Firestone Hot Springs i live for the applause

IC: Not to be a giant butt or anything but... I think Hawkeye might be being a little too knowledgeable or focused on what Jinx is thinking, and what is only in the narrative, rather than what she's actually saying. :(

Jinx's ears flickered back a moment when Hawkeye's breath pushed through her nose in a steamy gust of what she assumed to be exasperation. What followed next was another series of assumptions, to which her eyes quite physically rolled in her head out of sarcasm. Hawkeye couldn't possibly know any of the things she claimed to know — when had Jinx ever said she would band with followers of Sos? Was Kerberos not a follower of Atka? Was Pied not a follower of Atka? Cuan? None of those wolves had suited Sos' primal rituals, but they had been in Bon Dye nonetheless, in relatively important positions. So Jinx merely shook her head with a sad little smile, wondering how Hawkeye could be so blind to what was right in front of her.

She might have let the black wolf go without another word, but Hawkeye was wrong: Jinx had thought about them. She had thought about them many times. It was not her way to wander off into the sunset and settle elsewhere when she had wolves she needed to inform of her god's good news. That had always been other wolves' way, but Jinx, though occasionally wayward, had always returned home some way or another.

So she had this time, but her wolves had departed, and in anger she had found another group to lend her skills and knowledge to, for Jinx was ever a pack wolf, and could not survive alone. But while Jinx's religion made her delusional to other wolves, Hawkeye's conviction in what were merely assumptions made her delusional to Jinx, which could only confirm that returning to her wolves — had she even known where to find them before — would have been a terrible mistake.

Show me he who claims to know all, she quoted Lecter, pointedly referring to Hawkeye with a narrowing of her eyes, and I shall show you a fool. Jinx's entitlement was subconscious, and therefore, not a recognizable characteristic; if a wolf claimed her to be self-entitled, she would have been confused, having been entirely unaware of it. If anything, all of what Jinx had said made Sos out to be a self-entitled god (weren't all gods, by nature?) and Jinx nothing but a servant to his whims, humble in her belief and her faith to him. Perhaps her belief that they should forgive her for obeying Sos made her self-entitled in their eyes, which a pragmatic Jinx probably would have agreed with if her rational mind was still intact... But it was not as Hawkeye said, that she was so pretentious and full of herself. She was a patron to her god, no more, no less, in her eyes.

Perhaps you should study your reflection more closely before you label others with such words, she advised as the Blacktail leader turned her tail, like all of them had done when they chose to leave the forest and their faith in the possibly make-believe loa that would have protected them all. It is you, after all, presuming to tell me what I am thinking. But, unlike her swarthy once-subordinate, Jinx felt no need to launch into a lengthy tirade of how her whole journey she had thought of her wolves at home, and how they would rejoice in Sos' message to Jinx — who, having forgot the bulk of it, including the part where it was a white bear he feasted on, took it to mean Bon Dye would flourish as the most powerful of all the packs — and felt no need to explain that she had returned and been upset and irritated with their flaky belief in her. She felt no need to explain that there had not been time to inform anyone, and she had taken them for intelligent wolves who would have assumed Jinx's leaving was for spiritual reasons alone. For, as Hawkeye had said, it was pointless trying to get these things into the dark Alpha's head.

Instead, she fell silent and returned to soaking in the hot spring, content to allow Hawkeye to believe whatever assumptions she had made. None of what Hawkeye claimed had been expressly said by Jinx; she could only assume the other female was so strong in her unnecessary hatred of the wolf she had once placed her trust in that she had made up a bunch of rabble excuses for Jinx, and clung so strongly to them that she had no room left to listen to reason, even if that reason was based on a religion that only Jinx truly, fervently believed in.