Blacktail Deer Plateau Light up your wildest dreams

That he needn’t engage with anyone that he did not want to was great to hear, yet he was still troubled. “But if I agreed to be her mate, won’t she expect that?” he asked, brows essentially permanently scrunched together. That was what he agreed to, wasn’t it? Indirectly but… still. “Can I… Can I take it back?” he asked. “Will that make her angry again?” He didn’t want to make her angry—he just wanted her to be his friend, to fish with her and have language lessons, like before. Anything else just felt wrong.

Erzulie continued to explain, giving a common word to match his own, and reiterating the details of what he agreed to; he felt more embarrassed than ever, more so by the interaction as a whole, rather than the mention of making little ones. “So… so sex is pakik,” he repeated. “I know pakik—no, uh, sex—makes children.” Reproduction, although not spoken of in-depth, was at least glossed over by his dear uppik; it went hand-in-hand with their language lessons and explanations of families, why there was a difference between mother, sister, and aunt (unless you’re a Melonii). A shake of his head followed after, joined by a repetition of, “I don’t want to make children with Ying. I just want her to be my friend. Why doesn’t she want that?” That the question was not one to ask them, but Ying herself, escaped him.