Ouroboros Spine Twinkle twinkle, little star

Valiant didn't mind, and said so, sitting up so that he would not seem terribly rude. Or unwelcoming. Or presumptuous. He'd felt just a little uncertain since their fishing trip, during which nothing wrong had happened except... he'd forgotten to grieve. Just for a few hours. And it'd been happening more and more. That was a good thing, he knew, but sometimes it still felt wrong.

And was moving past his grief the same thing as moving on? Was one a virtue and another a sin?

Regardless, he was glad to see Raindrop. Glad to hear about her children, and most especially the newest of the bunch.

"That's good," he said, glad to hear that Ponderosa had found kinship with someone. It had occurred to him again and again during their trip that Angel Oak talked a lot more about her mother than her sister, and this had worried him. He couldn't know, of course, that she'd only been trying to talk the woman up to him.

"I went on a little hunt with him the other day," he told her. Which reminded him, "Oh, hey — I've got something for you."

He stood and spun back toward the tree. He'd dug another little shallow, higher up in the jutting roots, which he'd lined and then covered with skins. Things could be buried in this way without getting too dirty, and he took from this small stash of mementos the long tail feather of a pheasant. This he brought to her and — feeling very self-conscious — laid at her paws.