Duck Lake a mote will turn the balance

Surprise briefly flickered across the lad's face, his eyes just faintly widening and the smirk vanishing into a slack-jawed gape upon seeing patchy, jagged scarring, not on the girl's face, but in her crystalline eyes, appearing like twin crystal balls that had been dropped and severely cracked. Or, at least, he assumed them to be scars... surely one couldn't be... born that way? What on earth would cause such a deformity? Hell, what on earth would cause such scarring? His heart prickled sympathetically and his face involuntarily winced at the rough wounds, acting as a very sharp contrast to her otherwise soft and gentle features, but when her damaged gaze vaguely flitted to his shoulder and her maw parted to speak, he cast the pitying feelings aside at once and turned his own gaze, intense and shadowed by furrowed brow, to her chin, forcing himself to focus on anything else. From the way she didn't look quite at him and the clear injury to her pupils, he didn't think it wrong to assume she might be blind (or at least heavily impaired), but could not know for certain and didn't want to get off on wrong foot by staring.

"There are not any monsters in this lake." Her voice was a soft as everything else about her, carrying soothing, lilting tones that almost sounded distant and otherworldly, which only added to the strangeness of her appearance... and the intrigue, the latter of which he felt more strongly. With this, his grin slowly sliding back onto his face, he entertained the thought of her not being a wolf, but a ghostly wraith of the lake, perhaps killed by whatever happened to her eyes and thus haunting this area from sunset 'til sunrise. Of course, he knew she was real, could tell by her scent and the shear solidity of her figure... but it was always nice to toy with silly superstitions. Ghost stories were some of the lad's favorite, after all.

"Know tha' for certain?" he lightly teased with rhetoric, then perked his ears to her question, which eased his grin into more of a laid-back smile. It was an odd question, asking "what" instead of "who", but for a girl passing as a boy whom mostly seemed masculine, but still carried hints of femininity here and there, he couldn't blame others for being confused, especially if her sight was impaired as well, and considering this was a girl asking and not a man (of whom he felt more compelled to keep his secret), he didn't feel alarmed at her prying.

Of course, that didn't mean he'd give a straight answer.

"Jus' a curious stranger." He paused, thinking for a second. "Though if i's a name ya want, ya can call me Killian."

There. Now he'd answered what and who. With the girl now standing, he proceeded to look her up and down, even moving around her some to aid with this inspection. He was curious as to whether or not she had other scars.

"And wot of you?" The boy returned to his previous position, proceeding to sit and cock his head, grin returning. "Seems to me ya could either be a wolf or a ghost." These last words were heavily laden with playful sarcasm, making it apparent he was not serious and perhaps only saying this so as to poke fun at her asking "what" he was.