Drying by the Fire Who: Kai and Churat When: Anesus 5, late morning Where: Basement lounge
Nobody had told Kai the compound courtyard was going to be locked. Why would it be locked? The sun was up (even if it was lost behind the stormclouds) and the few Lenhakriron clan of the compound were back in their rational minds, so why did it need to be locked? Well, Kai didn’t know, but it was. She’d found that out first hand. After sleeping late in comfort and company for the first time since she’d arrived, Kai had attempted to follow her usual routine once she was finally up and about: she tried to go out to hunt breakfast.
After skirting the herds of livestock taking shelter in the courtyard, however, she’d discovered that that was as far as she would be getting. The courtyard gates were soundly shut and there would be no getting out for her. Oh, she’d tried, sort of, but in the end all she’d managed to achieve was getting soaked all the way through her fur and matted up to her heels in mud. As she’d slogged her way back to the compound doors, she’d also noted the gardens—on which a good portion of her day yesterday had been spent with her gardening chores—looking rather drowned, which was annoying.
Of course she managed to convince herself it was all for the better, though. The garden would recover, for starters. And she’d probably just been saved wasting a whole lot of energy trying to track breakfast down when all she could smell was water, mud, and lightning-cracked ozone. It could be done, sure, but probably would have been exhausting and taken a lot of foiled pounces before she’d finally make a kill. This way, she saved her energy and got a nice cleansing shower, aside from her muddy feet, which were easily remedied by a water-bucket hauled up from the deep hole in that one room. (Hauled up herself, even, as she’d be taught its use by a human who had looked bewildered when she had asked a couple days before.)
So now all she was was wet and cold. And hungry, but the kitchen would fix that, just as soon as she was dry. She liked hunted food best, but she knew the pantry was there for a reason and would agreeably make do with whatever it provided if that was what she’d have to do today. But first, she’d remedy the wet and coldness. She dripped and sneezed her way back to her room, put on her human form and dry clothes to minimize the amount of fur she’d have to wait on, then headed all the way down to the basement.
Once there, she proceeded to sit in a drippy puddle on the hearth, with her back to the fire and stomach occasionally rumbling. She certainly looked the miserable mess with her hair and mane all slicked down and skin goosebumped and wet, but she was cheerful as she watched the others who were in the lounge or just passing through. Wet, cold, and hungry were all just temporary, after all.
This morning Churat had been upstairs on purpose. It wasn't quite so scary when it happened on purpose. It had been Westling who had taken them all upstairs, anyway, and Westling wasn't unsettled by anything. And he'd wanted to watch the storm, so that was what he'd done. People didn't tell Westling no very well; he simply didn't really listen.
It was mostly Churat, though, who climbed down the stairs, on his way to bed for the first time in what felt like two days. He hadn't gotten much sleep the day before, really, and he was quite ready for it.
The problem was, it was only mostly Churat. Westling was still hovering around the edges of control, and Churat wasn't really in the mood to "chase him off", as it were. So when the two of them spotted the girl in front of the fire, and Westling thought he recognized that shade of hair though Churat couldn't guess who it might be, he let Westling grin for him and wave as he hit the bottom of the stairs.
Kai liked people-watching in the compound. It wasn’t as fun as actually talking with those who were so inclined, but even after only four days she was actually starting to recognize some of the faces, even though they weren’t ones she had actually spoken to yet. But just like she was starting to figure out all the smells, the crowds were starting to seem smaller as she began to identify all the individuals that made them up.
She even saw the one who had thrown the shoe at her, though he didn’t recognize her out of her fur. Probably a good thing. She couldn’t dodge quite so quickly in this form.
Paying the close attention that she was, she didn’t miss the tall figure that actually waved to her coming off the staircase. Sight was a slower form of recognition for her than scent or sound, but she knew that one, and didn’t have to wait for scent to confirm it. The Vrykola had made quite a powerful mark in her memory, after all.
Kai was in the wrong form to bounce up with tail a-wag, but instead she could grin in surprised delight and exclaim, “Churat!”
We know her?
Think so. Little Lykos thing, kind of reddish?
Oh, her?
Yeah.
Did we ever get a name?
K...ey?
"Idiots, it's Kai," Westling-plus-a-little-Churat snorted lightly, but it was with a fangy grin in Kai's direction. The blurring was weird, as always, but not too weird just then. Churat didn't mind a little confidence bolstering him now and then, as long as Westling didn't offend anybody.
