<blockquote>She had spoken earlier, though it had been his natural inclination to ignore it. After all, what more could words add to the picture that the scents and her laughter had already created? They had been easy to disregard because they had not been aimed at him, but it was no so now.
Oh dear earth, were those even words?
The usual discomfort he felt at their use was nothing compared to this, to the garbled sounds that she spoke as she rose to greet him. The painful thing was that he almost recognised some of them, because that meant that he was supposed to understand this verbal atrocity, and that, in turn, meant he wasn't absolved of trying to communicate. Damn it all. The situation wasn't sitting well with Marsh at all, and as he noted her curious body language, which sat somewhere between neutrality and defiance, he realised that this wasn't going to be a simple matter to solve.
The blood thick in her fur told of her recent past; Marsh was not about to get into a reckless fight with a female who stank of bloody victory, no matter how good his chances looked.
She snorted, communicating her state of mind more in that simple gesture than in any amount of words, and Marsh watched, suspicious and wary, as she moved closer only to lay down again. A display of submission, if half-assed? But then his silver gaze met her own amber one, and a trickle of hostility wound its way into his expression as she stared so openly at him. She had said something else, something about a name - that's all he had gotten. But names were irrelevant, and he had no idea if she had been saying her own or asking for his. But it wasn't important. There were times when he was inclined to put up with it and try, and times when it really seemed secondary to what was really important.
Agitated by the defiance her strong gaze embodied, Marsh took another step forwards, his head lowering and lip curling over his teeth in a more open threat. Her behaviour was infuriatingly unclear; was she aware of her trespassing or was she not? Was she repentant, or was she doing all this on purpose? Though half-inclined to chase her away on the spot, Marsh chose instead the less extreme route, though it did not soften his behaviour by much. After all, Indru or Corinna might appear and be able to make sense of the situation in a way that he could not, and their decision was ultimately final.
But they were not here, and Marsh did not have interrogation skills. All he could do was make sure that the stranger was suitably softened up by the time one of them inevitably arrived - and to do so would require straight-up submission.
The growl ever-present, he advanced on the bloodied female, bringing his nose close to hers - before jerking it up and down, opening his jaws and intending to grab her muzzle in his own, to force her head (and thereby her gaze) downwards, where it belonged. It would be a start, at least.</blockquote>