She listens with ears perked forward, eyes wide in expectation as she tosses a look over her shoulder. Watching him deep in thought, she wonders what creature he might present- a spirit shaped as a great bear, hiding in the rainforests? A two headed snake? Dragons, silver scaled, born from the deep of the sea and dragged ashore?

In her life she’d seen a menagerie of beasts, but so many of the same shape. Deer, elk, pronghorn. Badgers, skunks, and mink.

Then-

”A giraffe.”

She pauses in her steps, pawprints left behind her in the sand. Cocking her head, she works the word over in her head once.

“Sorry. A what?”

Hah! Success!

With a wag of his tail he pranced around in front of her (not particularly gracefully, covering a limp), and grinned. Taller than anything you've ever seen on four legs. Tall as a tree! Nate lifted his snout up in emphasis. The legs are long, and the neck? Even longer. It's gotta be mostly neck, if I'm being honest.

But the strangeness of them didn't end there! Each hoof is the size of a wolf's head! If you only saw the face you might think it was some kind of... stretched out deer, with fuzzy nubs instead of antlers. But they're covered in big brown spots, and their tongue is blue and wiggly like an eel. It eats the tops off of trees, whole branches at a time, and to drink it has to crouch, like — He splayed his front feet to either side, making a show of stretching out his neck in imitation, — this. He grunted a little, but the rendition was enthusiastic and hopefully got the idea across despite him lacking proper proportions.

A properly impressive animal, if he was any judge! But it was Mithwyth who's opinion really mattered.

In her mind, she attempts to conjure up the image of a deer, neck stretched beyond the canopy and legs so tall the knees tower above her wolf head. She imagines fuzzy little antler buds, like a buck that had lost its rack for the season. Dark, brown spots, like the pattern of baby cougar, and- a blue eel tongue?!

An incredulous laugh breaks from her throat and she looks at him with raised brows.

”C’mon, that can’t be real!” she protests. There’s no world that could possibly exist, or walk the same grounds as she! ”You’re pulling my tail!” As if to make a point she dashes round, nipping at the tip of his.

And it crouches to drink! How inconvenient!

”How can it walk if it’s that long?” she giggles, thinking of some stretched deer tripping face forward, neck landing first.

I'm telling you, it's the truth! He laughed, spinning in time with her as she made a grab for his tail. Head tilting, he staggered a little, and pounced forward in a lopsided bow. Around them, seals bellowed and waddled out of the way.

Ko-Ga, back me up!, he barked, as the crow swept down to see what all the fuss was about. Ko-Ga cawed back, though the tone left his response open to interpretation.

It's got a big ambling gait, like a loping horse, just — maybe a little more drunk. If we find somewhere it doesn't snow, where thorn-trees and tall brown grass grows, I could prove it to you. He'd seen animals already that had no right to tread snow in American taiga, birds singing songs he'd never heard. Who was to say there weren't giraffes out here somewhere, too, just waiting to be found?

A dramatic pause, Of course, then we'd have to worry about ostriches. And elephants. And rhinoceros...es. (What was plural for rhinoceros?)

The latter he'd only seen drawings of, led to believe that sailing them across the Atlantic was downright impossible given their persistent insistence on breaking holes in things like wooden boats, which were then prone to sinking.