✨ — The garou were isolated folks. They could never hope to believe that humans would fully understand them, nor could they expect one whom initiated contact to have their best interests in mind. That was the understood code even for a youth who did not grow up amongst the pack but rather sheltered in a Deeprealm. It was in her blood, she supposed, and even when she had taken the steps outside of her wild homeland and into the ranks of her father's peers, she still found it to be the truth.
That was, until she met him.
She could remember the way he held himself. He walks like the paragon of society -- in fact, he still does, she notes, but she can discriminate something previously hidden to her sharp, keen eyes: the man who seemed so stiff, so proper -- he too has his moments where he falters, where he glances around nervously and with a subtle desperation, where he might fidget or struggle to stay completely idle like the statue of his visage that will no doubt one day be made in his honor.
Her lips curl whenever she sees what was once ignored. She is not a fool to simply believe that this is all brand new; no, she simply knows him better now. The heir with his pristine image -- the epitome of the kind of person she ought to avoid most, had breached the gap and locked the two into an air of familiarity, an air she welcomed.
He is willing to understand, and for the hundred steps he takes towards the effort, she must meet him at least halfway and in time be equal. Wariness is one attribute, but it cannot become an excuse.
And frankly, she didn't like lame excuses anyhow.
The date had snuck up on her. It was not as if she did not know. In fact, once the significance of the day had been told to her, she had made sure to commit it to memory, refusing to be flippant on the matter. The issue at hand was more of the side effects of the barrier she had enforced between herself and her human peers.
It had always been him to try and try again to please her, to prove his convictions. Failed gift after failed gift -- she had paid little mind to it other than to give him her honest review. Yet, when it came to her own turn to return the favor for his birth's anniversary, she no longer thought his attempts humorous and endearing. On the other side of the wall she had established, she gained knowledge of the trials and tribulations that came with preparing an appropriate token of one's feelings, how hard it was to convey that and know precisely what might brighten your intended's face.
A pre-preemptive flash of shame covered her countenance. Her teeth bite a bit of her lip, caring naught for damage, only instinct, and in seconds the object that had been tightly wound in her gloved fingers was dropped to the ground just a few inches from the prince's feet. Before him was a writing utensil, sharp in its point, and beside it a bag of some finely ground dirt ( was it dirt? no... it had to be something else, some other mineral, but she would call it not by its proper name for she found it too trivial in that moment to be able to list off ) -- no doubt both made by her. She tried her hardest to make it presentable, for even if she found it in where she roamed most comfortably, that did not mean that her wilderness was what guaranteed his happiness. He was curious, but he was not necessarily the same as her, and she had to think of his tastes too. She made no grand display of it, simply crossing her arms and looking slightly away.
❝ The idea is that you dip the pointed end
in the ❛ dirt ❜ a little and it'll write --
perhaps even better than those funny
feathers you use. ❞
Though she tried to explain it rationally and matter-of-factly as possible, her attempts to justify what might seem a silly joke of a present ( even despite her earnest efforts ) still produced a blush across her cheeks. She knows this is not her place, this is not her expertise. Had he desired sport, she might have delivered with more confidence.
But alas, here she was, and here she was trying to decrease the metaphorical space between them, for if he were to try and understand her, should she not do the same for him?
❝ So... Happy Birthday, Siegbert. ❞