Greatwater Lake Didn't I sing all wrong? Acadia is gone

So absorbed with his worries and thoughts, Merrit fails to hear the approach of the stranger. He fails, even, to smell her. It is only when another face ripples into the water, that he jerks back, and whatever growl of warning slips through his throat is choked, simultaneous, by a strangled gasp.

Merrit catches her words, but meets them with a stupefied silence. His heart is racing at the speed of a charging moose; his ability to process reality takes its sweet old time to calm down and fall back into place.

"Well, you sure are gutsy," is all he manages to grumble, and he feels his skin warm beneath the fur on his cheeks. He knows she can't see that, but his ears betray his embarassment anyway, "is it your habit, to sneak up on strangers like that?" His fur already begins to lay flat; honestly, his whole body eased, the moment he saw her head wasn't made of ink. This one is something entirely other, adorned with the flash of garnet eyes admist the strangest array of patchwork he's ever seen -- and he can't help but find an irritating curiousity in this bizarre encounter.