Redhawk Caldera Bosses are bad, dude

If Elwood hadn't told him that Towhee was completely deaf, he might have thought there was something wrong with her upon speaking one-on-one. Her tone lacked all inflection and it was difficult to derive meaning from it as a result. He could plug any meaning into it and it would be equally likely. It was like reading text and trying to determine the tone, but he clearly wouldn't know what that was like. Luckily, Nightjar took almost everything literally. He was getting better as he got older, but there was still a lack of understanding there that surely stemmed from his mother, for Peregrine had been a much funnier wolf and Nightjar had missed those jokes at least two dozen times.

Still, there was also something distinctly off about how Towhee spoke, like the words all ran together, and he had to take a moment to think about what she'd said before he fully comprehended it. That would probably get better with time. He took her warning literally as well and clapped a paw against the ground as if to say, s'all yours. He flopped down into the grass, sensing that she wasn't about to tear his face off or leave him on his lonesome, and was halfway on his side when she asked about his smell with a wrinkled nose.

He laughed, a throaty chuckle, and said, "yeah! It reminds me of being a kid." Gosh, that was a long time ago. He wondered if Raven was still using Wildfire's badger den for anything. "Better than smelling like shit, right? Do you have a smell or anything that reminds you of being little?"