Hushed Willows And through the merry flowers of June

The one that interrupted his jaunt was Lily.  Now, his opinion on Lily still wasn't as strong as it was regarding Olive and Seabreeze, but that didn't mean he trusted her or really wanted much to do with any of them.  For as much as they'd talked about how the pack was a Sanctuary, from the view of the boy, they'd done nothing to solve problems that already existed.  They were happy to leave things the way they were, thinking that ignorance would somehow fix things.  There was no saying repairing relationships would have been easy, but they had let problems fester and his hatred and distrust had fused into something harder to just brush away.  He'd been treated like a child, dismissed and ignored and the only one who'd (eventually) listened was a stranger Mali also didn't entirely trust.  But here?  They'd made the decision for him, and all he could hear was that he didn't belong.

He came to a stop, eyeing her warily.  He had to assume she wanted to heckle him about something -- about what, he wasn't sure.  Maybe she wanted to tell him he shouldn't leave the territory or something, even though he was pretty sure another trip was on the horizon. Maybe she decided he'd be useful and would try to conscript him into some kind of awful job nobody wanted.  Either way, Mali didn't want to be forced to act before he was ready -- so he fell back onto his usual method of acting around anyone, his attitude metaphorically resembling a hedgehog so that maybe they'd go bug someone else because that was far easier than trying to get past spiky exterior.  Hi.