Blackbeak Bluff Red is such a lovely colour on you but you won't be needing those

Lucas fixed Ali with a pensive look when she murmured her question, but she backtracked and dismissed her own brief thought too quickly for him to formulate an adequate response. It would have been a disappointing one; Lucas believed that the world was infinitely large and went on so far that he couldn't possibly walk across it in his lifetime. There was a yearning in his legs to attempt it, but that idea scared him in a deep and primal way, much like Ali was bothered by the notion of being stuck on the earth. The open endlessness of the world was fathomless and that made his mind spin.

So he didn't answer but his mouth grew dry as he thought on it, and he was glad for the change of subject as well. His tail resumed a beating wag with every exclamation relating to his life with the troupe and he chuckled along with her. "They're not savage, silly!" (Slang was rather lost on an innocent cherub like him, it seemed.) "They're great wolves, love making others laugh." You know. Great wolves minus the bit about tricking and hornswoggling young, gullible little pups into joining them, then trekking them out so far that they didn't know how to get back home and had to stay. In Lucas' case it had been fun enough that he simply overlooked how bad it really was.

"Oh, well, I miss them all but I'll always love them from wherever I am, so it's fine," Lucas answered, which was rather different than Ali's situation, as she revealed. He dispensed with the urge to point out that being untethered was fun in its own way; surely she was aware, or she might not have left her family to begin with. "I'm sure they miss you though," he consoled, although it didn't seem all too promising. She left for a reason, after all, one that likely didn't involve being kidnapped from the sounds of it. She seemed to speak similarly of a pack—not something she was occupied with at the moment. Noncommittal, he concluded. That wasn't a bad thing though, not to Luc.

"Sounds like you're just a free spirit. Me too—gotta do your own thing, you know? It's your life, gotta enjoy it to its fullest while you got it." That sort of carefree attitude ran in his blood. One could call it selfish. Lucas called it self-fulfilling. Pulling a contemplative breath through his nostrils, the boy gazed out across the horizon and then rolled his burly shoulders. "I plan to look for my troupe a bit longer but I dunno where I'll end up if I don't find them. But wherever it is, I'll make sure to have fun with it!" Licking his lips and cracking a grin, he wondered, "did you like hanging out with that girl? If so, maybe you'd like her pack. Like wolves stick together, I think."