And since she remembered him, right back-- rather better than some of the shadows had remembered her-- the "two" of them wandered right over. "This is a new face," Westling commented, looking amused and reaching over to pluck a strand of wet hair from her forehead.
Though still grinning, Kai kept fairly still as she watched Churat’s incoming hand. Between being wet and human-shaped, she was pretty sure she was all wrong to be petted again, but there wasn’t anything threatening in his raised hand, either. She sat curiously to see what he intended, almost thought he was going to ruffle her hair anyway when his fingers met the wet mop on her head, and then barked an amused laugh at what he actually did and said.
“Yeah,” she agreed cheerfully, “but this one dries fastest. How could you tell it was mine?” She was aware that the other species had trouble telling Lykos apart between their many forms, and that Churat recognized her in skin after meeting her in full fur was…nothing short of amazing, actually!
"We know most everyone in the compound, you're obviously new and there's only so many new Lykos, the hair color helped, aaaaand mostly we just guessed," Westling-plus-a-little-Churat said with a broader grin.
You bastard.
And would you cut it out with the "we" business?
You try to hide too much. We are a we.
Not to everyone, we aren't.
Giving her hair a tousle that was less "petting" and more "messing up for the hells of it" Westling sat back on their doubled-up heels and let Churat talk again. Apparently Kai held no ill-will over how strangely he'd acted last time; maybe she would overlook the pronouns, too. "How've you been?"
Alright, so maybe Churat’s recognition of her wasn’t so amazing after all, but his answer still made her laugh again. She heard his use of “we” without it registering just yet, for the moment being more alert to the fact that the Vrykola appeared to be in a much better mood than the unhappy-seeming one that had come over him when he’d left her and Marcus that afternoon several days ago. It made seeing her brief playmate again even more pleasing, to know that he was apparently over whatever had suddenly bothered him before.
The subsequent tousling Churat gave her made her tuck her head and yip with amusement, running a hand over her hair to brush the wild wet strands back out of her eyes—but leaving the rest of it tangled in odd curls and directions, since her own physical appearance was something she was only vaguely alert to. If she was clean and appropriately covered according to her shape and company, anything else was just accidental.
“I’ve been good,” Kai answered happily, still grinning. “I like it here, though I sorta wish the holes in the walls hadn’t gone away. I had fun looking in them all to see who I’d find. And I helped save a girl from falling when the staircases vanished, too,” she informed Churat proudly. She still felt like quite the little hero for that. “Now all I need is to find drifter’s right with the packs here until I find the best one for me, and I’ll be all set.”
Westing, look at what you did, you mussed up her hair.
"That was the point," Westling chuckled, then focused back on Kai. "Very brave of you, rescuing somebody from those evil holes in the ground." He looked briefly irritated, remembering those and how confused everyone seemed to have gotten over them. If only he'd been there to keep things calm, nothing would have happened.
Oh, like you're perfect and the rest of us are idiots. Right.
Ignoring that one, Westling let Churat talk again. The voice was a little less confident and a little more curious. "So you're looking for a pack? Have you looked into the ones already here, then, or are you thinking of starting a new one?"
The Vrykola’s final query made Kai completely forget to ask ‘what was the point?’ Obviously he didn’t know what an insanely radical thing it was to even think of a female Lykos starting a pack (otherwise he wouldn’t have brought it up), but even awareness (or assumption) of his ignorance didn’t stop her from staring at Churat like he’d just…well…suggested she start her own pack.
“Oh, ancestors, no—me trying to start a pack would be like you walking out into the sun, except I’d probably get killed faster,” she said plainly, though her eyes were still wide at the mere notion.
You knew that, moron.
Did he?
Did we?
Actually, I'm not sure we did.
Churat, wholly himself there, blinked at her. "Well, that wouldn't be a good idea... you'd really... you'd die?" She was too cheerful and full of life for that. He found he didn't like that idea, at all.
“Soon as any other Lykos found out I was trying it, yeah,” she answered honestly, her expression already smoothing back to her normal amiable look. Believing that female pack leaders didn’t happen wasn’t an exception to her optimism—it was just the way it was. Having a rosy outlook on life didn’t mean she was delusional about the facts.
“Well, at the very least,” she amended after a moment, already speaking easily again, “I’d get beaten down before I could blink and run out of the compound as fast as I could limp. Would have to spend the rest of my time here living outside and as far from other Lykos as the walls would let me get. Only males are pack leaders.”
"Oh." Churat frowned a bit, but accepted it. It fit with the Vrykolas natural order of things, too. "All right, so you're looking for one, then. There's a few around, if you like-- though avoid Svathe's bunch, they're... a bit rough."
