Stavanger Bay with a crash

The woman seemed to relax a degree. He relaxed too, careful not to pivot toward her in doing so. For some reason, her anxiety was.. unsettling to him. She seemed piqued by his slip into French, though sadly he was not fluent. "Er," the beast said after a moment, "Un peu. My mother did, but I did not learn fully." As a babe he had been close to fluent, but lack of exposure over time had reduced his memory of the language. He wondered if he should feel sorry about that.

"Salt," he confirmed. She didn't seem to be ready to bolt anymore, so he hedged his chances and shifted just slightly, to face her better. His body language remained as passive as before. "You know French?" Though logically Étoille knew others spoke the language, he hadn't met another soul that shared his mother's tongue. It felt a little strangely intimate - platonically so, but nonetheless. He was curious, now, about the terrified scrap of a wolf. Though whether she'd open up to him or just dash away remained to be seen.