Colibri smiled encouragingly as Sura mimicked her, slowly figuring out the solution to the problem she had created. When she crowed her triumphant answer, Coli snorted, highly amused by the obvious malapropism. "Holes, Sura, we dig holes. Ahh, but slow down, you don't have to dig everywhere-!" she quickly corrected, waving the plants in her hands with agitation. The little dog had so much energy, it was hard to keep up with her. She tried to gesture that the holes could be in neat rows, but that didn't seem like a possibility. Oh well, it didn't really matter where the flowers went as long as they were in the same plot of land for everyone to find. She sighed, kneeling slowly at the garden's edge where she set the uprooted plants to one side. She could start planting them one by one while Sura tired herself out with the frenzied digging. "A hummingbird is... well, I'm sure it could be a tree like that, but there are also actual birds, the tiniest ones you'll ever meet," she said pleasantly, cheered by the girl's imagination.
As she quietly went back to the soil she so loved, ignoring the aches in her tired joints as she bent over, she listened to the long story Sura was telling her. The rapid pace of her puppy words made it difficult to fully grasp what had happened to her, but it seemed like she was sharing something important to her; her mother and father fought, and she released her frustration on a toy she loved, destroying it. Coli felt that sense of concern grow in her again -- was the puppy safe at home? Her parents didn't hurt her, did they? But Sura surprised her with the ending, showing she had matured further than Coli had expected for one of her age. She knew it wasn't her fault that her parents argued, and she tried to forget about the toy and move on. "That's very wise of you... You want me to forget about the unhappy things, and then my heart will get better like yours did...?" Coli was stricken by the simple honesty of this pup. Regardless of how adult her situation was, a child's words held the solution. She reached over and ruffled Sura's ears, feeling a rush of affection for her youngest packmate. She hoped the girl's parents appreciated the intelligent daughter they had been blessed with, instead of upsetting her with their arguments.
That sense of affection evaporated very quickly. A tinge of crimson flushed beneath her cream-furred cheeks, as she suddenly flashed back to a very old memory: the painfully awkward conversation she had many seasons ago with her child brother Emwe, in which he had asked why she did not have things dangling between her legs while he did. It had mortified her back then and she did not know how to answer him -- she had forgotten all about that until just now, since Sura's inquisitive mind chanced upon an equally embarrassing question for her. The puppy kept staring at her chest until Coli got self-conscious, crossing her arms over her bust so that the curves were less visible. "Erm... that's, uh... female animals have, um, teats, so they can nurse babies... size doesn't really matter..." Flowers, focus on the flowers! "Flowers don't need breasts, their babies are seeds. So they aren't animals, but they are alive." She frowned, wondering if that would actually answer the questions or end up creating more. She knew a lot about the individual qualities of plants, and how to care for them, but when it came to topics like biology, that was far beyond the scope of her simple knowledge.