Otter Creek [m]una vez más, con sentimiento

Her words are meaningless smoke. He doesn’t bother trying to understand. What she has to say doesn’t matter.
He reads only the whirl in her body as she recoils from his neaness.
Hound snaps up his head, but remains close.
Towering.

“Cuidadosa, Sangre. O joderé el fuego de ti,” comes his growl.

He’d been too lenient with her last night.
Now it got to her head.
But he had to admit.
He liked a scowl on her.

And she was bathing.
Good girl.

Niño did the same, smoothing out the half-shed coat and taking long, thirsty gulps of their filthy bathwater.
When he was good and clean and pulled himself from the pond and shook off the excess.
Found himself a nice little patch of dappled light beneath the roots of some dead tree to dry.

Whistles for Sangre.
Come here, girl.

He produced the green, then, from its safekeeping. Laid it out precisely in its wrappings.

Time to show Sangre her new purpose.
Time to show her what the world was really about.