Sunspire Mountains Meet Cadeau

Talos cocked one fuzzy black ear curiously at Cadeau's turn of phrase, though her fellow wolf hastily corrected and clarified. Her seeming eagerness to change out her words made Talos rather suspicious. What was this "leash" thing she'd never heard of before? And what part of her was it supposed to be attached to? Was this one of those dumb double-entendres so many of the adults seemed to find so inexplicably amusing? Talos filed it away in her mind as a mildly interesting and likely quite dirty word that she might whip out herself if she needed to shock some sedate elder at some point.

Talos allowed one corner of her mouth to quirk upward in response to Cadeau's smile, however. But her expression quickly flattened out again. She gave Cadeau a long, measured stare from her watery blue eyes. I kin tek care o'myse'f, she said in what she hoped was a withering tone. Talos remained blissfully unaware of how her slurred retrograde manner of speech and obvious noobishness worked against her; few observers were likely to be convinced no matter how brusquely she asserted herself. Whadda you know 'bout i' anyway? An' besides, she sneered, black lip upcurling to disdainfully flash an eyetooth, if i's sssssooo-o-o dang'rous then whai're you ou' here on your own? Talos jutted her face rudely forward to invade Cadeau's personal space, her tail flipping upward and fluffing itself assertively out. Mebbe you're th' one 'oo should be runnin' 'ome... oh, e'cept I fergot. You don' 'ave a home now do you. Talos pulled herself up to her full height and stared superciliously down at the overly-interfering girl.

Mebbe y'oughta get yer cat frien's t'help... if you c'n find any frien's, of any specie' tha' is. Hah! I bet you dinnin' even leave yer las' pack...you prolly got chased ou'! Talos sure hoped she had hit upon something of a sore point, here. It was only a hunch, but she ran with it. What kind of wolf would be proud to be catlike, anyway? No, Talos was convinced Cadeau was only trying to put an unconvincing mask over her own inadequacies, here. Not that Talos could possibly be projecting here, at all: nope, not one whit. And certainly she wasn't lashing out in hopes that Cadeau would stop pressing so very near her own sore points in this barely-civil conversation.