Kenta quietly nodded, still feeling embarrassed, but he at least stopped talking. Everythings... ok again... right? He thought with cautious optimism, his tails slowly swaying again. He shook his head and tried to smile. "Are we still... going to the secret spot?" He asked. Moving on from the subject, it still sounded like a good idea.
Shay nodded, taking hold of his hand. It was the only way she could think of to let him know everything was fine. "Yeah. Sounds like a good idea to me." Her smile widened.
Shay remembered where her secret place was by heart. She led him there, never once straying from her path or having to think about where she was going. While Shay didn't quite become alive in the forest, there was a freedom about the way she moved and a smoothness to her laughter that didn't come when she was near other people.
When they had gotten there, she dove into the thorned bushes and pulled him down into the burrow with her, picking thorns from her hair once they were settled in. "Ouch. One is stuck in my hair." She winced.
He felt so much relief when she took his hand. It settled the storm in his head instantly, and his smile became a genuine one. When they got through the bushes, he shook his tails. They were wrapped in thorns. "I'll get it" He offered before getting his own thorns out. He went gently through her hair until he found he thorn and carefully plucked it out. "Maybe we can find a less painful way back here?" He suggested, though that seemed unlikely. He quickly turned his attention to his tails, trying his best to get the thorns out. His tails had collected them in large strings that looped around. He tried pulling on them, and some would come out, but for others it just dug them in harder. "Or, maybe tail armor." He added jokingly.
Shay crawled over to him to help him free his tails of their thorny armor. "Definitely no other way in, and if we remove the thorn bushes it won't be secret anymore. Maybe we should buy or invent some weird thorn brush so we can comb out your tails?"
"Do they make something like that?" He asked hopefully as he tore the last of the thorns out. "That would make this so much easier... Oh, maybe we can learn some kind of illusion magic? That'd help a lot when we get older. I can only imagine it'd become more difficult once we're bigger, right?" He was rubbing his tails to try and make them feel better, and make sure all the thorns were out.
"I don't think we'll be able to come in here when we're bigger," she grinned. "But we could invest in a comb to help your poor tails." She stroked his tail before moving across the small space and leaning back against the dirt walls.
"Huh? Why not?" He asks, holding his tails close to him as he sits down. "I thought we'd always come here. It might get a little cramped but... I can always transform." He suggested with a smile.
"I can't," Shay laughed. "One day I may be too big. I'll have to find a different secret place." She stretched her legs out and laid her head back. "What should we talk about? Do you have any stories?"
The idea they wouldn't be able to come back one day worried him a bit, but he quickly moved on to the next subject with the thought That won't be for a long time... He thought for a moment, then told her "Well... There was this one time in France..." He shook his head and smiled. "Nevermind. We spend a lot of time thinking about me and my story. My past and all... Shay-shay, tell me about you."
Shay canted her head. She had never left Manta Carlos, so the idea of the world was intriguing to her. "Wait! Tell me about what happened in France, you can't just leave a story like that. Then I'll tell you a little about me, though, I don't have many stories."