I mean, I’m not saying the girl didn’t have any right to approach me like she did. I was on her turf and her doorstep and if she really wanted to she could kick my ass the fuck on out of there at the mere word. I ain’t like I was really really really trying to be there; if someone told me to beat it, I was gonna beat it with a quickness, and gladly, too, because I was still trying to work up a reason why I stood there in the cold and kinda-snow amongst the ruins of glass and greater times.

But here she was, asking if she could help me, and I was looking at her and it was probably a look that was way too hard and cutting and Chico probably noticed (I noticed) so he yawned his great lion’s mouth and leapt from my back and zpnck!ed into something fluffier and friendlier as he landed on the ground. I watched him waddle from my side, right at the girl’s (Lyanna) feet and plop himself right down, looking up at her with expectant, liquidy-brown eyes. He had a hide and a tail that were way too floofy and it was a given that it would be stroked and cuddled. (I cute. Fucking cute.)

Her perfect strangeness to me only underlined a pitifully painful truth: that the world was large and strange, and you can never really know the whole of it upfront. But that wasn’t her fault, so I tried to talk to her, and, as expected, it was a fucking disaster. “Uh—yeah, sure, whatever,” I said, and even my words were a shrug, “Is uh…Do y’all got any…um…” I don’t really know why I was stalling but I was doing it badly and I shifted from hoof to hoof while I cast about for something to say without spilling all kinds of business I still couldn’t really look at with a straight face.

“Is…is your king…uh…” I blinked, because I hadn’t meant to let that slip, but it was on my mind (even though Cheek had told me to stop it) (I did) and there’s a mental Freaky-slip thing that happens sometimes. I shook my head, clearing that nasty word-poop from my palette to give myself a fresh start. “I mean,” I said, forcefully, clearly, “Have you…Do you know if someone named—uh—Ophelia is here?” That was another thing I needed to face—another set of eyes, and this time only one of them were blue. This was the last place I knew my Ma to be and it was probably gonna be sticky but I can’t keep running from a painful, sticky thing. It’s always gonna be painful, probably. I just gotta make it right.



[Skunk Form!]
"talk" 
"Chico"