The Sentinels and the malaprops make me wanna fucking scream

In truth he hadn't put much thought into what he planned do for the winter. There were plenty of half-buried hopes he had left strewn somewhere in the marsh and mud of the coast, and at one point he had thought the winter feasible with Nyx. But that had escaped him now and with the northern winds riding down to force the season along, he certainly found himself in a predicament he had been in before. There were options no doubt, plenty of them if he wanted to sit and count them, but as it were and said before, he hadn't. Yet.

He considered for a moment saying that it all had been squared away and she needn't worry about him, but the courage to lie was about as flimsy as his halfhearted attempts at conversation. His usual charms had failed him; the best he could muster even now was a considering murmur in his throat, the lie that he was deliberating even now.

”I've kept my options open thus far,” he decided on, before turning honest, ”but I haven't thought much of them yet. The snows haven't forced my hand yet.” For as much as he avoided pitfalls, he certainly did not seem to mind riding the perpetual edge of them. Having spent most of the year fending only for himself, he hadn't fallen into some trap or almost perished from ill-adjusted decisions. He was lucky, or positively stupid. Perhaps both.

”It does please me that you've concerns though,” he went on, as though smoldering tones would change the sobering air that had drawn her out. ”It is nice that someone would care,” as though no one had until this point, however childish the notion was. He waved it away as he did many things with the sway of his tail at his hocks as he ushered her eastward. For all the distractions he desired, he would not entirely force things in his favor—it wouldn't have been very upstanding of him.

”What about a forest? There's one a ways from here, but if I do recall a river snakes through it. Nothing too major, just a fair stream. The sloping valley and mountains shelter it, lets it stay tucked away in my opinion,” and it certainly helped that the pack that had been forming there in the spring had skirted away to elsewhere. He also knew it to be some distance off and hastily thought to tie it in with a lengthier, selfish distraction.

”We could make a day trip of it,” he suggested.

word count: 425