Heron Lake Plateau spare dad

Owen was almost grateful for Vasa's repeated assertion: it meant he could turn in her direction and scrunch up his muzzle at her as she insisted that no, he was definitely, definitely weird. Sisters! Sheesh. But at least he had some idea of how to deal with those long-familiar siblings, regardless of how much of a judgy, nuisancy thorn in his side they might be sometimes. The rest of this? Eljay's news was very definitely unfamiliar territory, and Owen had next to no clue how to even start to navigate it.

Vasa helped give him a bit of a clue, though, once again, one that Owen thoughtlessly seized on with a fair bit of relief. Yeah! he said, glancing back over his shoulder at Eljay, —then you've gotta gonna stay so then why'd you come back?

...Okay, that had come out more than a little bit more accusatorily than Owen had really in his heart of hearts meant for it to. His tail had started to lift again, but once more stopped in its tracks, even as his mouth opened and hung uselessly ajar for a long, pregnant moment of his own. Shit. Shit, that really wasn't what he'd meant to say, was it? But what had he meant to say, then?! Shit! And while Owen didn't like how that had hit his ears, he also couldn't really say there was any particular part of it he could call back, either. He didn't know how Eljay could complain at all about how fast all this had happened, anyway, not when Eljay himself had been the one to so speedily disappear and now once again seemed to be choosing to upend Owen's hardwon though tenuous grasp on the whole order of the world again. It really wasn't fair, not at all!

But Owen did feel more than a little guilty nonetheless. Eljay's attempts to try and make it up to them by telling them what a great big brother and sister they could be rang hollow and lame, but Owen's attempt to limp the conversation a little further along in a different direction a long moment later wasn't much less lame, in truth: ...Will there be any boys? Gosh, that was a stupid question. Who even knew these things, anyhow?! If Eljay knew if he had any little boys he wouldn't be here, after all, now would he?! But again, Owen didn't really know what he could better replace it with. So after another uncomfortably long moment of tense inner debate he just let it be. He was having considerable trouble looking Eljay in the face at the moment however, and found himself instead staring unseeingly at the dark soil of the ground some middling distance away.