Redhawk Caldera Stay away from the streets [m]

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@Towhee

While she still spent the majority of her time patroling the borders, she had sliced away a bit of time from her normal routine to set about perfecting the densite she and Phox had chosen. As per usual, Niamh was picky when it came to birthing dens, and she preferred to give birth with only her mate nearby. She wasn't quite ready to give up on her old habits just yet, and surrender the little bit of space she afforded herself just for the first couple months after giving birth, so she had begun digging out a den she would likely only use for that small period of time. Still, it had to be perfect.

There was a bit of clay in the walls, which she felt was good- it would hold despite the thawing in the spring, and it would keep the ground firm all around them. The entrance to her den, as per usual, was incredibly small- and she had to crouch to wiggle inside. She'd forgotten exactly how big she'd gotten last year when she'd been pregnant- but we won't ruin that surprise for her just yet. The narrow passageway led to a much more open, rounded area which was where she expected to give birth and raise her children until they were old enough to be moved to the Rendez-vous area.

So the next part was making her den's bedding as soft and fluffy and puppy-proof as possible. It meant plucking out some of her own fur- just the dead fur she had't yet shed, and then roaming around in search of feathers or small creatures that had a pelt she could add for bedding. So she roamed along the lake's edge in search of tracks that might lead her to both a source of food and bedding, with the warm afternoon sun cutting through the chill of the autumn air.

Only a few hours later, as she headed toward the caldera for a drink, did a thought hit her: were Eljay and Maia involved? Might that explain the peculiar tension between them and the wounded look on his face? She wasn't entirely sure what to make of that possibility. She supposed she should be happy for him, finally moving on from Wildfire, and that effectively sidelined him as baby daddy material (for her, anyway), which was almost like a relief. Mostly, though, she just felt oddly blank about it.

The sight of Niamh near the water was a welcome one. Towhee surfaced from her thoughts and woofed to her comrade before bustling nearer, bumping right into the Regent's flank before taking a seat beside her. "So, I talked to Hydra," she declared loudly, her face giving away nothing about how that conversation had gone.

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Now and again, she thought she saw a couple tracks that interested her. She turned a blind eye to the large, spindly tracks left by the herons she knew fished in the lake, because she didn't expect to ever be able to hunt one of them down. They were vigilant even while they seemed hyper-focused on the water's surface. She'd attempted to sneak up on them before and they always seemed to turn one side-eye to her in such a way that she felt belitted by them, before they stretched their large wings and took off. For predatory birds, they weren't terribly fearsome- but they did have a tonne of dignity. She could respect that.

Some raccoons had come to the lake's shore overnight, either fishing or to have a drink so she took an interest in those tracks. They left behind such cute, but strange little pawprints in the mud. It was almost like their little toes were too long, and they seemed to walk in a more flat-footed way, revealing all the joints in their paws. Of course, Niamh had no idea what hands were, otherwise she might've compared the little raccoon pawprints to those. Raccoon pelt might make a nice liner for her den- too bad they didn't taste very good.

She chuffed as she caught sight of Towhee approaching, and decided to put her thoughts of hunting down a raccoon on the backburner, and perhaps try to hunt down something else later. She leaned her shoulder into Towhee's, accepting her Person's amicable gesture and returning it with one of her own, before she opened up a topic that they had discussed before.

She'd spoken to Hydra- and given the fact that Niamh was also keenly preparing herself for next year's puppy season, her thoughts immediately skipped over the possibility that perhaps the Moonspearians might need them for something else- and she fell to the conclusion that Towhee was talking about a conversation she'd had with Hydra regarding finding a sperm donor. They could talk politics, wars and conflicts later- but right now, she wanted and hoped to have a conversation about the potential of finding a male for Towhee. It seemed, perhaps, that she'd decided to try the 'go to the neighbours and borrow a cup of sugar' strategy.

-“Ok Ok,”- She said. -“Go on,”- She urged. Towhee's expression was fairly plain so she had no idea how the conversation might've went- but she bristled slightly in anticipation. Niamh always was swift to jump to the conclusin that she might have to bust in and give someone a solid beating if they didn't do what she or her loved ones wanted them to do. Fortunately for Towhee, Niamh was willing and ready to hear her out before she actually left the house with a baseball bat.

