Mother Like No Other

Oh boy. The look she gave him as she straightened and suggested starting at the beginning. He wasn’t getting out of this. No way in hell. So, dutifully, when she offered her fur for him to sniff, he sniffed carefully as directed, analyzing the smells on her coat. There was the Plains, of course; the smell of summer sweetened hay and wildflowers, open spaces and wind, and the western pines and deciduous trees that made up the wooded areas. There was the smell of his siblings and himself, and more faintly, days old, his father. Very recently, the smell of rabbit. And the smell that was undeniably his mother. He snuffed out and took another delicate sniff, the same way a scholar might have turned a page many a millennium ago. There, over it all, was a scent. He vaguely recalled smelling it on her toward the last days of their being lost on the southern continent, but he’d been too busy trying to get his injured mother home to notice it beyond that.

It was compelling, and exciting in a really strange way. Sweet, heady, musky, exotic. He pulled his head away and sneezed, realizing his head had been a bit cloudy for a moment there. Had she said anything while he was cataloging her scents? Realizing she had asked him to tell her what he had smelled, he sat straighter and recited his thoughts in a more abridged version of the originals, pausing now and then to look at her for confirmation before continuing. "Boladh mé an Plains, mé féin agus mo deartháireacha, agus tá athair ann, freisin, ach fainter. Tá tú i ndáiríre gafa le déanaí agus maraíodh coinín ..." He paused, feeling a little embarrassed, though he wasn’t sure why, then finished, honestly, "Agus boladh tú i ndáiríre, gur maith ar bhealach i ndáiríre aisteach ... Cad a rinne tú rolla i? Fhaigheann tú boladh is mian leat, ach ... Tá sé an-difriúil." Between his paws, Cinder was in spasms, laughing so hard she wasn’t even making any sounds. He nudged his friend with a paw, sending her rolling off the boulder, where she only laughed harder.

Really, what was the deal, here?