Serpent Lake (M) Two straws, one check, girl, I got you.

if only he’d known how poorly he was misunderstood, soto might have made blundering attempts at amends. as it was he only saw towhee’s expression shift to something best described as ugly — not her features in itself, but the emotion behind it. 

stonewalled by this, soto watches as she tears off with a furious cry. and with her goes any hope of a pleasant afternoon. long after she’d pulled away, her scent lingered intoxicating on his pelt, filling him with a sad species of loneliness. 

he reminds himself that it is the green above self; the green’s vision the choking stranglehold on all that made soto. 

and to defect from that is to invite weakness, which soto fears worse than death.