The Regent encouraged her to continue, her fur standing up a little as if she was preparing for a fight. Towhee couldn't help but crack at this, smiling a little even as she reported, -"I've come to the conclusion that friendly fire isn't going to work out. It's just too... complicated."- She shrugged. -"But it's fine. I'll just do what Phox suggested and find some mysterious strangers to bang. It worked out pretty damn well last time. I'm actually thinking about taking a little vacation when the time comes, just to be sure I don't run into any familiar faces while I'm in the throes of whoredom."-

The entire time she spoke, she gazed out across the water, though now she naturally turned to face Niamh to gauge her response to all this. Her tail idly swished behind her as she noted the way the November sunlight reflected off the caldera and cast a sort of glow over them, making Niamh appear particularly lustrous today. It made the Sovereign's smile grow.

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While the news was disappointing, the delivery was quite amusing, and Niamh guffawed at the mention of 'friendly fire.' Towhee always had interesting ways of phrasing things, which made her such a delight to be around. She did get the fact that the news- while delivered with humour- was still disappointing, so she reached out to touch her muzzle to Towhee's cheek. She'd hoped that perhaps she could find someone at Moonspear who had good genes, but just enough fear of committiment that he might feel comfortable offering to father children without stepping in to try and raise them.

She seemed inclined to find a random stranger, and this was something that Niamh wrestled with, slightly. If memory served her correctly, someone had injured Towhee's behind last year, and Niamh had simply assumed that perhaps it had been one of the random males she'd tracked down. She did seem to enjoy going out and letting wolves just gravitate toward her- Hell, Niamh had enjoyed the attention of strangers in the past too- but she still didn't like the chance that perhaps the stranger wouldn't be content to simply pair with a random, wonderful wolf who just happened to be in babymaking mode, and then wander off. She feared that they might try and work their way into what she believed was already a perfectly happy family.

But, if anyone was capable of handling themselves and chasing off any males who felt that they were needed to raise the children, then surely it would be Towhee. And she had the super-trio advantage of having Niamh and Phox by her side as well, so between the three of them they could probably fend off whatever lovestruck or selfish ex-lovers came along. Niamh, a bit of a warmonger at heart, didn't really mind the idea of getting to chase a few off herself, if the occasion called for it.

-“Hansom random it is then, eh?”- She asked, implying her approval with a nod. -“At least now that we're here, we should be far away from the elk-wolves and the idiots in the Strath so that they won't have any eligible bachelors wandering around.”- She said. -“D'you want me to keep an eye out? I happen to have exceptional taste in men,”- She said, though she was quite well aware that Towhee had never thought too much of Colt. At least she couldn't deny her claim now- considering she'd chosen Phox. -“What do you look for in a guy, anyway? Like say there's a whole lineup of potential baby-daddies in a lineup, but one of them stick out. What would he look like?”- She asked.

Her friend's implicit support meant quite a lot to her. Towhee felt a rush of fondness for Niamh, which unexpectedly triggered a very strange series of thoughts. The first one was a knee-jerk, Whoa, no homo, which then made her think abruptly of Wildfire. Before she'd hooked up with Eljay, hadn't she been with a woman? But they'd had kids somehow. Towhee abruptly wondered if Wildfire and/or her lover—a thought that made her cringe uncomfortably even now—had used a sperm donor. They must have. Huh...

Clearing her throat and shaking off those errant thoughts, the Sovereign paid attention to the Regent's signing more so than her lips, her own mouth still twitching with a smile. Niamh wanted to know what Towhee looked for in a guy, what features would make a man stand out in a theoretical lineup. She immediately thought of Kaertok, though not because of any of his physical attributes, other than...

-"You mean, besides a working dick?"- she quipped, staring at her friend as if the idea of there being any other criteria was utterly absurd.

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It was a pity that Towhee couldn't hear her- because Niamh made a sound that would have actually made her terribly self-conscious had her friend actually been able to hear it. It was meant to be a simple guffaw, but ended up being somewhat of a mix between a guffaw and a noise of mock frustration and ended up sounding something like a moose with very serious gastronomic issues. She cleared her throat, and rolled her eyes. Yes, having working reproductive parts was an important part of making children- but Niamh wasn't referring simply to the mechanics- she wanted to know if Towhee was doing any planning whatsoever in terms of selecting a partner based on favourable traits she hoped might pass on to her children.

