spin me right round

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. Fable's grin splintered as he snarled. She couldn't stop herself from stepping back and lowering herself just a fraction closer to the ground. Reflexively, her ears flattened back against her skull in submission, pressed down so firmly it felt like someone was stepping on her head with both front paws. Never had she elicited such a reaction in her life. Fable had been chided, sure. Disciplined? Maybe once or twice, but she was a rule-follower. A doer of "the right thing," whatever that happened to be at the time. Clearly, "the right thing" had actually been to not stop and talk to this man at all. It dawned on her that she'd barely spent any time with an adult male that wasn't part of her family - none, actually, came to mind. Were all men this persnickety?

His hackles lowered as he deemed her not a threat - or, perhaps, as a non-entity. Nothing at all to concern himself with. A trickle of air escaped her as she tried to withhold a great gasp of relief. Fable shifted back and forth on her front paws, wishing she was better at hiding her unease. He'd rattled her. "Well, I..." Part of her just wanted to turn and run. But he'd backed off, hadn't he? "I'd observed others use wet clay. To seal the cracks. And bond it with heat," she croaked. "So, I can't turn them into something useful immediately... but they are useful. In their own way." Fable's eyes roved over the pieces he had assembled. At least there must be more where that came from, if he'd had enough success. "I'm Fable, by the way. From Abaven." And my aunt is the alpha and she'll rip your tail off if you hurt me! She wanted to shout petulantly, but didn't. Being a yearling meant being old enough to be responsible for her own choices. It meant not relying on the grace of powerful relatives, much as she wished she could. On the slope of a fallen rock just out of view, a piebald raven shifted from foot to foot. The youngster hadn't noticed that Theory had quietly sent out her raven, Alouette, to trail her at a distance and fetch her if something went wrong; all told, Fable wasn't quite as alone as she would have liked to believe.