Emberwood There's no such thing as time to kill, nor time to throw away

The idea of a nice roll in the flowers was appealing, but the coywolf just couldn't muster the will. He plopped himself down on his ass instead, content to sit around and maybe chew his sore paw pad now that he had been welcomed.

"Real different from the Gilded Sea," he said, and on auto-pilot, he reached out to snatch away the offered flower, his tail wheeling in thanks. Flowers were nice. He had little use for them aside from rolling around in them, as Reverie was doing now, but any Item held by another wolf was something Dusty Rose could not help but covet, ardently and immediately.

It was nice when those things just got handed over to him, as all Items should be.

"Different from the Red Desert, too," he added, and then he pointed his nose toward the mountains. "I used to live up there. A while ago, now. It was the first place I really settled down back when I dispersed."

Those wolves were gone, now. Anselm and Etienne had taken their place — but Dusty Rose had not detected either of them in the area the last time he'd checked.

"I don't think I love anyplace better than home," he said, feeling wistful. He laid on his belly, blue flower still protected between his forepaws. "But, y'know, there comes a time in every young coyote's life where he wants to maim every male within a fifty mile radius. So I figured I'd better find an empty one for a while, y'know?"

He hadn't, of course.

"And when I went back, all my people were gone. Some I used to know, but they were strangers to me, then. It's different than the wolf packs here. Insular. It's just parents and their kids, and once you leave, you're not a kid anymore. You're a rover. A desperado. A man errante."

This was one of those rare things that hurt to think about. The flash of teeth. The beginning, when his fathers had begged him not to go, had done everything in their power to keep him safe at home.

"My dads didn't want me to leave," he said to her. He had said this before, but never with the knowledge that he now held. He shared that, too. "I thought it was because they worried what would happen to me. But I know now — it was because they knew I couldn't come back."

His tone did not waver far from his usual upbeat attitude, but to those who knew him, his air of distraction was a telltale sign of negative emotions he was doing his best to will away. It was a battle he always won, in the end. And he made himself relax, calling a small smile to his face.

"But that's life, yeah?" he said, not really asking her so much as acknowledging what he felt was a universal truth. "These things happen."