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Sandor glances to where Joffrey busily peers through the bars of a grate. A ball of tiny furred bodies slumbers amidst the stone.
"They're so tiny," Joffrey says. There's wonderment in his voice, a high, airy note of it that lingers in the exhalation of his breath as he settles on his heels. It is the wonderment of how weak creatures can be, how fragile their bones, as light and thin as that of a bird's.
Joffrey is just as tiny and weak. Sandor could grab him by the neck as if he were one of those kittens, could shake him and feel the echo up his arm as the vertebrae beneath his grip snapped and stole the boy's life.
"They'll bite," Sandor warns, as Joffrey sticks a pale arm through the bars, his bare skin brushing against the rust-riddled iron. "And they carry disease," he adds, just as Joffrey gets a handful of fur.
Joffrey jumps at a well-timed hiss, yanks his arm free so quickly that he earns himself a fine long scratch that beads with bright red blood. Sandor laughs silently.
"I hate cats," Joffrey decides. His eyes glisten with welling tears when he looks to Sandor for agreement, and Sandor laughs aloud, the harsh sound of his amusement as brittle as winter twigs. Oh, how easily that slender column would snap.
"I hate dogs even more," Joffrey says. The blossoming threat of tears has gone, replaced by a high colour in his cheeks.
The smile hidden beneath Sandor's helm is a gruesome thing that pulls at the scar-tangled mess of his face. "Then it's a good thing that I'm your dog, isn't it."
Joffrey's smile as he bids they continue on their way is just as cruel.