"Oh you bathstard," Tyrian grumbled around the rope clenched between his teeth. At the other end of it bucking wildly and bleating as though it were being murdered was a young goat. The silly thing had been totally fine until they entered the big bad scary forest and now it thought they were going to get murdered by tree goblins or something. He now understood the phrase "as cowardly as a goat" and damn it rang true.

Tyrian growled and gave the rope a hard yank after the goat managed to drag him forward a step. "Lithen," he chastised angrily. "Unt nobody gonna be murdering you here exthept me if you don move." The goat responded by bawling louder and if Tyrian could have thrown his paws up he would have. They would have been fine -  totally fine - if it had just walked with him, but if there were any hungry predators nearby no doubt they were going to sniff around now since it sounded like there was a murder in progress.

Aryn had been wandering the forest, trying to get up the courage to collect some herbs or track a scent or something that she could use to prove to herself that she was not a useless coward. Lirim needed healers and hunters, her father had said. Two roles that Aryn did not feel she fit into in the slightest. Finding some pretty flowers to bring home didn't sound difficult, but what if they were used on someone who was injured and because of it, Aryn became an unwilling murderess? She could not stand the possibility of hurting anybody, and that unfortunately that fact fed into her inability to bring home a small helpless animal to be eaten. A string of carrots hung around her shoulders, the vegetables being meant to bait an unfortunate fluffy bunny though more than likely, Aryn would eat them herself simply to have a reason to give up and go home.

Loud, terrifying, 'i'm-being-cut-up-and-eaten' cries reached the yearling's ears and it felt as if her paws were suddenly cemented to the forest floor. Something was dying, Aryn was sure of it. The part of her that desperately wanted to help others battled with the part that absolutely did not want to interrupt a kill-in-progress, and Aryn had to force her lip to stop it's trembling. If Torin could see her now he'd be so disappointed, she was sure. Perhaps it was only to please her father that the yearling found a way to force herself forward towards the terrible, terrible sound.

The screaming only got louder and louder, and Aryn's ears plastered against her skull as she ran to try and block out the sound of a poor creature taking it's last breaths. It wasn't until the unlikely pair came into view that the yearling slowed, and she realized what was happening.

"The poor thing is terrified!" Aryn announced herself with a pointed glare towards the boy, her fearful posturing instantly flooding away as she brought herself towards the two. "There there, it's okay I won't let him hurt you." She frowned at the goat, her lips breaking apart in a soft 'tsk'. Aryn reached over her shoulder to tear off one of her rabbit-bait carrots, offering it to the creature with her paw so it did not have to get close to her teeth.

Tyrian leaned back as far as the taunt rope would allow and closed his eyes in exasperation. The stupid thing was going to get them attacked by something or a group of somethings he couldn't fight off if it kept bawling. It was doing the noise version of covering itself in honey and roaming through bear territory. Half seriously he wondered if it was light enough for him to choke out and drag through the Forest. It seemed like a better idea than dragging it kicking and screaming the whole way.

A waily, girly voice caused his eyes to pop open. He canted his head to the side to eye the little wolf who seemed to want to play superman for his horribly stupid goat. Tyrian's brows shot up at her words. Not going to let him hurt it? "Oh, 'm nod goin' tuh hur it," he said tartly, loathing the way the rope muffled his words. "Jus gon eat et if it doh lithen."

Oh, now the carrot was a novel idea. Tyrian watched enviously as the goat quieted down and snuffed at the air. Its bleats grew softer as it reluctantly traded its fear for desire. Quite quickly it fell silent and stepped towards Aryn with its neck out and its hungry lips quivering. Tyrian, now holding a slack rope, eyed it with open contempt. He quickly dropped the rope and stepped on the end. "Well, that's a bunch of shit."

Aryn gasped at the boy's muddled words, lurching forward awkwardly to place her paws over each of the goat's ears gently to protect it from the threat. "Shh! He can hear you." The yearling insisted quietly, pulling away from the goat and placing a pat upon it's muzzle before holding out the carrot once more.

She stood perfectly still while the goat approached, letting out a giggle at the feeling of it's whiskers on her paw pads as it decided the carrot worthy. Her lips upturned in a satisfied grin, and as she dropped her paw and turned back towards the male her bright smile remained. "See, he just needed a little bit of love."

With a pleased sigh she settled back on her haunches, reached over her shoulder again to retrieve the string of remaining carrots. For a moment she contemplated tossing them to the boy to make his job a little easier (on both him and the poor goat), but paused suddenly and dropped them between her forelegs instead. "Where are you taking him? You're not going to-" She glanced quickly at the goat, then mouthed the word 'eat' back to Tyrian. "-him, are you?" The carrots she'd hold hostage, until she was sure that the creature was not his intended meal.

