Sun Mote Copse “A hug is always the right size.” —Winnie the Pooh

Although young, she was already pretty good at picking up moods and showing empathy, hence why she was such a tuning fork for Towhee's emotive state today. She immediately picked up on her brother's discomfiture, although she didn't really understand it. She also heard a bray of laughter from behind her and turned, not without a measure of surprise, to see the Regent suddenly grinning. Meerkat didn't understand that either, though she beamed at the upturn in her mother's spirits.

When she turned around again, Bronco didn't simply tuck a feather behind her ear, he clobbered her with an entire pheasant. Meerkat made a strange guffaw in total surprise as the dead bird collapsed at her feet, a few stray feathers drifting around her face. She blinked loudly at Bronco and was about to burst into laughter at the entire thing when she felt something warm and wet dripping from her nose. When she instinctively lifted a pale paw to touch it, it came away with smears of red.

Towhee was suddenly right beside her, turning her face with her snout and then licking tenderly at her bloodied nose. It smarted a little, making Meerkat wince. But she didn't fuss, just sat still and let her mother clean it. She did wonder how something so soft could make her bleed. She didn't realize there were hard parts, like the beak and claws, that must've struck her.

-"Okay,"- Towhee said when she stepped back, -"you're okay."- She said it for her own benefit as well as Meerkat's, though honestly, she was trying to reassure Bronco too. It had been an accident. Meerkat was fine. Towhee recalled their conversation about hurting others and didn't want the yearling to tie himself up in knots over this.

Hoping to cut off any possibility of that happening at all, Towhee squared her shoulders and looked straight at Meerkat as she said, -"You can't have babies until you're older. When you're about two, you'll go into season and you'll want to mate. Mating is when a dude puts his wiener in a girl's hoo-ha. Weird, right? They do a funky dance and then he squirts goo inside her that turns into babies. They grow inside her for a couple months and then fall out of her ass, like you fell out of mine. Any questions?"-

For the moment, Meerkat only stared.