-“I mean, yeah, obviously, you gotta find a man, but any man is going to 98% likely have a working dick, yeah,”- She said. -“And I know that when that time comes around, basically anyone with a working D looks pretty doable,”- She sympathized, as she too had once had eyes for more than one man, before Phox came along and in that awkward period where she'd been single after kicking Colt out of the pack. -“But like...What's your type?”- She asked. -“Do you ever look at a guy, and think what kind of babies you'd make together? WITHOUT just thinking about what it'd feel like to make babies together.”- She specified, with a laugh. She was curious to know if Towhee was attracted to any physical qualities, but wasn't exactly the best at stating that very simple point. -“Otherwise, I'm just gonna start bringing rando's back to the pack, and introducing you, an' you can either say yay or nay, an' I'll either leave you two be or kick him off the edge of the Caldera.”-

She supposed Niamh raised some valid points. Towhee listened and thought them over, for what it was worth, though in the end, her honest answer was, -"No."- She didn't have a type. The few times she'd experienced attraction, it was seemingly random. There was no common thread between the men that drew her eye, physically or otherwise.

-"And you can't do that,"- Towhee continued with a groan, -"otherwise, they won't be strangers, and then they'll want to get all involved and shit. No, when the time comes, I won't fuck a dude unless I've never seen him before in my life."- She paused, snorting a little at how that sounded, and then remembered, -"With one exception: Kaertok."-

Not only had they made Meerkat (or so she believed), they'd had quite the tryst. Towhee certainly wouldn't mind reliving it, with the same results. She wondered what Kaertok would say if they ever did meet again and she asked him to put some more babies in her. Probably, "More?!" She snorted again, an inelegant noise, her thoughts lingering on the white brute for a moment before she set it aside. It wasn't very likely they'd randomly cross paths while she was in etrus again, after all.

-"I'm telling you,"- she drawled, giving Niamh a playful love tap, -"I'm gonna go on a really sexy vacation when the time comes. Like, the minute I feel the tinglies, I'm outta here, on a wild goose chase, only dicks."-

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“Huhhhhh,” Niamh drawled, in a mind-blown sort of moment when she was informed that Towhee didn't have things that she looked for, or noticed that she was drawn toward in a man. It was interesting to her because Niamh had a very long list of qualities and traits- both in terms of personality and physical appearance- that were definitely on her 'to-do' list, and an equally long list of things that were on her 'no-way-josé' list. And a wolf could find themselves going from one list to the other simply because she'd looked at them from a different angle, under a different light, or because they'd opened their mouth and said something that was a turn-off. She was a flighty creature in many ways, and her tastes tended to vary a great deal- but unlike Towhee, she was able to pin down a number of things that would at least make an impact on her, should they strut their way across her path.

Strutting, of course, was on the 'yes' list.

She made a solid grimace when Towhee discouraged her from going out on a man hunt, which had actually seemed like an interesting conquest. Surely Towhee would have taken some interest in some of the men she might've picked out- and Niamh would have made sure to bring home nothing but the very best for her Person, but she had a solid point. If Niamh got involved, then she'd be potentially bringing in suitors who might want to stick around, having met two of the Redhawks. After thinking about this for a moment, an odd thought struck her, and she sniggered. “Nah, you're just worried that if I go out lookin', that I'll bring home a gaggle of men that'll only have eyes for yours truly,” She said, tilting her head coquettishly and batting her beige eyelashes at Towhee as she managed her most flirtatious grin.

But the name Kaertok came up again, and Niamh sat up a bit. Apparently this one guy- the one Towhee believed to be Meerkat's biological father- seemed to be the exception. Niamh was fine with that, considering that they had made one absolute gem of a child. But she had her concerns, though it took her a few moments to wrangle them into tangible thoughts. She had questions about this guy, as this was the second time she'd heard Towhee mention him- and now, apparently, she was quite certain that she would accept Kaertok as a baby daddy if he could be found again.

