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

The coywolf gazed at Reverie, assessing, even as his tail whisked in pleasure. Yes. Poor me. He wondered if she knew already what such an altercation must have been about, and he searched for signs of this knowledge in her eyes. Surely she understood how possessive Tybault was of her? 

Dusty Rose could understand it. Reverie was a possession worth throwing down over — but Dusty Rose would never forget little vulture, nor the dismissive turn of the other man's back.

"Nothing I want in my mouth," he replied after a moment of thought. More than that, he didn't want those words in Reverie's mind. They were too close to the hated moniker of sabandija — and he wasn't about to share that word with Reverie, either, lest she somehow learn to apply it to him even in the privacy of her own mind. If her brother could have such thoughts, he thought she was surely capable of it.

The coywolf flexed his claws, digging them briefly into the grass while he thought. Then he gave up and stretched his whole body, downward dog and then salute the sun, so that he could rest without tension once more.

"And I'll have to decline to speculate on his motives, 'cause, well — what's that saying? 'If you don't have anything nice to say, you oughta be doing somethin' else with your mouth.'"

That was most definitely not the saying.

"What gets me, though," he said, scraping the pile of flowers closer to him so that he could furrow his brow at that instead of Reverie — "What really gets my back up? I told him if he was starting to feel like a jackrabbit, he should just go ahead and jump. And he turned and walked away like he'd gotten one over on me. He's probably gonna think that for the rest of his natural life, 'cause the shit he came to threaten me about wasn't anything I was planning on, anyway. But he's probably pattin' himself on the back, wherever he is. You'd think a guy would get used to being looked down on like that. I don't, though. I pretend like I do, but I don't."

His mouth twisted, then. He figured, after that speech? He might as well have said it. Sabandija. Little vulture. What else could be read from the story?