Chico wasted no time when he found out Bwenny wasn’t even here. Tembo nodded that-a-ways--where he would have to search for his tipsy lil’ teapot--and Cheek was gone in a fuckin flash of heavy wingbeats. Deuces.

And then, suddenly, I was facing Tembovu all by myself, completely alone, which wasn’t something I was banking on to begin with, so that didn’t help with my agitation. And then he goes and spits my name at me--my whole name, the shitty ending parts of it as well was the acceptable half--and he spit it in a harsh way, throwing it at me, like I had some nerve to be there or something. And it was like, good, we can throw hooves all we want to now if he really wanted to grasp for a fight like that. “What?” I asked him, a dare, meeting up to his challenge with a puffed up chest and a rigid neck, wondering idly if I should go ahead and draw Sparkmarrow--

--but then goddamit he crumpled into himself again, saying my name (Ros) like it was a name this time instead of a curse, sweeter and soft and pulling down, down, down again, just like the rest of him was starting to do again, so suddenly.

What do you see when you look at me?

I twitched my head a bit--the fuck kind of question was that? He’d gone from a prickling ball of challenge into something deeper, much more introspective and desperate, and I wasn’t in the headspace to grapple with it quite yet; my blood was still boiling for a gaddang fight. “I--” I stammered, lost for a sec, launching into an answer before I had even thought thoroughly about it. “Shit,I dunno man--” Big? Brown? Buzz-cut? But it was evident he wasn’t asking for a literal analysis (or was he?) and I spent a few seconds trying to come up with something prettier to say but I was already frustrated, so I gave another twitch of my head in annoyance, shrugging aggressively as I did so.

“I see--you, man. I see Tembovu,” I said, my irritated voice sounding out of sorts with this kind of situation--not in the least bit because it was deflating, my whole demeanor collapsing like an angry inflatable with a nail stuck in its side. “I mean...who else am I supposed to see?” What else did you want to here? I missed the mark of his quesiton, I could feel it; and I was annoyed about that, and also annoyed that there was that piece of me, much larger and deeper than I’d previously thought, that pulsed achingly with the thought he was hurting and I wasn’t doing jackshit to help with it.

“...what’s wrong, Tembo?”

"In ornare vitae leo eu volutpat."