Isn't that like saying you're "a bit hungry"?
Or "a little pregnant"?
Ew, Mexecal.
That one's just wrong.
Who's the squeamish one, now?
“You’re definitely not the first I’ve heard that from,” Kai chuffed amusedly, smirking. “I haven’t run into him or any of his packmates yet, but I’m in no hurry to. I’m a Zalaron; I need a friendlier bunch than what his sounds like. I just haven’t been looking to hard just yet, I guess. Having too much fun just figuring things out around the compound!”
She paused to shift her position a little, offering her left side rather than her back to the fire, as she was starting to feel a little bit cooked in that direction. Then she gave the Vrykola another bright grin. “And I’ve met people like Marcus and you, too, so I’m not all alone.”
"And you don't have to look for pack that's all Lykos, either," Westling said, coming back into prominence with a confident grin that didn't feel comfortable, with Churat still feeling his face move, but which was natural for him. "There's some who take in humans, or make pack with them instead-- not so much Vrykolas, but that's mostly because most of you seem to have most of us."
And for good reason!
Oh, shut up, Harlequin, you don't have the faintest idea what it's like to be persecuted.
I do so, I do!
You're just a mad dog, is all you are.
See? Persecution!!
Even in her already present cheer, Kai brightened visibly. Though she’d already been looking at those of the other species she’d met as possible pack, the thoughts had been tied together with vague notions of bites and turnings and still needing an alpha male Lykos to start with, as turning packmates on her own could still be construed as trying to take lead. If pack could be made without having to limit choices in members to those who were willing or suitable to be turned, well, that was a significant broadening of options.
“Well you just seem like people to me, with your good and your bad. Like one of your kind threw a shoe at me, but I’m not gonna hate him for it. I mean, it did miss. And Desdemona scratched my ears, and you played, so I know you’re not all like my pack kept saying,” she smiled.
Admittedly, Churat had a hard time imagining Desdemona, of all people, scratching a Lykos's ears... or scratching anybody's ears, even her own, even if they itched terribly. It just didn't seem quite proper enough.
"Someone threw a shoe at you?" he repeated in a mix of surprise and chagrin. "I'm glad they missed. But yes, there are some Lykos here who I think call humans pack. Tayne-- you saw him at the meeting, I'm guessing? The Lykos Gochin calls him pack. So you're safe, there. Why," he added, half of the tone Westling and all of the smirk his, "got marks picked out already?"
“I’ve met people I think could be good pack, yeah, but I still need to find an alpha,” she agreed happily.
Kai then cocked her head at Churat inquisitively. She remembered Tayne and Gochin quite clearly—the latter had swatted her nose when she’d gotten too curious about the table covered with chore-cloths.
“So is Tayne Gochin’s alpha, then?” she asked. Gochin had blatantly seemed the dominant sort, but if Tayne was the head of the compound, that meant Gochin had to be the human’s subordinate, didn’t it? Could a non-Lykos really lead a pack? She had no clue, still having little idea of what humans or Vrykolas were like in their native social groups.
"Tayne is, actually," Westling agreed, nodding. "Which Tayne can never seem to wrap his head around, far as I can tell." He chuckled. "Gochin's his second, I think that's what you call it, right?"
Yes! Yes, it is!
"Oh, shut up," Westling said, rolling his eyes. "All you know about Lykos you picked up since you were here."
Harlqeuin sniffed piteously. But I am one....
Despite Westling's confident tone, Churat's face was mortified.
Westling, you just-- gods, why do you do that?? In front of people?
“Yeah, that’s about how it trans—” Kai started to agree, only to snap her mouth shut in startled bewilderment as she was (to her point of view) told to shut up. With a flinch and submissive duck of the head, she blinked owlishly in confusion at both the following comment and then the sudden look of humiliation Churat gave her.
“I’m…sorry?” she tried, head still low, though she had really no idea what she should be sorry for. All she knew about Lykos? What was that supposed to mean? She was one!
Westling retreated, leaving Churat to flounder. "Not you, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, not you, it was-- gods, it's hard to explain." Without sounding like a lunatic.
Even though he was.
"But it's not you," he said more firmly. "He wasn't-- I wasn't talking to you, you didn't do anything wrong."
Kai carefully lifted her head again, trusting she was not in trouble if Churat said so, but still confused that the chastisement had been uttered at all. She glanced around the lounge uncertainly. There were other people around, but she was certain none of them had said anything to the Vrykola. Even if she was tuning out the background chatter to focus on Churat, she thought she would have noticed the change in pitch that would have indicated words being cast their way.
