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"--so you can guess what I told her!"

The voice breaking through the late-morning quiet, rising above the chattering of birdsong and the whisper of breezes, is thin and cheery. Its gender is nearly impossible to ascertain, teetering as it does on the edge of being either a doe's or an older colt's.

It is coming from an Acha, with a brilliantly colored tail that is flicking in the grass. He is lying on his side and gently arranging blossoms in a glossy pile of blonde hair on the head of a Kimeti doe, who reclines next to him with her head leaned against his side. They have the relaxed air of siblings or best friends, and in the sunshine of the impossibly pretty morning, with various brightly-colored pets playing in the wildflowers around them, they make a compelling pair: he slender and childish, she round-eyed and lovely in a petite, wholesome way, with flowers tumbling around her ears.

They rest at the edge of a grove of apples, and here where the weather is nice and the food abundant, they are hardly lonely. Although this particular meadow belongs only to them at the moment, there are Kin grazing nearby and feeding among the trees, scattered across the borders.

"Anyway," he continues. "She raises a good point. You do need to think about that."

"But Fix," protests the doe, and her voice is mild and sweet, "I don't want to think about it. I am not interested. And neither are they."

He makes a dismissive noise. "Pretty girl like you, don't be ridiculous. Why just the other--"

He stops, because one of the creatures playing near them has stopped. A pale otter with a rainbow-colored streak down his side is standing on his hindlimbs like a mongoose, and soon an actual mongoose joins him, and they are peering towards some distraction in the treeline.

"Oh!" cries the doe, lifting her head, carefully so as not to dislodge her decorations. "Is someone coming?"

"Oh, we love an interruption," sings out the Acha, and the doe nods--too enthusiastically, as it turns out, and she has to quickly fall still to keep her crown from falling off her head. "Especially one as good lo--"

"What he means," the doe interrupts hastily, all too aware of where Fix is about to go with that in typical Fix fashion, "is that we're all out here just enjoying the sunshine and you're welcome to join us, of course. It's far too nice to spend all day in the shade."

Fix has a quick eye and, on the rare occasion he chooses to exercise it, a keen ability to read people. It wouldn't take a genius to interpret that look anyway, and there is pleasure on his face when he catches Wild Heart looking at the doe. He doesn't even bother to hide it. He just grins, sort of lewdly.

"It's such a pleasure," says the doe politely. "My name--"

"I'm Itchy," he says airily, before she can finish. "Sweetheart," he says, addressing the doe--and he doesn't say it like a mate would, but like a particularly effete friend--"you ought to have Wild Heart guess your name."

"Oh!" she says, startled but apparently pleased by the idea. "Would you like to guess my name? I could give you hints. And Fix is so good at riddles, he could too." And she gasps, realizing she's said his name. "Oh no--I'm sorry, Fix."

"Itchy," his secret revealed, looks chagrined. "That's why we'll have him guess yours--since now he doesn't get the joy of guessing mine."

"Okay," says the doe thoughtfully, mulling over a hint and apparently oblivious to the look of smug satisfaction on Fix's face.

"A hint," she ponders after a moment, the breeze stirring the petals in her hair. "I suppose--my name is a thing that is nice, and not nice." She looks to Wild Heart with earnest eyes, looking for approval at this clue. "I guess you're supposed to start vague and work your way down to specifics, right?"

She looks perked-up at this, seeing as he's so close already to the answer, and glances excitedly at Fix.

"I knew an ugly buck once," he says, "whose name was Great Beauty. I think it's fair to say the Dreaming has a sense of humor." White Lie laughs.

"I don't know if my name suits me--you'll have to tell me whether Wild Heart suits you. But I know that look on Fix's face and I think he's come up with a riddle. Tell it, Fix."

But the Acha shakes his head. He's onto this situation. He instead leans over to whisper into the doe's ear, and she repeats his lines back to Wild Heart obediently, one at a time: the whispering of the Acha, and then the chime of her rote responses.

"I can't make it, I'm sick; You look great in this light;
It's not you of course, just the time isn't right--
I suppose some would say that my name is polite."

"Oh!" she says, before Wild Heart can answer--and she seems to say "oh!" quite a lot, as if she exists in a state of perpetual happy surprise--"I've come up with another verse, I think."

"And although one might say that my name isn't candid,
A question that's awkward can make you feel stranded--
And my name is the answer that's sometimes demanded!"

She laughs delightedly, and scoops up the flower he'd left near her foot to tuck it behind the ear of the mongoose, which has scampered over to observe the commotion and doesn't seem too pleased by the gift. When she turns her head to face the newcomer again, Fix quietly removes the blossom and lays it back where Wild Heart had, shooting the buck a conspiratorial "I'm here for you, bro" type look.

"It is White Lie," she says. "I don't know if it's a true name for me but I do hate the idea of hurting someone's feelings, so maybe it is. What about Wild Heart--did the Swamp name you well?"