Gilded Bay [m] your words would leave me unconscious

Annoyance softened towards curiosity as River side-eyed him. Her tail stilled as he ventured closer, his adolescent form cutting an earnest display beneath her carving gaze. She could admit he was cute, in that boyish way, but there was something more about him, too.

Deliberate scars marked his lean, fisher’s build. She wondered who they came from, why they were made, what their placements meant. Despite herself, she felt worryingly interested. And the boy, at least instinctively, seemed interested as well.

You’re not old enough, she declared, forcing a half-hearted motion of flashing her teeth at him. (For now she would spare him the indignity of calling him a boy.) You got a daddy? Uncle? Older brother, perhaps?