That was not good, she saw that it was not good, no? To run into 'battle' with a litter in tow? Or was it simply that any pregnancy had to end in a bloodied delivery? He recalls the mothers who whelped in his yard with a vividity only grief could keep so clear through time, still yet does Mintaka's blood and the fear that seized him in her illness tinge his tongue. When Liss talks of wounded birth, he wonders if this is an inevitability. For her, he hopes not.

"Qué historia." (What a tale.)

Coyote, surprisingly, finds a thread of relief in her insistence to talk and talk though he suspects her lungs might fold soon. His ache a little in her stead.

This is beyond what he understands, Vale and Vandr and Anvils... sacred birds. She tries to convey them to him but it's through a framing he only knows some of, his life before had been a long one but he is finding it was a small one. Simpler. He understood what he was then.

What is he now?

"Your life like wild story itself, no?" He says, lost for the word interesting. "Why you come here if family is there?"

Persistent, Liss presses. How did he explain men to someone who did not know them?

And so he thought of their cruelty.

"Men. Human. They are not like you or like me; no fur, walk up like bear, and they have—" he lifts a scarred paw, splays each digit as far as they can go. "—hands they call it, no claws. Made for grabbing." Coyote drops it back to the dirt, his muzzle wrinkling but a whine seats itself in his throat. "Men say I am Coyote then I am Coyote, know better than to be something else." Because what had wanting ever done for him but hurt?

He shakes his head. "Errol is... nice," he says. "But I am not Errol." And he isn't sure how to soften the fact for her. "You are kind for thinking I can be something else."