"Poetry is kind'a like stories, some times. They're not very long, most times, they rhyme. Uh. I've got a favorite one or two. Folks write them fer lovers, or... lost kin. Or, about stuff like war or. Land. You can write a poem about just about anything." With a small nod, she turns the page. On to the next, but only after she touches the fish-hooked 'J'. The pages rustle as they are turned. "'K'," she murmurs, "is for a kiss. Lovers glow in elation." Disgruntlement is evident along his brow, marches down his cheek; too much grain at once for the millstone to grind. "Does it have pictures," he huffs a moment, "this thing that is like a story, but is not?" He quietly murmurs, "J." Bottle green eyes glance over to the illustration of the two lovers twined around each others like trees. "They will fuck," he growls, "what they do is called, a kiss? What is the rest, about lovers? You will explain." She sees it, how irate he grows with her speed and the progress that does not match it. Slows down accordingly and lowers the book. Her gaze finds his in the dim. "No, no pictures. Only words. I'll show ya in time. There's, uh... poems fer cubs." The way he speaks of that act which can mean so much or so little, that kiss, earns him a brief scowl. "Yes and no. A kiss is... well. It ain't just fuckin'. It don't have ta be. A kiss can be sweet. Meaningful. Innocent. A kiss can be like when I touch my lips to your face." She moves her fingers along his rippling maw. Touches beneath his broad nose. "Lovers kiss, strangers kiss. Kin can kiss. Don't gotta be tied to tha rutt alone, ya kennit?" Her eyes move along the words again. "Lovers glow with elation," she repeats. "I guess... they're happy. Bein' a lover isn't just. Ugh, this is real deep and sappy. Bein' a lover isn't just the physical, see? It's happiness when yer with yer partner. It's. Tanglin' up and bein' content to lie there, or. Talk. Or. Just be. I'unno. I'm shit at explainin' romance." Irritation races down to his tail, which lifts and settles after it whacks against the cot. "In time. I do not," he rumbles, "want poems, for cubs. I am not--" The charr halts mid-sentence, pushing up to shoulders to glare down that body. His body. It's only when he senses the sting of that scowl that muzzle snaps in her direction to fixate to her. "I fuck," he gravels, "I fight. I feed. These are the things, I do. Of these, you are feeding me...words." His snout pulls level with her nose. "Are you saying, Ainsley Groves, you. Are happy, doing this?" "Wouldn't do it if I wasn't happy with it," she asserts, peering straight and unwavering at and into him. "Yer so very far away from stupid, Myrrind. Yer far from ignorant. Ya want ta learn. And I'll be fucked if I see that wasted. Even if I'm a shit example ta learn from." Oh, the urge to grin at his protest. At his unfinished sentiment. How he was not a cub; she knew. She knew that she may have insulted him by suggesting dumbed literature. She salved this with one of the aforementioned. A kiss. A ripple dashes back along muzzle followed by a shake of his head. "No," he gutters, "that is not. My thinking. I do not ask, of this thing you are doing." A claw tip points at the page, neither of them had left. It's then she kisses him, and his tongue lashes back at her mouth once. He licks the taste of her lips off his teeth. "Are you, this?" The claw insists with a tap at the coupled tree, "Are you, what you said. Happy?" Her eyes glance between the page and her constant companion. Are you this? A question that, without intending to be, comes strikingly profound. Lips threaten to curl, and one can see, likely, the fine lines that appear at the corners of her eyes. "Yeah," she answers after a moment of silent consideration. "I am what I said." He could say something then, but she knows by now that he is not a creature of the mindful sort. He is not capable of keeping precision with his thoughts, picking the right words from the right boxes in his head at the right time; that even doing that, takes effort. So much effort from the likes of him. What had to be said was some hours ago, between her pitched cries of his name, and "this does not mean I will not try." He watches her crow's feet, and like the beast he is, a chuff issues before his snout butts against her as his head lays down again in her lap. She meets the bump of his face with her own, one hand loosing from the book to reach up and clutch the back of his broad skull so close to hers. Dark face turns this way and that, a nuzzling affection that denies him the brevity he seeks. When he lowers, she does too. Tips sideways and curls in against his chest in a way that still grants him her thigh as a place to rest. One arm folds beneath her head, book laid on the mattress between them that he could still look over the pictures if he so chooses. "We'll finish it when you get back," is her quiet promise. "And I'll show you tha things I made for you." She would fall asleep with him that way, their bodies feigning the shape of the zodiac's sign for Cancer.
