Willows

Oh, he’d done it now. He grinned, but any resistance, had there been any to begin with, was slaughtered. Damn, but she had that puppy-pleading-eyes down to a science. He chuckled and gestured, padding to the deer and beginning to work strips of meat from the kill, laying them out on the fleshy side of the hide in neat rows. He’d have to devise a way to dry them without flat stones like Domari’d done.

Between strips, he began, “Well, the first one trespassed into our lands. I was on sentry duty, and my sister was on her way to relieve me. When I heard it at first I thought it was Caelia, but you can imagine how my heart about jumped out of my throat when I saw a lion instead.”

He chuckled, remembering it. “It was my first real fight. And the first fight where I killed. I’m glad Caelia was close enough to help in time. Also, extremely glad I’d already made my torso armor before then. Those scrapes over the left shoulder are from that lion.”

He laid a fresh line of strips out on the hide, pausing in his story and grinning at her to see if she was asleep yet, tail wagging in private amusement at his mental self-depreciating joke.

Walk ---- "Speak" ---- "Hear" ---- Think