fix it in the next version.
You can enter the cave just fine - it's just Stella being a scaredy-cat. Surely nothing bad will happen. x3