X_X
Word Count → 429
Neela was suddenly more interested in the dirt at her side than Saul as the conversation moved to him meeting his family, one of her hands drawing intricate patterns in the dirt and her eyes fixed on these patterns as she tried to force her mind away from the bad memories that always came to the surface when family came up in a conversation.
Still it would be rude to just ignore Saul so she forced herself to look back up at him. The smile on her face wasn't quite forced as she was glad that at least Saul had family near him that he was on good terms with, but it was certainly strained. "That’s good, suppose it's nice to know that you have family nearby." Neela leaned back with a wistful sigh, "Wish I had some family around here I could see. Or some family at all that I was on anything approaching good terms with. Most'a what I've got left, somebody would be reaching for a knife if we met." Neela regretted the words the instant they left her mouth. The collie seemed to have developed a annoying habit recently of speaking carelessly and then depressing herself with her own words and once again she had struck true in this regard.
Mood struck and ears lowered Neela quieted up and listened as Saul spoke. Neela wasn't particularly fond of horses so that part of the conversation went over her head mostly but the last part was interesting. "Yeah, birds are pretty cool." Neela spoke, her mood and ears rising slightly, "Don’t think you've met Grynn have ya? She's a peregrine falcon, older'n you an been with me most her life an half'a mine." Neela smiled as she thought of her feathered companion, who had remained in ichika no Ho-en on this trip for reasons unknown to Neela. "I’d recommend ya look for some type of hawk or falcon, or maybe an owl. They tend to be pretty intelligent; Grynn can’t speak too well but she's easily as smart as a wolf in her own way, just thinks a little differently." Neela let a mischievous grin cross her face before, unable to resist the urge, she let out a series of short and rapid clicks and whistles, her approximation of bird speech, which roughly translated to her explaining the merits of falcons, "Maybe I can teach ya the low speech if ya get somethin' similar to Grynn?" Neela said, both offering her services and explaining what the hell she had just been doing in the same sentence.
