It was a strange thing to feel some part of him stir despite the quietness of the evening - this part of him, see, had seemingly been stretched too thin to ever stir again and yet he felt it nonetheless. He ignored it though even as she approached, his eyes shut as an ear twisted towards her. Yet, when she fell, his eyes fluttered open, meeting hers almost immediately as she scufffled about in the grass. His eyes followed her up as she rose and quickly shut again before she had time to notice that he had watched; only when she was composed did they open once more, allowing her the belief that he had not seen her stumble. Still, he had grown curious not just from that but rather, the strange juxtoposition that it caused: he felt Raven somewhere within this stranger and yet, Raven had never been as such. Raven had always been distant to him, a self composed and poised creature and yet, this strange version of her... well, did not seem so. It made his lip twitch in amusement as he peeled his head from the ground, offering his gaze to her with a tilt of his head.
He blinked slowly as she addressed him, taken briefly aback by her direct nature. Slowly, he looked to his left and right, as if only just now aware of the markers around him but then his shoulders shrugged, a halfhearted thing that seemed to deflate him as he settled into place. Not many ever approached him but when they did, they were often full of questions, often ready to nibble away at him and so, he grew comfortable, a leg stretched out in front of him to balance.
"And now... you walk atop..them.." He noted with a motion of his muzzle towards her paws, a snaggled tooth having poked itself out in jest and perhaps the slightest hint of challenge. After all, he had not trapsed across the earth here so brazenly. "I listen...I protect." He bowed his head solemnly downward, his nose allowed to briefly touch the soil between his legs as if to very well address the dead as if they were alive. "When I sleep...I am closer...to them." Sleep was, after all, the cousin of death. In his dreams, he could see them better, hear them better, understand them all. Awake, they were but whispers that competed with the scratching at his skull.
He fell into silence then, a heavy thing as he simply stared into her face, brows furrowed slightly as he explore the depths of her eyes. He could not pinpoint why it was that the same part of him that stirred for Raven moved ever so slightly with her and yet, it made him uncomfortable, made his skin prickle with uncertainty. He wondered in that deathly silence, then, if she was aware of this strangeness.