Otherwise, she was content to go on what sounded to Niamh like a grand old time. Niamh was a fickle creature, after all, and while she remained faithful to Phox, it didn't mean she didn't feel as though perhaps she might have enjoyed doing the same thing that Towhee was doing. She had the benefit of having co-parents, but once a year she got to go out and do whatever she wanted, with whoever she wanted for an entire week at least. She tried to shrug that little curiosity off. She had Phox, all to herself, all year long. She was convinced that there wasn't another wolf alive on the entire planet that could convince her to trade in her year with Phox for a week with them. Hell, she wouldn't trade in a day with Phox for a year with another man.

-“Aright aright. Well, Phox and I'll probably be too busy doing our own thing to usurp you while you're gone, so you can probably still be Sovereign by the time you get back, sore bits and all.”- She laughed. -“Circling back to this Kaertok guy, though,”- She said, hoping she might get to pry into that topic a bit more, -“I have some questions.”- She began, though the open statement was more of a question than anything- allowing her friend to cut her off and shut the conversation down if she preferred to keep information about her past fling to herself.

Jokey phrasing aside, Towhee was pretty serious about how she intended to approach the upcoming season. Of course, plans could change dependent on plenty of factors. But, for now, this was her scheme. And it was kind of thrilling to think about it. Both travel and sex held so little appeal for her most of the time, though her heat certainly overruled much of her personality when it came. It was going to be an adventure, hopefully a very fruitful one.

On that note, Towhee wondered (not for the first nor the last time) whether she could produce multiples. She told herself not to hope about anything specific beyond get pregnant. If she had one, that was fine. The sex didn't matter one whit to her. But what if she had a whole litter this time? Even two would be a whole new experience. She just hoped it wasn't many more than that, especially considering Niamh's offspring. Even with three parents in the picture, Towhee paled at the thought of being outnumbered by more than two to one...

Niamh's movements recaptured her attention. -"Shoot,"- Towhee said simply, curious what her friend might have to ask about him. Maybe she just wanted salacious details, in which case, she was happy to oblige. Hell, if the Regent wanted her to go into "WAP" levels of graphic detail about it, she would, 'cause Melee said that was above board.

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Green light? Perfect. Niamh was ready for this, or so she thought. She had a bunch of questions, and was fully prepared to launch a volley of them at Towhee without really giving her much time to answer, as per usual, when she suddenly clamped her muzzle shut, and reconsidered. That might not be the best way to have a good conversation- and this Kaertok guy? Obviously if he made Towhee want to go back for seconds a year later, he must've been something else. So rather than asking questions without really listening for an answer, she tried to rein in her enthusiasm and structure her interview, starting with what she found was probably her most pressing question.

“Well for starters, what's he look like?”

It was an innocent enough question. She assumed Meerkat might've gotten some of her resemblance from him simply because she looked neither like Towhee nor Phox in terms of pelt colour, and from what Niamh could remember of Towhee's other family members (such as Screech and Orca) she didn't resemble them, either. She also wanted to know just so she had an idea of what her friend found attractive, simply out of curiosity. While Niamh couldn't be considered a terribly observant wolf, she couldn't recall ever seeing Towhee gush about another wolf, nor had she shown much indication that she fancied any of their packmates.

“And what's he like? Or was it pretty much just a business call?” She asked.

Niamh asked the most obvious question first. Towhee chewed on the inside of her cheek as she tried to recollect details. -"White fur. Brown eyes. No,"- she corrected herself in the very same breath, -"Orange eyes. He wasn't huge but pretty well-built. He had all the standard parts."- Including the most important one. She smirked.

But Niamh wanted to know more than what was on the surface, naturally. -"I don't know. That's the beauty of it. He was a stranger, still is. He never came looking to get involved. That's my favorite trait in a man."- She paused to chortle at her own joke before continuing. -"He did make me spar beforehand. It was incredible foreplay. I think it was the adrenaline, made everything sort of mind-blowing. It felt really good, made me completely forget most of the other dudes entirely."- Was that a wistful look in her eye?

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There was very little swooning happening when Towhee described what Kaertok looked like- and Niamh was surprised when her friend didn't seem entirely certain of what colour his eyes even were. Then again, she might not have noticed his eyes so much as her gaze might have been trained elsewhere, and Towhee's smirk did not go unnoticed. Niamh chuckled. So maybe Towhee wasn't too bothered by what the guy looked like; most would have considered that to be a fairly endearing quality, admirable even. So, Niamh had little reason to be disappointed that Towhee wasn't as invested in that particular aspect.

