Jade Fern Grove Stick a Needle in your eye son

He closed his eyes with a smile when he finally kicked a good scratch right into the spot.

“Mmhmm,” he returned, “dun a couple with yer lot once or twice.” A keen memory, this one! “Augustin it is,” he said with an easy smile, and drawing himself into a long and lazy stretch. How tickled she would even remember his name! Shame, that he couldn’t remember hers. ”My apologies, miss. Gonna have’ta remind me a’yers again, got m’paws in enough places, hard t’remember e’ryone.”

The adrenaline of their work, and the sheer excitement of it all, eclipsed more of the finer points, the notable connections he supposed he should be making along the way. But he remembered faces well enough, and names could always come again.

He pretended to admire the forest with her, but was, in truth, entirely elsewhere. “Didn’t catch th’others in yer posse on m’way in, you on yer own out ‘ere?”