Witch's Marsh A Toad's Memory

She was somewhat distracted but she heard him say a name, not quite the right one, and shot him a surprised look. Something between, 'Oh good you remember!' and 'hold on a minute'. A single deviation wasn't enough to bother her; she swiftly corrects by enunciating her name: Ibis! And then she carries on with scouring the terrain, getting to her paws again and shuffling a perimeter around where Marten is sitting. The sludge line left by the frog has already coagulated and has begun to glitter with frost; but the actual target was long gone now, and there was no trace of where it went.

The boy went on to say something about friends; Ibis had already dismissed the thought of Hono from her mind and didn't catch on until Marten mentioned a toad — a toad as a friend? Her head raised from where she was sniffing at ice, the expression on her face was blank for a moment and then she was smirking, holding back a little laugh - mirth in her eyes. You had a toad friend?

Really she shouldn't have been laughing; if she had a toad friend and someone tried to eat it, or a reminder of it, she'd probably start crying about it pretty quickly. The boy seemed... Stunned. Cold. I mean that's... Not the weirdest thing you could befriend. At least it was alive -- I mean, she didn't want to bring up her own plaything from childhood, as it was the leftover skull of some premature child she had found buried beneath the Willows. Yeesh.

Deciding to give up her hunt for the wayward amphibian, she settled back down and sat next to Marten, the smile faltering from her face for a moment. He was alone, she thought, and for some reason the thought nagged at her. Are you... Are you okay? You seem... I dunno. Sad, she could've said, but she didn't want to presume anything or pester him at all (beyond what she'd already done).