Stavanger Bay from whence i see no reason why

Her suggestion flew over his head like a small plover flushed from the beach grass, even as the tragedy in his eyes met the lucid shine in her own. He answered her stupidly. "I ain't offended, and there ain't nothin' ye can do about what I am." The wolf ground his toes into the sand, his stricken energy plied against the very shores he no longer felt worthy of. "Or what I ain't," he added with a sneer and an anxious flick of his tongue against his nose.

Raptor rose to leave then, turning on his heels as anger and grief dripped off him the same as the as the seawater did. But he got no further than a pace and half before he spun back around, ears flung forward in defiance of everything but the bystander he had plucked from the ocean. "I thought ye were someone else!" He blurted out, unable to pin his tongue behind his teeth as he wrestled with his destruction. "Because I... and because you... Because..." and as he stammered and growled and huffed and groped blindly for an explanation, his face twisted and contorted into countless troubled expressions.

Finally, sucking in a shaky breath through clenched teeth, he summed up his anguish.

"Because... BECAUSE I SUCK!"