WC: 349
Coli blinked in surprise. Her mother had damaged her tail? Zana had been attacked by her parent? How cruel, poor little thing. Hopefully the fur would grow back quickly, so that she did not have the constant reminder. She personally had been lucky not to incur any visible scars from her own attack. That, at least, had healed well. "I thought... they were just to look pretty," she finished weakly, sky-blue gaze lingering on the worn ribbons. "Because they do, you know. You look very... cute." The compliment was foreign on her tongue, but it was another thing she wanted to get used to. Sankor and Anu had both said so. And they were both smarter than she was, so she might as well take their advice when she could. Besides, Zana did look cute! Her coyote-pup ears were adorable, and she had such a lovely eye colour... Nothing like Coli's plain looks.
There was an awkward moment when the shaky girls could do nothing but stare warily at each other, and then the spell was broken. Colibri sighed with relief, a small smile playing on her lips as she brushed the sand from her fur and stood up. "Yeah! Birds eat bugs, and fish, and stuff like that, right? If you trick them into eating plants instead, it can make them sick. Then they'll learn to stay away from where you are, because they'll keep getting sick...! Do you know anything about poison?" She tried to keep her explanation simple, to shy away from the more obvious applications of poison. No, she had never killed anyone, despite Svara Thames' insistent hostility, and her father's tempting proximity. Poisonous plants were her hobby, something she had explained to her friend Henratha. Her birth pack had drilled her in many different "forbidden" flora; it was the one thing she remembered of her late mother's family, the knowledge they had left her with. She still clung to it, starting little hidden gardens whenever she found a place of solitude. Maybe if she passed the knowledge down, Zana would adopt the hobby too...!
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