Of Crows and Songbirds

"I want you to think on that for awhile," he said. "I'll be coming back to it." He paused. "What sorts of creatures did you encounter?"

Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.

“Thankfully nothing big, sir. A coyote followed us for a bit, but we never saw it, just heard it. Saw a bobcat or two. Some rabbits, though we didn’t have anything to catch them with. Sir.”

"This was in the South? What about the North?"

(What would be feasible? I just talked out of my ass haha)

(Arctic and northern animals, probably not coyotes but wolves, bears, deer, elk, maybe moose? Various birds from that region. He's trying to use his knowledge of regional fauna to determine what direction they came from)

(Ahh I see… okay, thanks haha and would they have passed towns/what sorts of things might she have seen?)

“Um… we saw some deer. And some really, really big deer with big antlers.”

(They'd have passed towns but the inns would definitely not be the same coming from Tarr as coming from the mountains. They'd have seen a lot of trees, all pine and no deciduous, which you would have seen coming from the mountains, and they had to skirt the Barren Plains to get here either way, unless they were coming from the western side of the mountains. They'd see more colorful songbirds as opposed to brown and white, and the moose would be rarer down in the south though I'm still not sure I want them in this world.)

"Moose or elk?" he asked.

“…maybe?” She didn’t know what those were.

"Were its antlers more like a deer or wider and more paddle-like?" he asked

“Like a deer, sir. Just very big.”

"An elk, then." He gave a nod. "Did you speak to anyone along the road or see any banners?"

“No sir.” She shook her head.

He nodded again. "What do you know about Tadaaki and Al?"

Thank god.

“Not much about Al, sir. We met in the cage,” she answered. “Tadaaki and I had the same master, though… he didn’t let us talk much. But. We were still together.”

"And why were you both sold at the same time?"