He squinted as the girl placed her paws over the goat's ears. Really? It was a goat. A goat. If it could be reasoned with it would be walking beside him ropeless and not shrieking because Tyrian would have made it clear that how they survived the predators. Why ropeless you say? Because being the only male goat in Tyrian's small flock meant that when this one was old enough he was going to be quite busy.

Tyrian didn't return the girl's sunny smile. He was equal parts confused and miffed by this sugar sweet goat whisperer and it showed on his face. She'd just wandered up out of nowhere in a creepy ass forest with a string of carrots and suddenly his shrieking problem child was her very best friend in the whole wide world. It was a little emasculating to say the least. This was his shtick and his goat, dammit.

"What makes you an expert on goats?" The question could have been phrased better, but it wasn't meant to be rude. However, in answering her questions his tone did take on an annoyed edge because it rekindled his irritation with the dumb creature. "Assuming I don't kill him here in the woods for being a dunce I'm taking him to Fireside, where," He dropped his head to stare daggers at the goat, "He will give me lots of baby goats or yes, he will be eaten."

The boy's demeanor managed to not phase Aryn, for she was too enthralled with the creature at the end of his rope to remember that she had right to be nervous. This was a stranger, a man she'd never met before. Here she was telling him what to do with his lifestock without realizing that there could be wolves in the world who'd be opposed to the interjection. "I'm not an expert on goats." She admitted with a laugh. "I've never seen one before, actually. Maybe the reason you're struggling is because you lack the feminine instinct." The yearling's smile grew crooked, a small way to show him that she was just playing with him.

His next words caused her brow to raise incredulously, though she convinced herself he wasn't serious. Bravado, that's all this was right? Aryn could understand the boy doing his best to appear manly and strong to keep up his image, but there was no way he'd actually eat the thing, right? She decided to ignore his threat, and take a different approach.

Her paw caressed the carrots beneath it as she spoke. "What exactly will you do if it's not his fault that the babies don't come? Maybe he's a gentleman goat and wants to court his ladies properly. Does he have a time limit? Are you going to eat the girls who close their legs to him?" Her voice held her playful tone throughout her questioning, betraying the fact that she legitimately believed that perhaps the livestock had thought and feelings the same as they did. It didn't seem outlandish to her to believe that the goats might be capable of romance, after all she'd heard speech from the likes of horses and snakes and cats. Who was to say goats were any different?

So she knew nothing about goats and was still somehow its very best friend. Tyrian snorted a begrudging laugh. "Maybe so." Perhaps there was something to be said about the "feminine instinct" as she called it. His frown deepened as he considered the idea. If it meant he had to tote carrots around and ask the goat about its feelings when he was handling it, then he was out as the very act of not eating it left it (in his opinion) forever indebted to him. This was, after all, just a goat. If not for his interest in raising them this critter would have been lunch two days ago. It should just listen to him out of gratefulness for a) not being eaten on the spot and b) being taken to buck paradise as his one and only responsibility was going to be nutting in lady goats. All of that considered, Tyrian didn't think he needed feminine instinct to get his way. The goat, if he were wise, would beat feet for nirvana and drag Tyrian along behind him if he had to.

"Ohh, it will be his fault," he said in a teasing "I know better" tone. "He's just gonna have the one job. If he can't pull it off then I'll replace him with a buck that can. The girls too because that's just business." Tyrian cocked his head and gave the goat a pointed look. "You hear me, you carrot munching hard head? If I have to mount your horns on the gate as a warning to your replacement, I will." He was only mostly teasing for the girl's benefit (or rather, his own, as he was hoping for a reaction) as Tyrian wasn't willing to completely rule out the possibility that the goat could be reasoned with. If the goat had any sense - and that was a big if - he would take warning.

This boy was impossible! Aryn directed her gaze back to him in a half-hearted glare, her head shaking slowly. The carefree way he spoke of the stud and it's job brought a soft blush to her cheeks, though she did her best to force the heat away and remind herself that it was just a part of animal husbandry and not something that needed to be whispered about.The yearling was not so ignorant to the world that she thought the goat's destination was not a wondrous one. After all, many men would only dream of being able to sleep and eat and 'sleep' their days away without responsibility. That didn't mean he was going about it correctly however.

