Sunset Valley heart of the wilderness

He watched her face with mild interest. He'd never been one for family - his wives had bore weak children, and he'd saved himself the embarrassment of claiming them as his with every litter. However, he was finding (albeit slowly) that he didn't dislike kids, as he'd thought before. There was nothing annoying about this one. In a way, she was like all the other children he'd scouted in no man's lands and cowering behind corpses - innocent, and not necessarily naive. Just... inexperienced. It was a bit of a wonder, considering how hard and horrible his youth might appear to the average wolf.

A low chuff, something like a chuckle, husked through his black lips, and the veteran shook his massive head. "I couldn't say," his husky voice mused, looking down the gnarled length of his nose at her bright face, "never learned how to play in the first place." He crossed and uncrossed his forelegs again, ears scooping forward expectantly. Of course, as he did with everyone, he looked down on her, but there was more acceptance of her reality than he had expected out of himself. More often than not, he grew impatient, doled out harsh discipline like he handed out haughty words. A child, alone like this, would be easy to pluck up and, with a little more force and a few snaps of the teeth, be turned into quite the soldier - or, whatever a girl could manage, considering. 

Instead, he's rather content with her. Even as he belittles her innocence for weakness in his head, Karma lets himself smile, a mangled, once-handsome thing. "Is it too much to ask that you teach me?" Why not? It certainly did him no harm.