He must become immune to pain, that much he knows. He sees the way his relatives look at his leg; he sees the way even his mother looks at it, though he feels more warmth from her gaze. Yet, even in his young mind, he knows he must become accustomed to it, impervious to its insistent pain. He never thinks about what might happen if he does not. He simply knows. And so, he does his best even in front of this stranger to hide it all; his face is alive with movement in an effort to pull the boy's attention away from his body. His brows raise up and his tail waves, ears erect and nose twitching with excitement. Even as his new company looks at him with confusion, he does his best to look engaging back - interesting, fun, he tries to look like it all. He wants this boy to stick around, after all.

He shuffles, however, under the pressure of not knowing in that brief moment. To go first? He did not understand. He suppresses, though, the whine of confusion that seeks to break his lips. Instead, he swallows it down and turns away, trying to take the attention back towards the rabbit's hole. He is glad, then, when the boy responds so positively. So much so, in fact, that he awkwardly leaps to his paws once more, his tail a blur behind him as he paces forward, dropping his front half onto the ground and into a playful bow. The boy responded the same, a fact that made Abel wiggle in excitement.

The question, however, makes him pause for a moment, eyeing the darkness of the hole as he searches for the correct word.

"L...lepus?" He tests the word - in his mind, he understands and yet, he feels the other will not. And so, he tries again, his brows furrowed this time in thought. "Food! It... jumps. Living, it jumps."

He grins up at the other for a moment, hoping to see some kind of recognition of the words and some kind of understanding. It is difficult, he knows, to learn this language that the other wolves use and yet, he finds it fun to do so. In his mind, this strange boy is the key to the outside world; he is confident, he is cool and he knows to speak like the others. Though he might not know it, Abel was already looking up to him in.

With an awkward bound forward, he brings his nose to the hole's edge once more, huffing the scent before meeting the other boy's eyes with a playful, challenging grin.

"Think you can... catch?"