Icy toes and Ice Floes

Half starved in body, soul, and mind, Yll was mannerless. While he could give the excuse that the nuances of well-roundedness and society had been forcibly stripped away from him during his indentured servitude, the truth was more painful: that he had developed little care to try. Or, he could say that he was angsty and anxious from his long journey and sought solitude - but he also sought answers, which could only be gotten from others. His defenses and guise were as naked as the soggy mewling rat that he was born as.

Being quite tired, he did not spot the form of another one and a half times his size until - his nose suggested that this one may bear feminine hormones and rude as it was, a quick glance down south saw no apparatus of a certain kind - she had drawn near. Her steps did not seem dainty but elegant and refined, steeped in self-assurance of one who knew what they were about. She was black. She was white. She drew near enough for conversation. His eyes did not focus on her eyes in challenge, nor on her words to listen, nor did he bow or shrink himself as a sign of immediate respect. Instead, from the moment he spotted the stranger, his eyes were focused on the ragged still form of her rabbit. When she set it down, his head bent as his eyes followed. And when she put put her paw on it, he drooled subconsciously.

Saying nothing and showing no form of acknowledgement of her words, he moved forwards a few steps, lifted one paw, his front right paw, and tried to place it atop the rabbit. But he had stumbled on a deceptively thick patch of snow on his left the step before, so his right paw lift had more momentum than he had planned, and the paw was in line to smack the rabbit on the top of its head. He wanted this rabbit. He wanted to claim this rabbit as his own. Wordlessly, rudely, and mannerlessly, he tried. If he could place his paw on the rabbit, surely it would be his. He dearly wished to eat it, witnessed by his salivation, eyes, and perked ears keen on the woman's prize. But there was no aggression, no sense of fight and no preparation for it, only the attempt of a sticky-fingered thief with the worst deception skills ever known.