pure sweet violent hearts

Bhreac laid in the water for only a few minutes more before she heard someone else rustling around nearby. She thought first about standing and seeking them out in case she needed to defend herself, but that reaction was borne of the time she'd spent with the pack that wasn't hers, and after a moment she shrugged her shoulders slightly, discarding it. She didn't need that reflex, anymore. Secondarily it occurred to her it might be more polite to greet a stranger head on regardless, but her weary bones trumped all of that.

Instead, she stayed put in the shallow water until the stranger sought her out and addressed her, and merely turned her eyes from the horizon to him. He was by all accounts average in appearance — gray, red, and white with bright eyes that made her think briefly of relatives, before she dashed the thought — and most notably didn't look like he had any interest in anything but conversation, and so Bhreac relaxed. She'd spent too long at war, to speak, though there hadn't been fighting; to be somewhere where casual conversation with pleasant strangers was a possibility was equal parts uneasy and exhilarating.

"'Lo," she said, moving to stand with a sigh. She resisted the urge to give her coat a shake, since it'd probably soak him, but she could practically feel the dirt dripping off of her, mostly washed away but still clinging to her underbelly. Glancing down briefly, she almost laughed to remember that she was mostly white, rather than the dirt grey she'd been upon arriving. After a beat, she cast her attention back to the stranger, her tail giving a brief wag as she asked, "do you make a habit of sneaking up on strange women while they bathe?"