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He wouldn't see her, at first; in the slashing light of sun through drooping willow branches, Willow herself would disappear, camouflaged in green and gold. Instead, Wild Cry's eyes would fall on the crude carvings in the trunk of the tree, abstract shapes that might have been kimeti running through the swamps -- or birds in the sky, or maybe just sideways slashing lines. Willows-breath was an artist, but that didn't mean her work was intelligible.

She herself would step sideways as he came in, tail swishing up across her work in progress, a sharpened rock clutched between her teeth and eyes narrowed. She mumbled something unintelligible around it.

Wild Cry got to look at the rock for about ten seconds before she spat it out at him; not enough force to hurt, just for it to bounce off his snout and tumble into the dirt at his feet. Her eyes were pale and narrow and hard to read, her tail still swishing and curling and obscuring his view of the tree trunk -- not quite thrashing, but almost.

"You're encroaching on my psychic space." -- but her voice was soft and surprisingly serious, her chin tipping up so that she could look down her nose at him, despite his lanky height.

"I'm not finished with it yet." His curiosity, however, softened her expression just a little. She eased back a prancing step, with another slow curl and twitch of her tail, and those pale eyes shifted onto her drawing instead. Of course, now she was stoneless, no way to add to the tail, but as she stared at it, Willow found she was bored of the tale it was telling anyway.

"Well, it's unfinished. Maybe I am finished with it." She sniffed, shrugged, arching her neck as she considered a shape near the end which might have been a snake. Or a tangle of legs coming up out of the swamp, who knew.

"Hmm." She twisted in place, pretending to look at the drawings while actually watching him out of the corner of her eyes. Either he pretended very well, or he really was interested in her work, and both ideas held their appeal.

The problem was, she didn't exactly remember what she'd been getting at, with the drawings. She made things; she didn't always think them out all the way. Willow stood considering her work for a moment before she explained, and something about her tone made it very clear she was making this up as she went along.

"It's a story about mongooses. I saw two of them at the edge of the swamp the other day, when it was cold and raining." She raised her eyebrows and tipped her head to look at him in full. "They were chasing each other in circles, up and down dead branches."

She snorted at him, a rough noise that turned into a sneeze instead, sudden and sharp and sweet. She was left shaking her head, blinking dust from her eyes, head tipped to the side so that she could look up at him again, pondering his expression. "No, I thought they were cute. You're a strange boy."

"I don't think I much like carving." She leaned in to her designs to consider, her head canted again, one hoof digging deeper into the soft earth around the tree, and narrowed her eyes. It was a bit sloppy, she thought, and didn't do her ideas a bit of justice.

"I like drawing better." A hum as she straightened, swiped her tail back and forth, and she shot him a look that was a bit more amused, any hostility faded away. "You can get a much better image in the earth than in bark."