Jill't temper, while most often suddenly roused, was also at times quite easy to lay to rest. Indeed, when she felt her friend tense behind her, at once insisting that she had meant nothing by it, Jill's anger was suddenly reduced to nothing, few traces remaining other than the deep marks of her teeth in her lower lip. "No, I'm sorry," she said, voice low, before she cleared her throat. "It's just that...my mother...has often had...reason to say many...similar things to me." Looking down and realising that she was clutching the reins so tightly her knuckles were white, she took a deep breath, trying to make herself relax. "It is not at all my favourite subject," she concluded, guilt already gnawing at her innards again. She ought not say things like that about her mother, about the woman who had born and raised her. It was frightfully disloyal and downright wrong. "I mean...she only has my best interests at heart, I'm sure, it's just not...a thing I like to dwell on."
She tried to cheer herself with Lillie's insistence that she did not look at Jill as a man hunter at all, but the words only drew a slight smile from the redhead. The silence however, drove her to speak again, not because she had anything to say really, but she didn't want Lillie to think she was mad with her. "Um, well, maybe he smelled funny to her, she can be a little picky about that sometimes - wouldn't come near me either..." the words were out of her mouth before she could stop them, one hand flying up to cover her mouth, but it was too late. It was not quite the same as telling Garret's secret quite openly, but it was just as bad, because now Lillie was bound to pick up on the strangeness on Jill's description. Panicking, she tried to make amends for her mistake, unwittingly only digging a deeper hole for herself and creating lies that were bound to tangle her up. "He had lived in the woods for a long time, maybe he had come across something that smelled strangely, like a wild animal! No, not a wild animal! Maybe...maybe darkspawn...yes, that's probably it, Salma has never cared much for the smell of darkspawn. He was taking a bath after all, that was probably the reason, nothing else." She only made herself shut up by biting her own tongue, stopping the barrage of words. Oh dear, what now.