Ouroboros Spine Yeah, we fancy like Applebee’s on a date night.

It took several seconds for Rodyn’s words to compute. By the time she realized what he meant, he was grabbing for her. Towhee remained very still, save for the single foreleg that wound around his ribs. This happened on autopilot, as she stared unseeingly over his—slightly shaking?—shoulder.

She only snapped out of it when someone stepped into view nearer the tree line, her heart stuttering when she momentarily mistook him for Orca. His name didn’t come to her just now, but she remembered her granddaughter’s lookalike. Towhee didn’t have it in her to acknowledge him.

Instead, she slipped out of Rodyn’s grasp, the foreleg that had held him now sliding up to his shoulder as she silently demanded eye contact. When she looked into his face, she saw the grief and thought about the look on Kukutux’s sunken face when she’d seen her just a few weeks ago. The very last time.

They… Towhee began when she found her voice, her halting words a good indication that she was still processing. Deliberately…?