Sweet Disaster

No, he certainly wasn't feeling like an open book, but Shiba's pokes and prods didn't irritate them as much now as they might have done in the past--or as much as they might have coming from other wolves. They made him a little uncomfortable in the way that they forced him to revisit things more than his busy mind was already prone to do, but at least for now, his sparing answers were good enough for her, which did well enough to minimize the discomfort. It probably helped, too, that they'd already gone for so long with so few words between one another. Her company had become somewhat of a constant, with their streaks of silence bringing him back to those first few inklings of relief when she'd tended to wounds everyone else had forced him to let fester. As for Shiba herself, she seemed content enough with his willingness to stick around even after finding his feet again--and hell, if that was all he had to do until she decided what she wanted from him, then he was equally content to keep it up.

He wasn't surprised by her careful response to his observation, but it intrigued him nonetheless. Mikko didn't know much about the woman besides the fact that she had kin waiting for her somewhere around here, and that her intention was to return to them as soon as she was able, but what he'd failed to notice until now was the possibility that maybe she wouldn't be able to do that so easily. He sensed a hesitation to her voice, perhaps the slightest tinge of uncertainty, though that could've come from his tendency toward pessimism as she spoke hopefully of her family's patience. After all, "they're family," she said. "I'm sure all will be forgiven."

Mikko's expression remained unchanged as his fur bristled down the length of his spine. With a twitch of his empty eyelid, he glanced away. "Right."

From the corner of his gaze, he saw her look away too. For a little bit, his attention lingered on the fireflies that lit up the air as hers did on the water, but then she spoke up again. She offered to forage for more herbs in the morning, but he quickly shook his head. "Don't," he said, abruptly at first before he managed to push her last words out of his head, after which his features and tone softened into something less hostile and more...defeated. "Don't worry about it. You've done plenty." His next thought lingered on the tip of his tongue before he took the chance and voiced it. "Use this time to prepare...while we have it." For how she'd handle her family when they found them, for how they might handle her.

"