silence is golden unless you have a toddler

A smile crossed Modesty's face at Tori's blunt reply. Some things would never change. When he agreed to join her, in not so many words, she chuckled and tipped her head deeper into the Moor. So what if Tojo ended up raiding them for resources, the Raider's would never turn down an excuse for a brawl. "We picked up the cows from the markets," she gestured to a few short, shaggy horned cattle, mini highlands, or so she had been told. "They are good for milk, or meat, but they are also good little workers." They had been put to work clearing downed trees in the past, and she was sure if Jael ever told Wake about her plans to have them turning over soil for gardening, he'd put them to work to expand his little patch of poppies into a whole blooming field.

"The goats, some we rounded up, and some were already here." There were shaggy goats with curly coats, long necked wobbly desert goats and grey and brown short-coated goats all mingling together quite happily, "We use their milk to make soap, the longer coated ones shed and their fleece is quite soft, almost cloud like."

A breeze blew off the ocean to the south and she closed her eyes, enjoying the warmth that carried on it. "It doesn't get as oppressive as the South, but it's warm enough in winter that we don't have to worry about being snowed in. We've got fowl in the estuary and access to the sea. Why wouldn't we move here?" She had expected to carry most of the discussion, so any silence that stretched between them wasn't awkward at all. "For a pair of Ashen exiles, we seem to be doing quite well for ourselves, don't we?"

"speech"