Red Hot Gardener

It was moments like these that really made the glowing boy wish he were normal. As soon as the bark left his mouth, the girl folded in submission, clearly frightened by his beastly manner of communication that he was left with. She offered him thanks, her voice soft and melodious in a way that reminded him of his Geisha sister, Ike. A part of him hoped that she would leave it at thanks and be on her way. He couldn’t uphold a conversation anyhow, damn his defective tongue, but he also secretly hoped she’d stick around. If anything for the company.

His ladder wish seemed to be the one granted as she asked about the bamboo, asking if it was his and commending him for its upkeep. He paused, hesitating before shaking his head. It wasn’t his bamboo, it was his father’s and he certainly couldn’t take any of the credit. The Shogun had started tending to the crop even before he and his siblings had been a thought in his parents’ minds. But he had no way of conveying this...unless....

The boy extended a paw and, in the dry, barren dirt between them, he wrote ”I can’t take the credit, my father tends to it most often. I apologize if I scared you,” in common tongue script. He knew there weren’t a lot of wolves who understood writing, even fewer who would understand if he wrote in the Kanji on his family’s native tongue, but perhaps she would pleasantly surprise him.