Firefly Weir daydream melody

Her lips curled back in a snarl when he denied her claim, and she bristled furiously. Not furiously at him, but at herself. An old desire to fight and bite to take out her frustrations rose back up from where she'd buried it after leaving her old pack, and she shifted her weight on the slush beneath her, fighting the need to pace and release some of that energy.

"Don't defend me," she ordered, her head low and her silvery eyes focused on his dark ones. "You don't know what I am. Where I came from. What I think. So you can't possibly know what I can and can't say about myself." Her voice was cold and firm, not cruel toward him, but merely stating facts.

She desperately tried to sort out the emotions that ran across his face, but found that it was not easy. Her own expression was back to its trained blank state, but inwardly she was chaotic, like a storm on a sea. "I don't..." she began, her eyes narrowing slightly in concentration before she drew a sigh of frustration and dropped her gaze. "I don't understand what it is that you're feeling right now, Eskil. I'm bad at this." She gestured a bit with her tail, going for an all-encompassing gesture that explained to him that she just wasn't good at socializing or speaking or interacting. "I wasn't... wasn't taught all the normal stuff. I don't know how you've dealt with me for this long, to tell you the truth." She raised her gaze back toward his. "Could you try to... explain what emotions you... Nevermind."

That was a stupid idea. The young woman inhaled deeply to calm her frantic heart rate and stifle any emotions of her own.

His words appeared to put her on the defensive, and his body fought between the need to both assert himself and placate her anger. His tail swished an arch over his back, but he kept his head low, lips peeled in a thin, long grimace of submissive agitation that showed his molars. Sure, he didn't know much about her at all, but he still thought there was no need for that kind of language. 

She didnt understand what he was feeling? Eskil wasn't even sure himself just what that was, and if he did he wouldn't know how to put it in words. Just what 'normal stuff' wasn't she taught? He couldn't even fathom. Eskil had half a mind to leave all of this behind without another word and disappear into the forest, let her deal with this all herself. But that seemed unusually cruel, and Asha was obviously struggling with something. Nobody deserved to be abandoned like that.

Eskil exhaled, one long breath slowly seeping from his lungs, taking some of the pent up frustration with it. "Well, I'm feeling confused, for one." He started, looking to her before glancing away, off into the leafless trees. "And a little frustrated, I think." He admitted. He rubbed a forepaw against the snowy ground. It didn't seem productive to lay down all the turmoil of his inner mind, and he was even less sure what she wanted to do with the information once she had it. How would it help her, any? It seemed like it could only hurt. "I don't really know what you want to hear. Obviously, I touched a sore spot of yours. If you want to talk about it, I'm here to listen. If you want to keep it to yourself and we can both pretend none of this happened, I can do that too. If you don't want to see me again, I'll turn around, walk off, and never bother you again." He explained plainly, cutting straight to the bottom of it.

He was sending such confusing signals, and she had no idea what to do with them. His tail was high, which suggested dominance, but his head was low, which suggested submission. But that couldn't be - his teeth were showing, which, in her mind, only ever meant bared fangs or, rarely, a smile. The latter was not at all possible in this situation. Her breathing picked up, her anxiety at having another overly-dominant wolf attack her. Her tail subconsciously tucked so tightly that it was curled around the inside of her hind leg, and her ears were pinned back to her skull. Her mouth remained shut and she lowered herself to the ground, a bit of a tremble in her legs as her belly brushed the snow. Terrified at even the suggestion that he was so angry that he felt the need to dominate her.

She glanced back up when he exhaled, met his eyes nervously, but did not move from her position on the forest floor. Her orbs widened when he mentioned just leaving her behind and she let out a soft whimper, pressing herself further into the snow. She definitely didn't want him to leave - he was her only friend, and the thought of him just abandoning her was stirring up all sorts of negative emotions inside her. Tears burned the back of her eyes, and she was overcome with the want to approach him and beg for forgiveness.

But she didn't. Instead, she maintained her submissive stance, even as he seemed to relax a bit and gave her options. She pressed her chin to the ground and let him have the dominant position in the conversation. She didn't want to speak - the lump in her throat would make it difficult, and she didn't want to make him angry.

In the end, she figured it would make him angrier not to speak, so she gave it her best shot. "I'm... sorry," she began, eyes flicking up to his before averting submissively once more. "I'll, um... I'll go. Not-not forever, but... but for a little while. Unless you want..." ...want me to stay.

Eskil watched the trembling woman, looking all for the world like a hunted animal. Did he look so fearsome that she needed to cower before him? Was it his face? He looked a little rough, sure, but he didn't think his display of irritation was terrifying enough to elicit that sort of response. Her reaction made him feel like a monster. Like he was some sort of lusty wild beast frightening young maidens. And maybe that wasn't an incorrect assessment, after all, if he'd just kept his damned paws to himself, none of this would have happened and they'd still be traveling together on their merry way. And then, a pang of guilt gnawed at his stomach. His sister was out there somewhere, and here he was messing around with girls. 

The Whitebark man took a step back, then another. Asha stammered out an apology, and her answer. That was it, then. Again, he sighed. He didn't want to stick around if he scared her so much.

"Okay," He breathed. He took a third step back. Then a fourth, hesitating. He looked into her scared, haunted eyes. She needed something, but he didn't think that something was him. "Bye, Asha. Take care." He said without inflection before he loped past her, running into the woods without looking back.