Shimmering Sands Could be happy

He didn't take offense at her pantomime, though he answered sort of vaguely again. Maybe he didn't want to share what troubled him. Q shrugged inwardly. Now he wanted to know more about her sidekick. She couldn't help but snicker at the term "acquire." She grinned down at Frolic, who looked up at the very same time, meeting her eyes. He patted his little paws against her foreleg, so Q abruptly bowed forward to let him clamber back onto her shoulders. He took up his customary position: partially wrapped around her neck and held in place by the bones in her shoulders. He was sort of like a living, breathing scarf.

"He's my buddy, yeah," Quell replied. The story about his sister and her hawk intrigued her, though instead of asking more about it, she remembered to answer his question first. "It's a funny story, ah..." Twisting her neck around to address the otter, she said, "Cover your ears." When his little mitts came up to the tiny flaps on either side of his face, she turned back toward Phox and said, "I took a kick to the head on my first pack hunt and swore off big game after that day. I decided to focus on small game instead and became quite the killing machine." She grinned cockily. "Long story short: I killed and ate his parents and was going to eat him too but then he looked at me." Q twitched a shoulder and Frolic released his ears. "I raised him and we've been inseparable ever since," she finished with a lopsided smile.

Her tail switched and she glanced upward as a pair of seagulls whipped past, fighting over some scrap of food. Quell swore it looked like a tentacle. Her eyes then dropped back to Phox's face and she queried, "A hawk would be badass. No offense, Fro," she said, pronouncing it like a southern drawl of the word "fry." The youth's brow furrowed as she added, "Hol'up, you said 'used to have'...?" in an almost accusatory voice.