Neverwinter Forest I guess I'll just go home.

The forest was home to one particular animated monkey-wrench that went by the name Mal.  At the very least Mal had started to understand and accept some of the jobs that would come with leadership -- he'd been out on patrol making sure that nobody else was going to encroach on their home.  So far, it had gone pretty well.  Nobody had bugged them.  It should keep going that way.

He heard Ibis in the distance somewhere, so slightly adjusted his path to intercept.  She was usually quiet, so this was sort of out of character.  Or something like that.  Maybe he was just associating quiet with "doesn't usually come heckle him too much" but maybe that was because she was gone a fair bit.  As the dappled man prowled his way out of the dark shadows beneath the trees, he noted she wasn't alone.  Hm.

Of course, Mal was about as sweet as a pile of thumbtacks doused in lighter fluid, so of course, his sharp question without an introduction was, Who's she?  Sidelong muzzle-point in the coywolf's direction.  She looked rather cartoonish to him -- or like a mutant or something.  Weird was always untrustworthy, wasn't it?  He didn't hide his suspicion, but it ran deeper than showed on his face.