Moonspear your love will always be rooted deeper than any grave

As soon as she'd gone away from them, they voiced their issue with this in their tiny new voices and it made her stomach drop hearing it for the first time. Realization had set in swiftly -- even if it had only been mere feet, she'd never been that far from them at all. No wonder they should take offense in this, so she made sure to fix that distance quickly, although her sights remained on Charon as he joined in behind her.

For a few beats, she watched him carefully behold the new little lives for the first time. They squeaked, and shifted among themselves. She still knew so very little about them but so long as they continued to thrive, she knew there would be time to learn.

Her unease eventually smoothed with time as the pups seemed to settle even more, so she took what comfort she could from having that. It was a delicate, strange sort of peacefulness that she touched on.. one that seemed so foreign to her but she still knew how to revere. Charon seemed to feel it too, and she was glad -- and relieved, too. He would be the only one to share a moment like this with her. She soon found herself nodding. "Yeah," she replied, her voice coarse and tired too but full of fondness. Beautiful, yet still only the very beginning.

Ame tucked the pups in close to her before setting her head on the den floor to watch them -- or doze if they kept quiet enough, hopefully. When Charon said he'd get food, she had no objections, so picked up just enough to nod again. She reasoned she could eat but while she waited his eventual return, she focused on resting and processing the entirety of this moment and the four living newborns beside her. Sometime later, she'd decide what to do with the last one that did not survive (perhaps just unable to compete before their birth, or she'd been unable to provide him the resources to survive too), but he was swiftly becoming inconsequential compared to what did matter now.