Blacktail Deer Plateau Take these broken wings and learn to fly

Fin listened quietly as Junior said her piece. She sounded like a cliche emo song, but she knew what it was like to feel that way. She had been young once, and she too had been deeply hurt by someone. Never her parents, of course. But the abandonment of their children was rather commonplace in the family she'd grown up in. Of course, they'd love every one of their children, but Fin was not of the first or last of the Blackthorn generations to be pushed aside to make room for new life. So, she supposed she was familiar with that as well, although to her it was nothing so traumatic as what Junior described.

"You," Fin started slowly, with a small, knowing smile, "Have never been in love, huh?" She shifted her weight so that she was fully upon her stomach again, her tail wrapping around her haunches as she settled in for the conversation. The silver mockingbird knew heartache, she knew it very well. And she also knew that there was nothing that compared with the indescribable agony of love. Yes, she knew well that physical hurts were far lass awful. Maybe that was why she experienced them so often, if only because in the doing she avoided that more severe pain.