Bearclaw Valley you were not made to be understood, you were made to be experienced

 

i never mind!

he caught her attention, drew her from her introspection as if he had materialized before her from her very thoughts.

she did not greet him as warmly as she had been known to do, instead stopping midstride, half-woven around a tree.  but her eyes sought his, somber and full of emotion.  it was a display of raw intelligence, a look that would cause any being with higher functions to realize there was more to her than most assumed, that there was more character to her than creature.

oh, how she desperately wished she could speak to him.  she wanted to tell him that she understood, because she had been alone since she could remember and even through she'd survived through fleeting encounters it had consumed her black and ugly from the inside.  she wanted to tell him that he didn't have to be alone anymore.

but she couldn't.  he might figure something was broken if she didn't act as usual, and she desperately didn't want to be kicked out. so she turned to stride towards him, greeting him the same as she had everyone else: a quick toss of her nose down the traveler's coat to find where he had been lately, who he had seen, and then a brief run of her own fur across his before retreating a safe length away.

the normal enthusiasm in her greetings was absent in this one, gaze now averted to the ground.