“Then…who did?” she asked with another blink, head slightly cocked to one side.
"Harlequin," Churat winced. "He's... gods." Churat put his head into his hands a moment, gritting his teeth and bracing for the confession.
Spit it out, boy.
Gonna have to eventually.
"It have other people," he finally said. "In my head. They talk, and sometimes they get out, and he was talking to one of them, not to you. I'm sorry. I know it's weird."
Churat’s lowering of his head concerned Kai a little, and his sudden awkwardness had her recalling the odd way he’d behaved at the very end of their last meeting. She didn’t know what to make of it—she just couldn’t see what apparently kept happening to sour his mood so suddenly.
His explanation didn’t help much.
“In your…head,” she repeated uncertainly. Her gaze drifted up to his bang-obscured brow, as if that would help her visualize such a strange statement. Though she’d heard the words clear enough, she had trouble comprehending the meaning. The little Lykos frowned in careful thought, but then perked up slightly at a sudden thought.
“They talk in your head—like spirits?” she tried, looking for a familiar root to ground the notion with.
"Spirits?" Churat repeated, looking up a little though his hair. "I-- I don't know-- I don't think so. They tried to exorcise me a few times... it didn't work. Unless they're just really persistent, or Vrykolas don't know how to do it right. But they're just-- they're there. They talk, they're themselves, it's just like-- there's a bunch of people in here." He let go of his head finally so he could tap it with one finger.
He dropped his hands to his lap, looking down at them so he wouldn't have to see whatever expression came to Kai's face. "The one who said to-- so shut up, that was Westling, and he was talking to Harlequin, who says he's a Lykos, only none of us knew what a Lykos was like until we came here, so we've always thought he wasn't much of one. It's... it's complicated."
Talk about your information overload. Rather than finding a point from which she might have been able to understand better, now Kai was only more confused. It showed on her face, even if Churat wasn’t looking anymore. “Weird” and “complicated” were definitely good descriptors of the situation.
“You have a whole pack in there?” was her next attempt to make sense of things. An impulse struck her as well and was acted out as immediately as it occurred, just like every other impetuous urge that ever crossed her thoughts. Her utterance of “there” was accompanied by her reaching out to touch his head. Not petting or patting, just putting her palm atop his crown as if touch could somehow help explain things, or even just to see if being full of “voices” made Churat’s head feel strange.
Churat flinched, as if half-expecting to be hit-- he kind of was-- but didn't actually move out from under her hand, or try to move it. "If 'pack' counts as a group of people who don't necessarily like each other but are stuck together, I suppose so."
Ha, "pack".
Good one.
I think you're like my pack....
But you're also insane, Harls.
"Everyone else just says I'm crazy and leaves it at that," Churat mumbled, looking away side ways. He felt horrible, confusing her and embarrassing himself, forlorn at the lack of cohesiveness they all managed even on the best of days-- even a Vrykola, even someone like him, was allowed to want to feel comfortable in their own head, right?-- but most especially afraid she'd agree with the "crazy"-- after all, if was the truth-- and that'd be that.
All Kai felt was slightly tangled hair, and she took her hand back to brush absently at her own far worse and damp ones before resuming her perched pose on the fireplace hearth, with legs crossed and hands together on the stone in front of her ankles, half a canine sit despite her human shape. She still didn’t understand anything more than the general gist of what Churat was saying, uncertainly filtered out of all the other information that had been dropped with it, but the Vrykola’s numerous vocal and body cues were clearly read despite the rest of the muddle: he was miserable, which made her all the more determined to understand why. It was that selfsame single-mindedness which her pack had always had to keep in check for her—a pack she was now without.
Crazy? Yeah, she supposed a head full of voices was pretty crazy—but she was also of the species that went into an insane, mindless frenzy every respective moon-cycle. A little “crazy” might confuse her, but that was all it was doing so far.
“I think you could be a lot crazier,” she observed simply, agreeing with his self-admitted strangeness without condemning him for it. “Have the…have they always been there? In your head?”
"As long as I can remember," Churat nodded, a little relieved that she hadn't left in disgust, but not writing it off as impossible yet, either. "Ever since I was small."
I liked that better. When you were small.
Weren't so uptight, didn't fight us so much.
Wasn't hungry all the bloody time....
Do you ever think about anything but eating?
I like it better now. I hated being stuck in a child.
You weren't even around back then, were you?
