Whitefish River she fears I'll be a servant to my history

Cleo? she repeated in her head. Why not Clem? Maybe it was too obvious. Quell didn't make the joke out loud, having no particular desire to make Cleo uncomfortable. She could be rather in-your-face and high-spirited to a fault, with a filthy, dirty mouth... but she liked to think she was still nice, under all that.

Perhaps she was wrong, though, because she burst into laughter at Cleo's question, realizing she mistook the word "homeboy" to be his species. Q really wanted to run with the joke, though she could barely breathe, let alone riff. She laughed heartily for a moment before it tapered off into chuckles and gave her enough breath to spare for speech.

"He's an otter," she explained, prepared to tell the same (true!) story she'd told Phox when her inner mischief-maker struck after all. "They grow on trees. I just picked him right off a branch one day. Wait, you've never seen an otter tree?" Q told herself it was a good-natured joke, Cleo just seemed so irresistibly innocent and gullible.