But there was a change in her expression when she described how distant he'd been, and that he'd never bothered to go looking for her to see if anything had happened as a result of their coupling. To Niamh, that could have meant that either he'd been under the same impression as Towhee at the time- that she couldn't conveive- or that he simply didn't care, and she wasn't sure she liked that lack of empathy. Then again- his apathy certainly hadn't been inherited by his daughter, so why would that matter if it was something that meant a lot to Towhee?

Her mention of the spar made Niamh's expression change, and she was suddenly quite a bit more intrigued by this guy. Apparently, he liked his foreplay to be a bit more rough-and-tumble, and so did Towhee. -“Well that sounds like fun,”- She commented, impressed. -“So you find this guy, tumble around a bit, and then...Tumble around a bit more. Did you ever see him again after?”- She asked.

Towhee grinned at Niamh's succinct remark. -"Yeah. It was his idea,"- she said. -"And nope. Although..."- She paused ponderously, her tongue swirling around her mouth and poking at the inside of her cheek. -"He wasn't technically a total stranger. I'd met him once before, on Heron Lake Plateau. He was looking for his—friend. I was looking for Sugar Glider at the time."- And she'd found X, dead, though Towhee didn't want to dredge up that painful memory any further.

-"We'd planned to rendezvous again to check in but bumping into him that particular day was a happy accident. And, y'know, there's no telling who really fathered Meerkat. But I genuinely believe it was him. So, it doesn't matter what he looks like or even that he rocked my damn world. He has good genes,"- Towhee concluded astutely.

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It was interesting to learn a bit more about Kaertok; that Towhee had met him once before, so they hadn't been complete strangers. Something about that made Niamh feel a bit more comfortable, knowing that Towhee had at least been able to get a good gauge on him before they'd gone and done the deed. The last thing Niamh wanted was for whichever random Towhee chose to end up being clingy or needy. She did not want to have to chase off an unsuitable suitor who felt that they should have a hand in bringing up the children he'd sired. She knew inevitably, there would be some males wandering in the wilderness who might seem like they were everything she wanted- aloof, distant, and well-equipped for the task- but who might also end up being a total nightmare once they realized how likely it was they'd just made themselves into a father-to-be.

So while she'd had her doubts about Towhee asking the same guy to do the same thing again, she also preferred the idea of Towhee not finding a total stranger that could potentially be completely unpredictable. However, choosing to find Kaertok again, if it was even possible, definitely had its set of challenges as well.

-“So if you haven't seen him since then...Would you tell him about Meerkat?”- She asked. Perhaps Kaertok had been willing to get jiggy with Towhee because he'd either simply been the sort to throw seeds into the wind without caring where it landed, or potentially he didn't think he'd get Towhee pregnant. Finding out that he had, in fact, sired a child might end up changing his life. He might, then, decide that he wanted to become involved, or he might choose not to get involved with Towhee again if he realized she simply wanted him for his genes. -“Or are you hoping to just...Maybe find him just at the right time, and have him ask no questions and just do the do?”- She asked.

These were good questions. Towhee didn't have the answers, not right now. -"I really don't know. I'll have to think about it,"- she replied to both of Niamh's inquiries. As a matter of fact, she would momentarily forget all about it in the wake of other upcoming events, only to eventually decide Meerkat herself out to locate her father. Perhaps this talk planted that seed in her head.

-"Anyway..."- the Sovereign said after a few beats, taking a moment to stretch after standing here and chatting away for so long. -"Y'know, I wish these conversations didn't have to be so one-sided. I mean, you can talk to me about anything, including your sex life... I just wish it didn't mean talking about my brother's dick,"- Towhee quipped with an unseemly laugh.

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It was encouraging for Niamh, and gratifying too, to know that she'd given Towhee some food for thought. She'd trust her Person's decisions, of course, but she also wasn't the sort of person to simply stand by and enable everything her friend did simply because it was what she wanted to do. Sometimes, questions needed to be asked. Sometimes, opinions needed to be given and it was fine for them to have different views. She was lucky to have a friend who would actually let her pose such personal questions, about something she could have otherwise kept quite private.

