The coyote's tail beat harder when the bird-woman reached down to scratch him, though stilled somewhat when she brought her hand back to do... what? He remembered seeing her hand make strange movements before, hand-shapes. Now she was doing it again. He didn't know what they meant, but he understood they meant something. Though he hadn't seen the blue men do hand-shapes like these, she wouldn't make the shapes without a reason. So he thumped his tail again as they moved forward into the good building together. He accepted the shapes, even though he didn't know what they were or why they were used.
He was also glad that she seemed better now. The wariness had smoothed mostly out of her posture, which was good. The coyote kept by her side, however, instead of wandering off and greeting the other people who looked over at him. He would have liked to know them, to catch hold of their specific scents so that he might remember them if he saw them again in this city-place. But he didn't. He was here with the bird-woman. More than wanting to see the others he didn't want to leave her alone. Not if she was wary of this place.
He couldn't help himself from begging for a pat, though, when another young woman came over, her clothing dragging the smells of the cooking and many other people with it. She spoke to the bird-woman with unknown sounds that at first the coyote did not even know to be language. But her sounds seemed to make sense to his friend. And again she made the hand-shapes, though now the other woman made some back.
It was odd. The human-forms he had known had not made so many hand motions while they spoke. It was like their hands were speaking for them. The coyote understood the idea of body language, and this was like that since the hands were part of the body. Out of all the ways that human-forms spoke, this seemed like a good one. One that he might like to know and use.
As for the words they used... he thought he had heard pork before, though he didn't know what it was just from the word alone. Fish he understood. They were slippery in the water, hard for him to catch, and wrong-hunting for his dogs who didn't like to swim.
Curious as to what stew was, the coyote vanished under the table, crossing in front of the bird-woman's knees to get at the chair next to her. He nosed at it, pressing his head to the legs, pushing. When that didn't work how he wanted he closed his teeth over the wood --different from the barky wood of sticks like in the forest-- and dragged it out.
Then he jumped up, his bad back leg scrabbling and hurting to get into the right place, and then sat on the chair like a human-form might. He didn't remember ever sitting up at a table as a coyote before, and somehow it seemed silly now that he was up here, like play. He looked over at the bird-woman, tilted his head, and grinned. Some of the human-forms were looking this way and he bobbed his head at them as if to say hello. One of the people --a little girl across the room-- laughed in delight, and the coyote warmed at the sound.
