King Elk Forest sweet adeline

she doesn't know what the leaves are, and tells him that, and delight loses interest. "oh," he says, and moves on to phase two, totally smoothly. "i'm delight singing-sunlight -- you're malice, right? burke and mato both mentioned you." he pauses, realising how odd that sounds, and tries again: "i mean - because i'm - i'm collecting everyone's stories, right now. the founding stories of tindómë." 

he glances at the plant again as if checking it is still, in fact, the same boring leaf it'd been when he walked up. so far all of his pack mates have been quite accomodating on his self-directed quest but there is still the awkward hesitation in demanding the life stories of total strangers - and so he bites his tongue for now, watching instead to see how she responds before he decides to press on or not.