Redtail Rise mountains that are stacked with fear

He heard the stammer and it did something to him. He listened in silence as the wolf fumbled with his words and there was a terrible twist in his gut. His ears unflattened from his skull and he turned to look at Ashlar, his eyes filled with a sharp concern. His anger had dissipated like morning fog. He felt an odd swell of...something. He couldn't name it, or didn't want to. It sat heavy in his guts but he also felt it rush through his veins. He was no longer annoyed, no longer fighting his temper - it had been replaced with a quiet distress. 

He did not want to hear the stuttering of his words. He didn't want to be the cause of it - for some reason, that was the worst. Ashlar had looked at him, heard him, and thought there was something wrong with himself? The brown wolf had done nothing wrong. Ratio was an ass. And an idiot. It was times like these when he felt he had never really grown at all - like he was always going to be the same angry, ignorant bastard.

"You're okay." he said, and he meant it.

There was silence and then - "I'm...sorry." he didn't say it often, mostly because he usually didn't feel it. He shifted uncomfortably and his gaze moved away from Ashlar again, this time in self-consciousness. "You're...what, the healer? You knew the fox was..." he trailed off. He didn't like the way the creature had been killed. Ratio didn't think himself a bleeding heart - a poor reflection of reality, really - but he didn't like the screaming. Things had to die and that was fine but there were better ways to do it.