She swallowed, pushing down her discomfort. It was a difficult topic for Aryn who always tried to be as lady-like as she could. "Ever heard of performance anxiety? While I can't say for sure myself, I have a feeling it's hard to get in the mood with that sort of threat looming over your head." She just had to keep telling herself that he was joking anyways, because otherwise she may end up kidnapping a goat and getting herself into a world of trouble. "And replacing the girls is just rude, if they won't let him -" She stuttered over the word and all the vulgar variations of it, blushing again. -"Near them, I'll bet it's not their fault and only the fact that you picked an ugly goat. By goat standards, that is." The yearling threw the goat a grin, her voice softening as she addressed it. "Sorry buddy, I think you're plenty handsome but that doesn't mean the goat girls will agree."

This girl was impossible! He wasn't sure how serious she was being but it sure felt like, smiling or not, she was at least teetering on the edge of being serious. In all honesty he couldn't quite wrap his head around her view. This was a goat - they were all goats - literally the things they killed and ate with nary a thought to their feelings on the subject. He was just baffled by the implications of what she was saying. They were goats for heaven's sake!

He shook his head in mock exasperation - the expression only slightly exaggerated as he wasn't sure how to feel but he was getting the impression that at the very least he should feel incredulous. "You do realize they're just goats, right? Why should it matter how they feel on the matter? If they were loose on the plains without me looking after 'em I wouldn't give their feelings a second thought before I hunted one down and ate it, you know?"

Tyrian eyed the goat and noted its dumb expression. Now that it had carrots and no one was pulling it around it just stood there like an idiot, blissfully unaware of the conversation, its mouth working in small, equally dumb looking circles as it chewed. It was a dumb, dumb beast. He waved a paw at it. "Just look at him. Does he look like a creature who thinks about much? Nah, with a belly full of carrots he's already forgotten he was squalling a minute ago. The girls are just as dumb. And they ain't picky. I've seen 'em stand for sheep."

The logic he was throwing back at her was hard for Aryn to swallow, her empathy towards these creatures was the very reason she was currently a very struggling hunter within Lirim and unable to be useful to her father and pack. While she understood the necessity of killing defenseless prey animals it was entirely another thing to scare and torture them, at least most hunters tried to end their suffering quickly.

"I'm sure the bears and lions think we're just wolves too, but the fact of the matter is everyone feels pain and everyone feels fear, you can at least be a gentleman about it and try to keep them happy and safe. If he feels secure I'm sure he'll give you lots of cute baby goats, and the mothers will provide more nutritious and fortifying milk for them if they feel the same." Aryn tried to seem confident in her words, as if she had real experience in animal husbandry instead of imaginative fantasy experience. She decided one day she wanted to raise animals for Lirim, to provide her pack healthy food without unnecessary bloodshed and suffering. Maybe if she learned healing as well she could even create a sedative so when the animals were eventually harvested, they did not feel their deaths.

She tried to appeal to the business side of him, if he saw the goats as only a resource to be one-day eaten then perhaps she could reason with him in that way. "If all you care about is the quality of your product you at least need to understand how to produce quality. Sickly animals taste worse and you can kind of taste the fear in the animals who fight for their lives before they die. Terror and suffering is only going to ruin your meat." The yearling imagined his earlier threat, the goat's head mounted upon their fence as a warning to future studs and shivered. She certainly didn't think that would be a very happy environment to live, breed, or raise kids in.

Tyrian made an incredulous noise in the back of his throat. The girl was kind of cute, but no amount of cuteness could fix what he thought to be a terribly naive worldview. She was willing to die on this hill, wasn't she? The more they talked the more convinced he became she didn't know anything about raising animals. It sounded like she was kind of coming around to where he was at already, but she was making the assumption he didn't already know those things. By and large he strove to make sure his animals lived good lives. Why? Because in that regard she wasn't completely wrong. Happy animals were healthier and had more babies. Her assertion that he didn't know that was wrong. He was frustrated with this particular dumb goat, but as it was showing right now, it would forget that frustration the moment it got nice things. Once he got it home and it quit bitching it would see that it had a good life and would run around kicking it heels up and boinking all the lady goats. It would live well and then one day out of the blue and unaware of his plans, it would die at his jaws so he could replace it with another buck. That was just life. Until then it would be taken care of.

So what was a boy to do in the face of insulting naivety? Ham it up and play into it, of course. He shrugged dismissively, then said, "Nah minimal effort, middling rewards is totally acceptable. Why would I want to treat them well and get more from them? Who does that? Certainly not anyone who wants to make a living out of this! Besides I find that sickly scaredy cat animals don't taste so bad. Anywho, I'll be off. Got goats to threaten to death and stuff. Later!" He finished on a breezy, blase note. Would she catch onto what he was implying? Honestly he wasn't sure.

With that he gave the goat's rope a tug and began to walk in Fireside's direction. It was getting late and he wished to be home so he could finally be rid of this empty-headed young buck. Nothing would please him more than being able to take the rope off and deliver it into the goat pen with a swift kick.

-exit?-