Emberflame Ridge in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me

He is attentive to their surroundings but cannot mistake the scampering of her own steps, which soon align in tempo to his own. She cannot move in sweeping steps the way he can due to her size but somehow, as if with a dancer's finesse, she flows alongside him. He feels something brush against him; but it is right to think he is oblivious to the touch of her hip against his. He thinks it is just a piece of the forest catching on him and doesn't really care.

For a few minutes Revui forgets all about her. He's moving at a prowl, his head gradually lowering to align with his shoulders while his jagged neck fur slowly prickles like a storm of quills, ducking even lower to sniff at one patch of moss or another, a segment of old bark peeled from a tree, a patch of dirt that at first glance looks a bit too red to be normal. Nothing is amiss in the woods but he makes a good show of it.

The girl slinks alongside him, and whispers close to his ear, Where are we going? And he realizes that he really... has no idea. They are away from the fernbed where he's probably left a sizable depression. The trail of pollen in his leftover prints act like bread crumbs. There is no sign of any cougar but the important thing - at least to Revui - is that Eleuthera is very, very close to him.

He delays a few of his strides and flanks her. It would be easy to do the ignoble thing in that moment, give in to his desires. Be a glutton for goodness rather than punishment, as was his norm. He had felt good with Ikkalrok; it was hard not to look at Eleuthera's slim shoulders and narrow hips before him without comparing her to the heavy-weight woman, and especially difficult not to act on his whims.

Revui has always pursued what he's desired without a care for others, and this is hardly any different. When he's hungry he finds a way to eat. If he's eager for a fight he starts a brawl. There is nobody here to stop him — and he figures that Ikkalrok has ignored him long enough to prove her lack of interest in him physically. This girl keeps stealing glances his way — she hasn't left him yet, she isn't afraid to be alone with him. All signs point to attraction according to the lonely, horny, impulsive dumbass.

And when he realizes he has let her question hang in the air without an answer, he doesn't know what to do next. By this stage with Ikkalrok they had been brutalizing foxes, which somehow brought them together for a hasty, messy affair. There was nothing here for him to kill and no way to impress upon her his strengths, no way to charm her — Revui had never needed charm before — but he can't throw himself at her without somehow hurting her, and that's the last thing he wants.

He swallows it all down. Buries it as deep as he can, for now, and feels the pressure of the moment churn his belly painfully. Where do you want to go? He finally asks.