Blacktail Deer Plateau As the shadows fall

Mind if we wrap this up in the next post or two? I'd love to have another one with you soon. :)

As she retired into a more comfortable position, Atticus did the same, lying down and stretching his forelegs out in front of him. He felt a yawn tug at his lungs but resisted the urge to give in to it, not wanting to appear rude or bored to her. He was, after all, anything but bored. Blue Willow was not a creature that could bore him; even when she spoke of seemingly mundane things this night, he found himself transfixed by her words, and could not help studying the little things about her -- the sweet tone of her laugh, the cute way her lips curled when she grinned, the way her deep green eyes captured the starlight, the way the night danced and moved over her black curves. She was the furthest thing from boring in the world at that moment.

She invited him to tell her a tale, and so he did. He told her of some misbegotten adventure he, Peregrine, and Crete had gone on when they were boys (there'd been many of those), of how it'd gone totally and completely awry (and it always had), and how much trouble they'd gotten in afterward (which never taught them the lesson it was intended to). He laughed a lot in the telling, and found parts of himself that he'd never realized were so isolated and tense, opening up and relaxing.