And she opened her mouth to fulfill Towhee's wish about having a more two-sided conversation, but shrugged and snapped it shut, chuckling through her grin when she retracted that statement. -“Just sayin, but”- She said, as a soft warning. She pondered her decision t be considerate for a moment, before she changed her mind. -“I call it no fair when you get to go on all dick dick fuck dick about all the hotties you're gonna bang an' I'm over here an' I can't even begin to tell you about all the amazingness that is the dick of your brother,”- She said with an ugly laugh. -“I tell ya, you're the one getting the short stick at the end of the day, 'cause you don't get to see Phox's,”- She cackled. She hadn't felt or acted this ridiculous in a long time- and it felt good.

She'd walked right into this and she knew it. Honestly, Towhee would've been disappointed in Niamh if she hadn't ran with it. The Sovereign stood there, expressionless, debating on how to play it. Should she act affronted, grossed out by the thought of her brother's shenanigans? Or should she inform Niamh that she'd seen his junk on many occasions, since he was usually running around naked. True, it was usually safely confined in its dick sleeve, but...

Towhee pretended to throw things at Niamh right before busting into song. -"I don't want no short stick man."- Needless to say, she couldn't carry a tune to save her life but she made up for it by busting a couple sweet moves. -"Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't want no short stick man. What in the world is that fuckin' thing? Do you need some fuckin' tweezers to put that little thing away? That has got to me the smallest stick I have ever seen in my whole life. Get the fuck outta here."-

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Whatever idea Towhee had about what songs sounded like was...Well, much less than tuneful, even to a tone-deaf wolf like Niamh. She felt her skin prickle with goosebumps as Towhee CaTeRwAuLeD at her, spouting obscenities that were probably loud enough for some of their other packmates to hear if they were in the area. She shuddered to think what her little songbird of a son might have thought had he heard his Towma singing right now- but Towhee's antics did not fail to amuse her, and make her laugh so hard she thought one of her ribs had popped out of place. It didn't stop her from leaping into action as soon as Towhee's bewildering squawking cut off, though.

-“It ain't about the size of the stick,”- She cried out- as in truth, Niamh was no better off singing than Towhee was. A flock of birds that had been perched in a tree nearby took flight, beating a path straight away from the odd couple of howling wolves. Niamh shimmied and swung around to do the best 'twerk' she could possible manage, as a wolf, with her tail waving suggestively in Towhee's direction. -“It's about the motion of the ocean!”- She laughed, and pranced around. -“And it-it-it ain't about how deep ya dig the hole, it's about scraping the bajeeeeezus outa the sides,”- She said, her face wreathed in rage-laugh-lines. Even the ptero for her words was lewd- but she did her best to make them into something almost graceful, like a mildly graphic interpretive dance.

Niamh joined right in with her own song and dance. Towhee couldn't possibly read her lips with all their movement, though she caught many of the signs and laughed loudly at their lewdness. They were a couple of hams, dancing there beside the caldera, likely to the utter embarrassment of everyone who shared their homeland. Towhee didn't give a single fuck, simply enjoying their mutual ridiculosity.

Towhee wasn't exactly a spring chicken, despite her immaturity, and soon collapsed in a tired (but not sweaty) heap. -"I love you, Niamh,"- she panted, apropos of nothing, tacking on a laughing-but-dead-serious, -"no homo,"- before rolling over onto her back with a contented sigh.

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It was ridiculous, for sure- but much needed. She collapsed in a heaving, laughing heap next to Towhee and snorted at Towhee's confession, reaching out to jab her shoulder with a mock punch of one of her forefeet. -“Love you too- no homo”- She said, signing in the air with her forelegs as she lay on her back by Towhee's side. She chuckled a few times, reflecting on the ridiculous things she and Towhee had shouted without even stopping to consider who might have been within earshot. Hell- they were on the top of an extinct volcano- anyone could have heard, really, the place was like an ampitheatre.

Slowly, he chuckles slowed, and as her eyelids drooped, her breaths became deeper and seemingly within minutes she began to snore, mouth open, eyelids only partially closed, looking like how Sleeping Beauty might've looked had Disney actually depicted what a sleeping beauty actually looks like.

Hint: It's really not that beautiful at all.