Bearclaw Valley is it okay to cry, sometimes?

Phoenix, who for all intents and purposes was still a boy in many ways, didn't have the control to save face as she knifed through his angled ploy. He looked embarrassed, to put it quite flatly, and involuntarily he took another step back. Though he had meant every word spoken, Phoenix had been hoping that his ulterior motive (and by extension: his stifling loneliness) would go unnoticed, or at the very least unasked for. Concluding that he was not made for subterfuge, he gave his answer like a begrudging confession. "A friend," he said as plainly as he could, trying not to sound horrified at how pathetic he sounded. Was this was it was to be a lone wolf?

"I'm alone. And it's shit. But if I can make friends, then maybe I'll make it through the shit." He tried to sound steady, like he knew what he was talking about, but clearing his throat at the end implied that he was maintaining a facade of confidence while running purely on untested faith. For all his pride and arrogance, he had been raised to never forget the importance of having someone at your back; even if he had, for a time, indeed forgotten this.

"I'm Phoenix," he tacked on in an effort to diffuse the still-lingering tension of quiet mistrust between them. He felt very much like he was a handler, reaching into the cage of some wild animal for the first time. "Named after some woods, somewhere around these lands, I think." He hadn't found  the Maplewood himself yet, but someone had been kind enough to tell him he was in Teekon. It was here he knew that he would find he and his sister's namesakes, and the settings to many of his childhood tales