Understanding Pointers in c++

So I have been going crazy over this one small concept. I have been trying to wrap my head around pointers. To start off with I understand they point to a specific memory adress. My problem comes in when returing a point from a function. More specificly why I can acess the values in it in a specfic manner.

The bottom example is what I am messing with at the moment.I am currently returning a pointer to a int that stores a array as the return value. I place it on the stack to be accessed later. I am also aware this is not the best way of doing things but I am just doing this for practice.

 int* startTheSquare() { //Keep the array on the stack to be looped through static int ar[2] = { 2,4 }; //This will set the value of x^2 return ar; } void outPutValuesToCompute() { int* get = startTheSquare(); for (int i = 0; i<2; i++) { cout << "Values" << get[i]; }; } int main() { outPutValuesToCompute(); return 0; } 

The part that is tripping me up is why can I point to the memory address of this return type here.

 int* get = startTheSquare(); 

and then just automatically gain access to the array with out the need of de referencing it? I also want to know if I just access one part of the array why when I have to then deference it but I do not have to use a reference value & to access it. Like I would need to do when pointing to a variable?

example of accessing with out the array.

int* get = startTheSquare(); int *store = get; 

example of accessing it with the array.

 void outPutValuesToCompute() { int* get = startTheSquare(); for (int i = 0; i<2; i++) { cout << "Values" << get[i]; }; } 

example of pointer with variable

int foo = 10; int *getFoo= &foo; cout<<*getfoo 

Hopefully all of this makes some sort of sense? Please let me know if I need to clarify any thing.