Kitty squeezed his hand back automatically, holding tight, but for some reason her chest tightened uncomfortably when he spoke. Sister. That was...well, it wasn't really wrong, was it? They'd grown up together after all, yet they were closer than just "childhood friends" might indicate.
Still, somehow it made her...uncomfortable. She wasn't entirely sure why, but she had a sneaking suspicion--but it wasn't exactly the time or the place to address that just now.
Wayrin, oddly, seemed similarly put off by Atiq's words, though for a different reason. Ignoring the human entirely, he met Kitty's eyes and demanded, incredulous, "He calls you Kitty?"
The panther shifter felt a strange combination of defensiveness and shame that she didn't understand wash through her. "It's my name," she snapped back.
"It's the name of a pet," the jaguar snarled. He finally did look to Atiq, just long enough to curl his lip and scoff, "Sister my ass."
Kitty growled at him, shifting again so she was crouched over Atiq protectively, as though worried Wayrin might suddenly pounce. One hand braced next to his hip with her legs on the other side of him, holding her body across his lap without quite touching, her back to his chest so she couldn't see his face.
She knew her nickname could be considered...condescending, but it had never felt that way. When she and Atiq met--well, when his parents had bought her for him, she always assumed she was a birthday present--they'd both been so young that not even she could pronounce her full name properly. She could still remember the tiny boy Atiq had been, utterly delighted the first time she'd shifted in front of him, stroking her silky fur, still kitten-soft then, and calling her "Kitty". She'd liked the name, and it had stuck.
She'd never felt ashamed of it before.
"If you're not going to help, just give me the herbs and I'll do it myself," Kitty finally snapped, ears pinned flat to her skull.
Wayrin scoffed again, but he knelt a few feet from them and started laying his bundle out on the jungle floor. "Would you even know what to do with them, Kitty?"
She winced, growl swelling louder, but didn't answer. She figured all three of them knew that she wouldn't, there was no point digging this hole deeper. "Just...help him. Please."
The jaguar glanced up, met and held her eyes. Then some of the posturing seemed to bleed from his stance and he sighed, nodding. "Alright. See if you can get him comfortable--well, as much as you can. I only know enough herblore to keep infection at bay, I'm not going to be able to do a thing for his broken bones. And this is gonna sting like all hells."