Whitebark Stream when I was a young warthog

Valiant accepted this warning with wide eyes, almost glad that it had been Dawn and not him to run into them. He would've liked to spare her the pain, but knew realistically that he would have fared much worse than she had in a fight. Perhaps it was time to change that.

"I'm glad you made it out of there," he told her, craning his head to check out her tail. Yep, definitely the badest chick he knew. His own tail wagged without him really realizing it, and he said, "I hope I'm as tough as you are, one day."

Then some loaded questions were thrown at him. He couldn't even remember how long it'd been since he'd last seen her, or which of the things he'd done had been in that time frame. "I've been all over," he began choosing to answer the simpler of the two questions first. "Aunt Spot's pack — Round Valley? I don't know if you've been — took me in after I left here, looking for dad. I haven't seen him at all, by the way. And then I was in Aunt Easy's pack for a while — she's got a husband and some kids, now, if you didn't know. And then I was here for a little while, and I went back to the willows, and I got... confused, so I went back h-home to Round Valley, and now I'm here," he explained, looking a bit contrite and a little bit startled, because he'd just realized he was actually taller than her, and wasn't that incredible.

"As for how... I guess I've been better, and I've been worse," he said, his nose dipping and his tail flagging. "I'm gonna go back to the willows, but I was hoping I could stay here for a few days? Maybe we could hunt — or just talk, since you probably need to rest," he explained, glancing bashfully at her injuries once more.

"How have things been here?" he asked her. And then hastily added, "Other than the whole crazy dudes thing."