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Across the yard, a vague smudge of color nestled into tall grass that could easily have been mistaken for a patch of flowers suddenly dispelled all suspicions by sitting straight up, blinking and squinting in the sun, her ears pulling back ever so slightly. "Nantli?" she said doubtfully, the very tip of her tail twitching.

Xo gave a disdainful, catlike little sniff at the air. Somebody'd called her, hadn't they?

She cast a glance toward the direction in which she'd last seen her Guardian, ready to scamper off and execute a mad scramble for freedom if it was in-time already, or at least put up a good howl if she were caught. Out-time was supposed to be much longer than this. That sort of thing could not be tolerated, or else who knew what would come next. It was important for everybody to understand where the priorites lay, though it was taking a great deal of training on Xochitl's part for this to come across to her Nan.

But Shiva was still dozing under the same tree, her hands folded, her face half-obscured by a fallen hat, her mouth slung open. This was an odd development. Xo abandoned the worm she'd been methodically poking with a twig and stood carefully, unsteadily, using her tail like a balancing pole with handfuls of tall grass in both fists, and turned from where her Guardian slept with a new feeling of a strangely heavy apprehension, especially now that she realized it could never have been Nan.

It had been a much smaller voice, for one thing. No minute cigarette rasp in the back of it.

For another, there was a strange inflection in the tone, a curve to the word that was as evasive but firmly there as a smell in the air.

Somebody was by the garden.

"Niltze," Xo called impatiently across the lawn, crossing her arms imperiously. Her tail gave one indignant lash that nearly tumbled the toddler right over, though she regained her balance discreetly enough. Whoever it was calling her could come over HERE and discuss their business. There was no need to be rude, or hide, for that matter.

Xochitl, briefly distracted by the maddeningly frivolous passing of a blue and gold butterfly, had turned her sights away from the garden for that crucial moment. She didn't realize something was amiss till she heard a muffled galloping sound behind her in the grass, cocking one small, black-tipped ear to catch it, and by then it was really too late anyway.

WHAM.

Suddenly there was a burst of color in her eyes and very little air in her lungs. Xo found she had a mouthful of dirt, and also maybe a bit of the worm she'd been studying earlier, and there was a great blue tornado of wind and flapping surrounding her and for a surreal moment she thought maybe the butterfly had grown very large or she had grown very small and either way she was caught up in its backdrafts, tumbling helplessly -

Hissing and spitting and writhing in the dirt like a terrified feral kitten, Xo clumsily managed to roll away from the mess, where she crouched on all fours, wild-eyed, disheveled, filthy, and bristling with a peculiar, tiny ferocity, her tail lashing about behind her like a ship's line in a hurricane.

And there, regarding her with much the same look on his face, was a familiar sight.

"Amehuan! Onimitzittac!" Xo snarl-squeaked furiously, swelling up like a bullfrog with spitting rage. Oh, she remembered HIM, alright. That doll-shoving, personal-space violating, black-masked, feather-butted -

"- Huexolotl!" she shrieked in his general direction, though it was from a safe distance.

Despite Nao's impressive displays of manly, it seemed Xo was having none of it.

Still crouched on all fours, still framed by the lashings of her tail, Xo fixed Nao with a serious fisheye. What the hell was all this? Tackled from behind and jabbed with sticks and taunted? Oh no. Oh hell no. This was not how things went in the world of Xo.

With pointed disdain, she paused to fastidiously and furtively wipe the dirt and worm-bits from her face with the back of her hand till all that was left were a few miscellaneous smudges. Replacing the hand on the ground and with a fresh bristle, she gathered herself into a tense little ball of malevolence, her tail calming till only the very tip rapidly twitched.

This whole thing pretty much needed to be rectified immediately. Xo understood herself to be someone for whom proddings were not an acceptable form of communication.

Gold eyes round and indignant, Xo eyed Nao like a fish in a bowl till one prod hit a little too close to home. Giving a preliminary shake of her back-half, Xo let out a comical little bleat of a snarl that she thought was quite intimidating, at least, launching herself from the ground and latching right the hell onto Nao's "sword" with her sharp little teeth. She dug her heels and palms into the dirt in a vigorous attempt to wrestle the thing out of his grasp, looking about as fierce as anyone with rainbow feathers serving as hair can manage. The wood crackled between her jaws, and she growled like a cub, her tail bottlebrushed and poker straight.

Then it occurred to her what she'd just heard.

She stopped her tugging abruptly, blinking twice, and glared at Nao in a mixture of stark horror and crippling curiosity.

"Tlen amehuan chihua ihtoa?" she demanded breathlessly, muffled from around her mouthful of stick. At least, that's probably what Nao would understand it to be if he were listening properly - with so little room left in her mouth it sounded more to the tune of "teghn amwagh cheewagh eetoeahmf?"

She dropped the sword from her mouth, spitting and licking her sleeve sulkily to scrape off the splinters. She hoped he knew she would be attempting to bite him into swiss cheese by now if his inexplicable knowledge of her only words hadn't completely emptied her sails.

He must have been the one to be calling her..! It was his voice she'd heard across the yard. Of all the people who understood the only things she could manage to say, it had to be the one who seemed to enjoy knocking her over and jabbing her with sticks. Perfect. And had he really said nacaocuilin? That rotten, stinking..

Well, if he understood, all the more reason to chew him out about this knocking-over crap.

"Inech monequi teica tlaza tlapalotiuh, totolin," she snapped, turning her back on him quite huffily and shooting a reproachful glare over her shoulder that was icy enough to hopeful staunch any thought of further attack. It was the longest thing she'd ever bothered saying to anyone. The last few weeks had brought with it a bombardment of sudden, nearly fluent comprehension of what seemed a completely useless language, but any sort of English still left Xo utterly helpless in it's wake. Speaking was a frustrating thing, when one could say so much that nobody could understand.

...except this one, apparently and.. he..

Had Xo been just a little older, she may have felt the urgent need to slap her forehead.