Cheer Up

Walk | Talk | Think

The girl's yellow-gold eyes had gone back to watching the water as she continued to walk slowly through the shallows and toward the deeper sections of the lake, an ear perked and angled to receive her newest friend's answer to the question she had asked. She was not altogether surprised to hear that Jian was not a fishing prodigy - there seemed to be few of them overall - but it interested her to know that she knew many different things besides. Anais's gaze lifted distractedly toward the girl as she listened, for the time being forgetting that she was supposed to be fishing as she wondered how much more she might have known than her. Had Jian's mother and their friend covered more things than Anais's own parents had? What might she be able to teach her herself?

One part of her story did manage to stand out, intentionally or not. Her mother was gone. Here Anais was with a whole family of parents, brothers, and now sister too, and this poor girl had none of that. A new concern began to form within her as the grey-gold youth considered what that meant for her home life. Was there even a home life? We're her own siblings still around? There were too many questions, each of them touchy and prickly if asked in too careless or curious a fashion, and Anais certainly had no interested in offending her newest friend; their friendship would have been over before it truly began. But the thoughts lingered, and unknowingly she was prepared to be even more open and kind to this girl to make her feel welcome, to provide companionship when she feared she had none.

When asked herself whether she had any talents with fishing she grinned somewhat sheepishly, remembering a second after of where she was and what she was doing. Oh right. Fishing. "No, I'm not really good at it," Anais said quietly as she lifted her paws again and picked up where she had left off proceeding into the lake, "It's my mom who's really good at fishing." Finally deep enough in where she thought she might get lucky with an easy catch, she stopped and went still, though she continued to speak and likely lessen her chances for success - she really did have little patience for the craft. "She's tried to teach me, but it hasn't worked. I think she was hoping I would be like her and be really good too." It was not often that Anais got to speak of her shortcomings with others - brothers were not the sort that she wanted to share those things with, but here in the friendly company of her new acquaintance it spilled forth easily, and she hoped the other girl did not mind.