Heron Lake Plateau ashes against the grain

Quixote's frown was both thoughtful and representing simmering feelings.  So his initial thought that it had been Niamh had been right.  It had been the most logical conclusion he could dredge up, after all.  It did make him wonder if Colt was actually going to mess things up with her, as Quixote really doubted he'd actually worked out his problems.  Sounded like a great combination then if both of them were kind of unstable, but at least there weren't going to be pups any time soon that might get screwed up if things went south.  Either way, the drift in conversation was enough to make him stop feeling so relaxed, so he nudged Owen off and out of the way so he could roll onto his side -- the kid was free to go back and climb around again, but unceremoniously dumping pups on the ground and/or squashing them was probably a bad idea.  As far as Kite went, he'd been kind of hoping that she'd just catch up or calm down or something and it'd be totally ok and less dramatic as she got older, but the fact she was different seemed to just become more pronounced now that their pups' movements were more familiar and predictable to him.  Didn't stop him from wanting to just pretend otherwise, though.

After a second of thought, he decided to be vaguely vague about the exact issue, even though Colt had said it was okay to tell Raven, When I last spoke to him, he was trying to sort out some baggage he's kept pretty well tucked away.  Figured, try to find out if it was one of those things where someone words stuff a bit differently and then you feel like an idiot for missing the obvious, or if he should maybe talk to you, yeah?  Then suddenly he was going off about my issues and starts to scram.  I still tried to tell him he should talk to you, but he hasn't come by.  'Literally ever.'  In other words, he didn't know what to think.  He hadn't done anything completely outrageous, and Colt had just totally gone off the rails from his perspective.  Quixote had totally been willing to help, and now the more that he thought about it, the more the friendship just got buried under a pile of questionmarks.