The girl seemed confused at her joke, tilting her head, and Vesper quickly shrugged to show that she hadn’t meant anything serious by it. “Hard to adjust to pack life after being a loner for so long,” she said with a half-smirk. She didn’t mean to sound like she had a bad life or was strictly meant to be alone, because she’d done well despite her birth and didn’t mind company. The fact that she was talking to the younger wolf was proof enough that she wasn’t antisocial.
The subject drifted to her injured paw, and Blind quickly circled around her, excitedly murmuring that they were just like each other. The coywolf started to open her mouth to disagree, but she held her tongue, not wanting to say something after she’d gotten her hopes up. It would be good if they were similar; it’d make the training that Vesper had in mind go through easier.
Gesturing at her injury, Blind asked her what had happened. The tawny hybrid quickly shook her head at the second question; though she and Bambi had been snarling at each other in preparation for a fight, the encounter had gone very, very differently in the end. Besides, it was obvious that this scar was an older one.
“Punk coyote,” Vesper said instead. “He was a young tyrant. He bit my paw and my shoulder.” She turned her head, indicating a bite mark on the shoulder of that side. “He ended up…worse off.” Quite an understatement. She gave her head a quick shake and smirked as the dark wolf sat down, looking brightly at her.
At the words “I’m ready!” the coywolf launched herself at the wolf, aiming to knock into her chest and shoulder and send her sprawling.
She had learned the hard way, through being forced to compromise for her balance in her bad paw. Of course, she made sure that her tackle wasn’t going to seriously hurt Blind, and she would give her pointers and feedback that she herself hadn’t gotten.
“First off,” Vesper said, whether or not she’d managed to knock Blind down, “balance is the key to any fight. If you get knocked down, you’re just asking for disembowelment. Your balance is off because of your leg; you need to figure out what works for you to be able to move quickly.”
She leaped back, head low and ears back. “Now attack me.”
