Sunspire Mountains all the butterflies have turned to vultures in my stomach

ｗｅ ｔｈｏｔ ｕ ｗａｓ ａ ｔｏａｄ

he rended the air with her name and her eyes screwed up at him. the springtide lilted voice informed her of his tender age, and thus, identity. ahhhhh. this guy. her shoulders lifted in a huffish sigh, the hackles stiffened on her withers smoothing out just so. 

esmé wasn't sure which eye to look at when she greeted the sleuthhound in turn, so she focused on a spiral of fur between his eyes instead. "boy," the woman never insisted on savvying the kid's name, almost entirely because climate change had caused a poor harvest from her "fucks to give" farm., but also because it kept her out of his clearly unsavoury affairs. 

in fact, she was already starting to feel like the curator of his welfare and there was no way in hell that was happening.

sitting back onto her haunches, glacial gaze did a proper appraisal of his condition. it'd been after dark last time they'd mingled, so she had no reference for the true color of his coat. had it always been rufous, swathed in crusted cinnabar? had he'd bore those weeping lacerations on his thigh? she gleaned from the way he favored certain limbs that he'd intersected on some flashpoint between his disappearing act and the present moment. 

she didn't even know the half of it. 

how could one wolf get himself into such sturm and drang in such a short period of time? "you sure did, chief." she reminded him baldly. clearly. she wasn't the one with open gouges on her person. her lids drew like heavy curtains as she tonelessly stated, "and thank the heavens you found me now before the brigands could snatch me away. a damsel such as myself? low-hanging fruit, i tell you." the sarcasm was becoming septic, but she had a feeling riley would take her figmental commentaries as the gospel truth. 

anyway, if he was lucky, the teeth that'd profaned his flesh had missed any major arteries. esmé surmised—remissly—that if one was not presently exsanguinating on the ground, they were probably cleared for takeoff. "i'd uh, maybe rub some dirt on those or something." she remarked, glancing her gaze off his injuries with a "yikes on trikes" gurn of her gums.

doubtless, she was no healer and figured his wounds would become infected sooner or later. "pest control" was the extent of her usefulness these days, so she needed him to spill the tea now, before he potentially found himself in extremis. "tell me precisely what happened between the time between when you 'lost me' and right now." she demanded, tail curling around her hind-legs and the tip flicking. "and don't be stingy with the gory details. they're my favourite part."