new car, caviar, four-star daydream

Barrett · 02-26-2012, 09:40 PM

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meet me in outer space

Barry's ears cupped forward to catch the stranger's thickly accented words. At first he had some difficulty listening through the quiet roar of the crowd, but his brain seemed to calibrate to the unusual cadence and stresses characteristic of a non-native speaker's English quickly. Accents were prevalent in his homeland and ran the gamut from Irish to Australian; throughout his travels in Nova Scotia, he'd encountered even more: Korean, Russian, Spanish. Ah, it's just a saying, he explained, waving his hand dismissively and motioning for the tattooed hound to take a seat. Well met, he added with a congenial smile.

The café-coloured Canadian sank back down to the log bench at a close, but comfortable distance. His citrine gaze wandered across the passing shoppers and their swag, but his attention was mostly focused on his new acquaintance. Cairo, huh? That's... Africa, right? His tail thumped. My grandfather's mate is from Africa. Her coat's really short and smooth like yours, but it looks like someone splattered tan and white paint on a black background... her ears are rounded, too, he explained. She can't shift though, he added with a faint frown, peering inquisitively to Imhotep.

Nobody at the Collective ever asked the Wild Dog why she couldn't assume a bipedal form, although they all had wondered. Alacrity spoke and behaved much like a wolf, and although the rigid customs of her birth clan were foreign to his liberal family, they were not very far removed, like those of a cougar, bear, or even a fox. They could not understand the intricacies of the virus that gifted them with the ability to shift — that the subtle differences between the genera Lycaon and Canis were enough to prevent hybridisation or similar genetic mutation in the face of Z456 — but at least the Egyptian native might know African Wild Dogs could not shift as common knowledge, just as Barry knew red foxes could not. As things stood, he was uncertain if it was just her or all members of her species.

Whatever the case, it was something to talk about — a subject they could both (hopefully) relate to. If nothing else, he was proud of himself for not being completely ignorant; at least he knew where Africa was (or that it existed at all). Must say she finds the winters here pretty rough, he added as an afterthought. How have you been holding up? I got some thick furs here, if you wanna take a look? he offered, nudging his backpack with his foot.

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