Shed a leaf when necessary

The sound of approaching footsteps was easy enough to ignore, but when a polite Good afternoon came her way she supposed she aught to respond. As she rapidly pulled her head back from her foraging, chunks of snow rained about her, a snort ripped from her nose, melting some of the ice that had found it’s way into her airways. Colourless eyes fell on the young man, looking him up and down shrewdly, just a kid, well, if he was interested she wasn’t against sharing what she was after and why, but he’d have to be able to put up with her inherited rough edges if he was going to get anything out of it. She scowled, though there was a playful twinkle in her eye, “What’s it to yer?” She squared her shoulders, staring the younger wolf down, but she couldn’t hold the look for long, a lopsided smile pulling at the right corner of her mouth and her tail waving lazily behind her.

“Jus’ kiddin’. Yer interested in plants?” She asked with a much softer tone, tipping her head towards the fronds she had managed to extract so far, a questioning brow raised. “Do yer know why I’d bother ter gather these ones but not those?” her head tipped towards other exposed plants that hadn’t had their fronds stripped. If she was going to offer to share her knowledge, she wanted to know what sort of grounds he had to build on first.

“Speech”