Redsand Canyon Depredador

She offered another smile at his words, moving on barely a moment later. She had more questions.

"Could I ask how you got your scar? It's unique from other's I've seen."

She lowered her head, touching her nose to it as though he would need help navigating his own face.

The woman asked about his scar. 

Juárez smiled warmly at her - an expression that never found the dark of his eyes. 

My mother gave it to me, he told Leto with an easy nonchalance. Just intriguing enough to draw her interest further. It was enough to make most wonder what might have caused a mother to maim her child. Leaving a visible mark of reminder for her hatred of him.

With Leto's natural optimism came an equally optimistic, stupid assumption.

"Ah. It was an accident, right? Must have hurt."

Accidents are rarely that disfiguring.

The jaguar nodded his head in confirmation. Let her believe what she wished without any effort to ruin the accident that had happened. An accident was such an innocent thing. Everyone made them. 

Pain is only temporary, Juárez said with an easy smile to the pale woman.

She nodded, offering a wag of her long tail. 

"Hey - at least you have a cool scar now."

She was attempting to look on the bright side of things. She always did - it was a talent; just not a very helpful one.

A cool scar, he echoed with a soft squint of his eyes. 

Juárez was fluent enough in the common language but he found phrases like this escaped him. The blurb was kept in his mind. He would use it later. He could always use what they said later. It helped him become approachable. It helped him speak to anyone and sell to anyone... and take from anyone. 

You don't think it makes me ugly? the jaguar inquired with a soft smirk on his dark lips.

"Of course not - a lot of wolves have scars, there's nothing wrong with them."

She responded, looking away from his muzzle to meet his eyes once again.

"They're hard to avoid - I'm surprised I've gone so long without gaining a few."

Of course there wasn't much outside of hunting where Leto risked scarring. Her fights never lasted long.

It might have been touching, this woman's dismissal of his ugly flesh. She did not seem at all deterred by it. Juárez thought it was a good trait in a woman. She ought to be grateful to him. She ought to feel blessed that he had even looked at her. And though he took a sinister satisfaction in those who winced away from his face... this was another kind of power that thrilled him. 

Maybe the Gods have decided not to mar perfection, hm? the jaguar offered with a soft tease to his rumbling voice.

"Or maybe I'm just lazy - can't be scarred if you don't do anything to earn it."

She responded with a snicker. While she didn't truly believe her words a self-deprecating joke or two never seemed to hurt.

Leto had never understood bringing God into these things. If a situation was logically doomed to end in a scar, what could some higher being do to stop it?

The jaguar chuckled at her comment. It was only funny because it was true. Those who never engaged in threat were never met with harm. But it made them soft. Leto was soft. He liked knowing that. It was good to know that she carried the promise of a woman who had never been marred so drastically. 

You know... I travel with a brother. We are in the desert to the south. You should come. Meet him. 

It was an invitation that he expected her to accept.

The offer was met with a smile. "Sure - I don't see why not." Her response was immediate and unthinking. She should have known better.

Briefly, she thought back to Pepper. He would be fine, she had decided - the old wolf was plenty used to being alone.

She didn't plan to leave him for long; she would part ways with Juárez once she was bored or had found her next case of puppy love.