Word Count » 468
I really should be posting elsewhere, but at the moment this is pretty much the only thread I have muse for. I wish my mind was also that active.
He gave her a formal, unusual-for-himself greeting, and she returned it with... well, not a greeting, more of a demand. Ugh, he wasn't in the mood for this. Still, for that reason he decided he needed to go on this hunt whether he liked it or not. It wasn't like Deirdre spoke the truth when she mentioned "stealing" him away from his pack. He didn't really know any canine in the pack--other than himself, of course--better than Deirdre, and there was really no reason other than a bad mood to sleep the rest of the day away.
Just because he was forcing himself to go didn't mean that he was going to try to be completely upbeat; somehow he could sense that Deirdre would see through it, since he certainly wasn't acting himself, and he certainly didn't feel like explaining. He would just act the way that came naturally to him, and at the moment this was a rather bored, monotonous way.
Surprisingly, Deirdre's mood switched back to what Slade was used to when she finished talking, which suddenly made him feel much less opposed to coming on this hunt. He still had a storm cloud hanging over his head but in that particular moment it shrunk considerably. Letting his head and tail rise a bit, the coyote gave a formal nod to her demand. They had the opposite problem, bad days and bad nights. The difference, Slade realized, was that Deirdre was open to admitting it. This reminded him of their past meeting, when he had noticed that he knew quite a bit about her life and she knew little about his. In addition, his mind began to reel and he recalled the rest of that meeting, when he had promised that she was welcome to come to Cercatori's border to summon him for whatever reason.
Again, Slade was reminded how he was a terrible conversationalist, and once again his head drooped--not so much in boredom, but in shame. Well, there was certainly no way he was going to back out now, not after that promise. (Technically he hadn't promised to stick to either of those statements, but in his mind he had decided that they were promises and it would be foolish not to keep them; there was no reason not to, after all.)
With most of his boredom replaced with embarrassment, especially after he realized that he had gone quite a while after nodding without moving much or speaking, Slade sputtered out the first words that came to mind: "Yeah. Yes. Sure. Of course, I'm up for a hunt. Haven't had much luck with my own hunt today. Let's go." He started walking past her, trying not to meet her eyes, hoping that by the time she caught up his ears wouldn't be bright red.
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