Heron Lake Plateau awaiting your mistake

Raven had hoped her words would encourage and hearten the boy, but she ought to have known better. He accepted her pep talk in his usual fashion: with unrelenting pessimism, self-pity, and a big dose of the signature Titmouse victim act, followed immediately by a sudden fleet-footed departure. As she watched him disappear into the low foliage near the plateau’s edge, a sense of bitterness filled her. Where had they gone so wrong with this boy?

She wanted to empathize for him but, quite frankly, she was running out of patience for his shit. At some point, one had to grow up and deal with the choices they’d made. Some part of Raven wanted to go after him, to make him stop and listen to her...but that was a part of her that was shrinking faster and faster with every situation in which he pulled this crap and trampled all over her patience. It was getting easier to just shrug it off and walk away. ”Right,” she said sourly, glaring in the direction in which he’d disappeared as she turned to leave. ”Whatever.”