Let's be better strangers
For all the rest of his faults, Wherewolf is not stupid - or so he likes to tell himself - and though he enjoys the flattery, he is not moved deeply by it. Obscene may try to play him against Aela if he wishes, but Wherewolf doesn't rise to the ribbing, only stares with that unchanging scowl. A diplomat?He thinks his mother would enjoy the joke, it is the sort of joke that she would play on someone. He thinks Amarine would be horrified, and that thought quirks at the edges of his scowling face, adding unkind humor to the gleam of those blue-green eyes. He neither knows nor cares what game Obscene is playing at, but he is willing to play this part.
"It's your funeral, Obscene." His gaze turns back to the mound called Steve and he wonders if everyone here is out of their skulls, but he doesn't wonder long. The answer is almost certainly yes. The idiocy is pandemic, and it must be catching because he's agreed to be here among them. The tarnished silver of his short tail switches, faintly irritated with what this must means, brushing at his dark hocks and the flowers that bloom around them bright as Obscene's eyes, bright as Wherewolf's golden dapples in the shining sun. Their heady scent makes the air thick, but his stubborn Northern blood resists.
He won't be led so easily.
"No, I haven't." He has not tried the Pampeian flowers. He does not want to relax. He doesn't want to forget all the little jabs, all the hurts and the betrayals that led him to this place, where his bitterness is so palpable he's surprised the flowers around them don't wilt beneath his shadow.
And he's not certain he wants to remember the things that he has forgotten, either. Calm and gentle Wherewolf died years ago, if he ever really existed, crushed by wind and granite, and plucked by hungry gulls. Shaken to pieces by a mother's unforgiving teeth. The shadows of those memories are too thick to see through and he does not need Aela's or Ama's magic to know it best not to shine the light there. Nonetheless, he lowers his lips to brush against delicate petals, avoiding the nectar the Prince of Poppies is pushing so strongly.
"Was it the flowers that told you to make me a diplomat? You might want to ease up a bit," he remarks, his voice sly, "I wouldn't trust the advice of my dinner."
@[Obscene]
