Blackbeak Bluff Red is such a lovely colour on you but you won't be needing those

Ali's next move brought her within an inch of the seagull, sending it winging up to join its circling comrades. Impressed, the piebald youth plopped his wide rear end down and panted up at the birds. He thought with practice he could be that nimble, but his bulk was difficult to coax into a jump on the best of days and he didn't know how she predicted where it would fly. He guessed that with that kind of skill, Ali was an extraordinary hunter too, something he never quite got the hang of enough to do more but just survive.

"If I had wings," he observed, "I'd probably be cocky too. You could just fly away from anything!" That was quite the notion. Shedding his worldly limits and taking to the skies was a private pipe dream of Lucas', though he knew the futility of it. He sometimes dreamt about it, and figured that was the closest he would ever get to the sensation.

"Oh, they're my circus group! We're like performers. I was their dancer!" He did a little wolfish pirouette as if to demonstrate, then fixed Ali with an expression that was ever so slightly more grave. "That's all right though. They'll be okay. I lost my family once too but there's a lot of them so they're probably fine too." If he was overly bothered by his present circumstances, it didn't show. He lived entirely in the present and didn't dwell enough to be upset. "I like it here, too," he agreed then, squinting into the sun momentarily. "It's warmer here than where I was before even though the weather's getting cold, and the big water is beautiful."

Like an afterthought, he went on, "so did you find a pack near the ocean then so you can stay here, or still looking?"