After a little pause while he tried to shake his head and focus, Churat added, "Well, a few shadows have left and new ones came in, since then, but there's always been some. My family tried to get rid of them for the longest time, but nothing worked."
“You call them shadows?” Kai tilted her head again, managing to catch that since the fact had come in a much smaller chunk of dialog. Why would he call them that? Were these strange head-voices dark somehow? But rather than ask that, she voiced the query that seemed more pertinent to what he had said. “Do you want them to be gone?”
Unconcerned by the connection to "dark", having mostly just gone with the most instinctive comparison to the real life things that both protected and frightened by turns, Churat answered, "Yes, it seems to fit them, and-- I don't know." He had asked himself the same thing many a time. His life would be so much easier without them, surely, but at the same time, he couldn't imagine what he'd do with himself. "I guess I'd settle for everyone getting along in here and working together."
Ha, like that will ever happen.
You wish.
In your dreams could I work together with him.
“Sounds like you need an alpha, too,” Kai remarked thoughtfully, finding some renewed confidence in the parallel. “That’s what an alpha makes his pack do. Even if packmates disagree and squabble, everyone still works together for the sake of the pack.”
She considered her own words for a moment, then frowned slightly at the next thought they led her to. “If they’re all in your head, why aren’t you the alpha?”
Ha. That's what I'm for, Westling commented, though thankfully he didn't come out again to do so. Churat privately had to agree: of all of them, Westling was the most decisive and most commanding. Not that he really thought the concept of "alpha" would help him much.
"Because they all think it's their head and the rest of us are the intruders," he sighed. "Or, some of them to, anyway. It doesn't work quite the same way for Vrykolas than it does for Lykos, anyway, I don't think... whoever's the strongest and loudest doesn't necessarily get to be the one in charge just because he can beat everyone else up. We're less...."
Animal-like?
" ... less simple. More complicated, I guess. More often than not, whoever tries to win by force winds up with someone they put down stabbing them in the back, later."
You couldn't be an alpha, anyway.
You don't have enough backbone.
Well, he couldn't argue with that.
Kai looked affronted at the very notion of such a betrayal, nose wrinkled as she considered it. “That wouldn’t happen in any pack,” she chuffed, somewhere between saddened and disdainful of the possibility. “The alphas change over time, but pack is always pack. And anyone who did do something like that—” (for she had to admit it was not unheard of) “—would be cast out.”
The little Lykos frowned thoughtfully at Churat for a moment. “But I guess you can’t outcast someone from your own head, can you? So it’s not pack in there. It’s just…” Her face contorted slightly as she tried to think up the best descriptor, before finally settling for, “…crowded.”
At that oh-so-perfect word, Churat started laughing. "Yes," he agreed. "Yes, exactly, it's crowded." He grinned at her, genuinely amused and for once comfortable in it. "I'd like for it to be pack, somehow, someday, but until then... it's just crowded. And noisy, too. If I ever, I guess, miss something you say, or get distracted-- don't take it personally, okay? Sometimes I just can't hear over the noise in here...." He pointed at his temple with a smile that turned a bit more self-deprecating. "No matter how much I might want to know what you have to say."
Churat’s sudden laughter caught Kai by surprise, but she warmed to its authenticity after but a moment, grinning with delight. She didn’t know why what she’d said was so amusing, but was happy enough just to be pleased with the end result.
Still, she nodded at what he said, certain she could follow through on his request even if she was struggling to wrap her mind around the reason for it. But it was easy enough to understand being unable to focus on one sound if there were many others making noise as well—even if Churat was the only one who could hear them. A head full of voices…how very strange, indeed! But he still seemed a…tame kind of crazy? “Crazy” made her think of tribemates that caught the brain-fever from wild animals, or that old ex-alpha who’d gotten kicked in the head by a buck during a hunt and had never been right after that. They sure couldn’t sit and talk reasonably with you like Churat was.
“Okay,” she agreed. “I can do that. And I can just come up with other ways of getting your attention if I need to,” Kai decided suddenly with a playful grin. She’d taken note of his somewhat precarious perched-upon-heels crouch, and just as soon as the thought appeared, she pushed at the Vrykola’s knees in attempt to offset his balance in demonstration.
That was an odd expression-- not one most people turned on him, actually, unless they were planning something nasty for him, and he didn't think she would be planning something nasty for him, at this point. Harlequin had that look a lot, and Westling now and then, but that didn't really count. "What do you-- oh!" He wasn't expecting to be pushed, at all, and given he wasn't the most graceful of beings to begin with, he wound up on his butt, on the ground, staring at her in blank surprise.
