Blackfeather Woods Did I just seal the deal?

From crippling darkness, at last came light. The girl awoke from slumber one day and found a new sensation: she could lift her eyelids, weak as they were from unuse. Her baby blues popped open, twin bright orbs in the den.

It was not perfect; her vision would remain murky for some time. But at last, Maegi was able to make out shapes, dull colors. Her own pelt, which matched that of her mother's, laying in a delirious haze several steps nearby. And her brothers, one solid dark, one with a mottled gray and white pelt. She noticed that the former had his eyes open, too, and stumbled toward him with a squeak of joy.

He was small, and incredibly stunted, though Maegi didn't realize that this wasn't the norm for young ones; he could be a late bloomer, after all. He was crying for Potema, mouth wide as he pleaded. She settled down next to him with a muffled thud on the stone floor and nestled her muzzle into his neck, curling her longer, more supple body against his.

She didn't have the word for it quite yet, but the emotion she'd later call love coursed through her, racing alongside the blood in her veins as she embraced her little brother. For if their mother would not answer, she would care for him herself. As best she could.

The world had grown so much bigger in just a few moments.