Totoka River 그 안에 숨겨진 비밀을 알게된 것 같아

The inky ingénue, stung by the abruptness of the male’s recoil, skipped nimbly away in turn — she was learning swiftly that the rules were different here. To anybody in the Teekon Wilds but Amoxtli, she was a creature without a name — a literal nobody among the many, many somebodies she came across. Her tufted ears pinned sharply back against her nape at the harshness in the voice of the male she’d instantly assumed to be a gentle, benevolent creature. She was naïve, in many ways as guileless and unsullied as a female half her age, and had hopped immediately from polite conversation into a catlike craving for physical contact. She recalled his words — “don’t you speak, girl?” — and the pain his question evoked flared brightly in her brilliant seablue eyes, but they were turned away from him — fixed solemnly on her reflection in the muddied water.

With quiet humility, the sheepdog cross lifted her finely-sculpted head to face the stranger without meeting his ruddy gaze, a low and toneless whine unlike those she had whispered thus far spilling limply from her streamlined muzzle. I am sorry, said the whisper; and with a sheepish dip of her slender head, she demurely slipped her sumi-e brush tail betwixt her hocks to waver apologetically: I am sorry. She answered his question as clearly as she could, a soundless shake of her head. No, she thought, no. Even had she been able to speak, in the face of the male’s unease, she could think of nothing to say.