Then, before the shadows could even start laughing-- to their nearly-universal amazement-- he did, instead. Again. For the second time in five minutes, the little Lykos had made him laugh. "Well," he managed, "that will definitely get my attention."
“And it’ll be even more fun for me if you can’t hear me coming,” Kai cackled back, both pleased with herself and vulnerable to the contagiousness of other’s mirth—not to mention just plain laughing at the Vrykola’s expression of surprise. It was fun putting that look on people’s faces, regardless of whether it was followed soon after by outrage or mutual amusement. She was glad this time was an example of the latter, however. Though it hadn’t been her conscious aim, she had no reason to want to irritate Churat.
"I will have to look forward to some surprises, then," Churat said with a wonderfully comfortable grin-- which turned into a yawn. He covered it politely, but it was still a very big yawn. "Oh, dear, excuse me. Sorry, I was on my way to bed when I got diverted...."
Oh come on....
Not already.
You sleep too much.
If it were up to you, Garnet, we'd never sleep.
Kai grinned impishly in return, mind already geared toward plotting such ways to “get his attention” in the future, but then had to giggle at the Vrykola’s very obvious display of tiredness instead. (And egads did he have the fangs to put a feral-form Lykos to shame!)
“You’re excused,” she chuckled, scratching at the stiff-drying tangles of her mane. “It’s okay if you have to go. I think I’m about dry enough to go find breakfast since I couldn’t get out to catch any, myself—that’s what I was trying to do before I ended up down here. I’ll just be sure to get your attention again another time,” the Lykos warned with a wink.
Smiling warmly, back, Churat said, "I'll look forward to it." He climbed to his feet and offered her his hand to help her up, as well. Sure, she probably didn't need it--
Sure as the gods, she doesn't need it.
You'd need it more than she would.
Can you imagine a little thing like that trying to help this clunky thing up?
--but it was only polite. "It was good to run into you, Kai."
Kai blinked at Churat's hand in curious surprise for a moment, wondering why he was offering her his scent when she already knew it quite well. They'd had their tussle, after all, and she was soundly familiar with his olfactory signature because of it.
Well maybe there was something more polite about doing it this way? She really didn't know what the rules around the gesture were, but with first Marcus and now Churat offering it to her as well, she'd really have to find out. But whatever they were, it seemed she'd managed to do fine in responding to Marcus before, so she'd just do that again.
She had to shuffle her legs under her so she could "stand up" on her knees to do so, since Churat was so dang tall, but the Lykos bumped her nose against Churat's palm and took in his scent in what she assumed was a more formal kind of reintroduction.
"Good to meet you properly, too," she then agreed happily, sitting back on her heels again.
The scenting got nothing out of Churat for a long moment but a blank look, and his hand was still stuck out there even after she sat back.
"I was, er, offering to help you up," he said. "Since you said you were going to go get food. If you're not ready, though, er... that's fine."
Unaware she’d done something wrong, Kai’s pleasant expression only slowly started to drift into something bemused as Churat just stood and stared. Was he already having one of those distracted moments he’d warned her of? How suddenly it had come on!
But then he finally spoke and cleared things up.
“Oh!” Kai laughed at the revelation, her bright grin already returned, far more inclined to laugh at herself than be embarrassed by her error. It was harmless, and it did amuse her that she’d assumed the foreign ritual rather than recognized the far more common gesture. She’d have to look carefully for differences in the gesture in the future.
“Sorry,” she giggled, taking the proffered hand to accept the aid. “But thanks.”
"It's all right," Churat said, relaxing now that he knew she had just misunderstood. He kept himself nice and steady as she stood, and gave her hand a friendly-- and gentle; he knew how breakable other species were-- squeeze. "Good luck with your breakfast, Kai."
Hmph. Wouldn't mind some of her for breakfast.
Shut up, Garnet, you're just disgusting.
I wouldn't mind some of her for breakfast.
And you're just always hungry.
Aren't we all?
“Thanks. At least raiding a pantry’s gotta be easier than trying to get out locked gates in a storm,” Kai snickered, returning the firm clasp with little thought before taking her hand back. “And you sleep deep and dream of, uh….” Once again she found the usual “bedtime” parting foiled by the lack of speaking to another Lykos, and once again she could only laugh at the failure and be left with: “…whatever a Vrykola likes dreaming of!”
And with the farewell given she trotted towards the stairs, tossing a final lopsided grin back at Churat as she went. Then, up the staircase she went, in search of that ever-elusive breakfast.