Heron Lake Plateau another five more short graybles

He couldn't be serious. Was he serious? Towhee arched an eyebrow but bit her tongue from making a tart reply. Instead, she both said and signed, "Yes," before adding, "It's an entire language." She'd expected him to be rusty but to have forgotten that this was a legitimate method of communication...

She'd gotten so good at reading lips, perhaps too good. Ptero wasn't even necessary anymore. It was so important to Towhee though. She would never let the language die. She would make sure everyone in the pack knew it, at least the basics, and that included Screech. As a matter of fact, her expectations for him would be higher: he was her litter mate, after all, and he should've been fluent.

"You don't have to spell everything out like that," she said a beat later. -Towhee,- she signed, explaining, "See? That's my name sign. And this was yours, back when..." She made the rusty old sign for his true name: Titmouse. "Here's the sign for Screech," she added, using the exact same signal for his name as the actual word itself, which involved a crude mimicry of, well, screeching.